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Google Won't Add Fact Checks Despite New EU Law (axios.com) 90

Posted by BeauHD from the not-sold-on-the-idea dept.
According to Axios, Google has told the EU it will not add fact checks to search results and YouTube videos or use them in ranking or removing content, despite the requirements of a new EU law. From the report: In a letter written to Renate Nikolay, the deputy director general under the content and technology arm at the European Commission, Google's global affairs president Kent Walker said the fact-checking integration required by the Commission's new Disinformation Code of Practice "simply isn't appropriate or effective for our services" and said Google won't commit to it. The code would require Google to incorporate fact-check results alongside Google's search results and YouTube videos. It would also force Google to build fact-checking into its ranking systems and algorithms.

Walker said Google's current approach to content moderation works and pointed to successful content moderation during last year's "unprecedented cycle of global elections" as proof. He said a new feature added to YouTube last year that enables some users to add contextual notes to videos "has significant potential." (That program is similar to X's Community Notes feature, as well as new program announced by Meta last week.)

The EU's Code of Practice on Disinformation, introduced in 2022, includes several voluntary commitments that tech firms and private companies, including fact-checking organizations, are expected to deliver on. The Code, originally created in 2018, predates the EU's new content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), which went into effect in 2022.

The Commission has held private discussions over the past year with tech companies, urging them to convert the voluntary measures into an official code of conduct under the DSA. Walker said in his letter Thursday that Google had already told the Commission that it didn't plan to comply. Google will "pull out of all fact-checking commitments in the Code before it becomes a DSA Code of Conduct," he wrote. He said Google will continue to invest in improvements to its current content moderation practices, which focus on providing people with more information about their search results through features like Synth ID watermarking and AI disclosures on YouTube.

Google Won't Add Fact Checks Despite New EU Law More | Reply

Google Won't Add Fact Checks Despite New EU Law

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  • Real reason (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @02:06AM (#65095367)

    Their fact checkers are either going to be biased or simply misinformed often enough for fact checking to be irrelevant (and potentially harmful).

    • Re:Real reason (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Dollar Ton ( 5495648 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @02:28AM (#65095383)

      The real reason is that in the US, facts stopped to matter and anyone who even toys with the idea of limiting lies and fakery on the interwebs is bound to draw the ire of the post-truth cabinet of donold.

      So, US companies will try to abstain.

      • Re:Real reason (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @02:57AM (#65095425)

        Indeed. But the EU will not let this pass and eventually make things mandatory. Google is being stupid here. They could fix their act and stay without mandatory rules. Well, I guess the kid-gloves need to come off on this one.

        • Indeed. But the EU will not let this pass and eventually make things mandatory. Google is being stupid here. They could fix their act and stay without mandatory rules. Well, I guess the kid-gloves need to come off on this one.

          I doubt it, and I'm a big supporter of the EU pushing this. The reason being is that search is a search. It looks for things. I'm all in favour of social media having fact checking where algorithms push content purely based on engagement factors, but if you search for something you are ... searching for something. The results should not be filtered based on perception of correctness.

          I would actually like to see the EU go the other way on this one, and make a rule saying that search results need to be presen

          • I don't know about you, but when I search for things I search for facts.
            Google already deliberately edits it's search results based on who is paying them to advertise in that space, and that is a large reason I use other search engines.
            However, to get back to the point. If your search engine knows that a piece of information you are looking for is non-factual, it should show you the information you are looking for along with the facts. Clearly labeled somehow. ie: this is what you were looking for. It has b

      • Re:Real reason (Score:4, Informative)

        by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @07:16AM (#65095789)

        Given that Trump has literally, on record, threatened media that publish (or refuse to publish) in accordance with his desire with government intervention to destroy them and now he's POTUS with people in place to actually do at least some of that... yeah.

        So you're about to see Fox News-style 'facts' everywhere, unrestricted.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by timeOday ( 582209 )
        Huh. To me the idea of requiring google to 'fact check' the entire internet sound insane.

        This the most 100% Chinese-like idea I think I've ever heard proposed in the western world.

        • to you, possibly.

          to anyone with a bit of common sense it is a no brainier.

          first, it is a great application of this "AI" shit that Nvidia is peddling to the feeble-minded. huge competitive advantage. much profit. really progress. A MAGA that is actually helpful rather than harmful.

          second, and more pertinent, normal people turn to google to look for information, not for noise and propaganda.

          following the EU law is, thus, pure self interest for Google.

          except that the us broligarchy doesn't like it, now that th

      • The real reason is that in the US, facts stopped to matter and anyone who even toys with the idea of limiting lies and fakery on the interwebs is bound to draw the ire of the post-truth cabinet of donold.

        So, US companies will try to abstain.

        If the EU desires fact checking every video on Youtube, is it not the EU's duty to intercept every video and fact check every video on youtube? It then becomes a version of Youtube that reflects what the EU decides is true. Europeans have a perfect record of not deviating from actual facts - they never promote anything that is a lie.

      • The real reason is that in the US, facts stopped to matter and anyone who even toys with the idea of limiting lies and fakery on the interwebs is bound to draw the ire of the post-truth cabinet of donold.

        Or, just perhaps....we're going back more towards the origins of the internet, and people said/presented what they wanted, and it was up to the CONSUMER to sort out the chaff from the wheat....and decide what was factual themselves, rather than being force fed "the truth" according to other "authorities".

    • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Their fact checkers are either going to be biased or simply misinformed often enough for fact checking to be irrelevant (and potentially harmful).

      You: Drinking bleach will cure you of respiratory infections!!

      Fact checker: Bullshit ...

      You: The fact checkers are biased!!

    • That simply is not true [translate.goog].

      • "we have investigated ourselves and found ourselves, if anything, to be under-respected and under-paid."

        Wow, and that's coming from a "fact checker!" So you know it's true!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      There are numerous examples of fact checking being very helpful and preventing harm. For example, several times when there have been terrorist attacks/mass murders, lies have been spread about the perpetrator being transgender, or an immigrant. Debunking that stuff is important for protecting those groups.

      It may be imperfect, but it's better than not having it. Just because the fire brigade can't save every house that an arsonists sets on fire, and occasionally maybe even makes mistakes that make things wor

      • There are numerous examples of fact checking being very helpful and preventing harm. For example, several times when there have been terrorist attacks/mass murders, lies have been spread about the perpetrator being transgender, or an immigrant.

        Actually, to date, if the media discovers the "terrorist" is of one of your listed persuasions...they pretty much just suppress that.

        It gets a LOT of air time if it is a straight white guy.

        Have you noticed they STILL will not release that trans...whatever (woman w

  • Yep, that will go well (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @02:55AM (#65095415)

    Content "moderation" on YouTube is deeply broken at this time. And Google thinks it is above the law? Time for a $500M fine and repetition of said fine until they comply. Well, at the moment it is still voluntary, because the EU gives enterprises a change to fix their act and self-regulate. But expect this to get mandatory if the large ones fail to fix things.

    • They are just painting a target on their backs

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        They are. And that does not go well with the EU, were anti-trust and consumer-protection exists and is taken pretty seriously.

        • If only they took democracy seriously...

          Sorry the EU made me do a revote on that and it's come in at 50.000001% in favour of me believing they respect democracy. Shame I'll never get to reevaluate my opinions on this... But that's apparently my final answer.

    • not above us law. its saving itself from liability and wasted resources. without fact checking, there is no fact to check so when section 230 protection goes away, they wont be sued

    • There is no law.

      The EU is refusing to legislate and trying to get Google to contractually obligate themselves to be arbitrarily beaten.

    • Re:Yep, that will go well (Score:4, Interesting)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @07:55AM (#65095877) Homepage Journal

      To be fair, the EU isn't saying you must have a specific type of content moderation and misinformation control. It sets out a standard that it expects companies to meet, with examples of how they could do it, but if Google can do the same thing some other way then that is allowed.

      The question is if Google's proposal is good enough. Based on how YouTube is going, I'd say not.

    • Content "moderation" on YouTube is deeply broken at this time. And Google thinks it is above the law? Time for a $500M fine and repetition of said fine until they comply. Well, at the moment it is still voluntary, because the EU gives enterprises a change to fix their act and self-regulate. But expect this to get mandatory if the large ones fail to fix things.

      The solution is simple. Block Youtube and all social media. Problem fixed, and the EU is now safe from lies. Like they have been forever.

      The problem with "fact Checking" is that it becomes opinion checking very quickly. And Is the fact checker presenting facts? Who watches the watchmen?

      Take the China approach, not the EU rules the world approach.

  • This is going to be disastrous for EU citizens looking for the truth.
    We need a Ministry of Truth in the EU!

  • Could be worse (Score:3, Interesting)

    by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @04:39AM (#65095539)

    Google Won't Add Fact Checks

    Jordan Klepper on The Daily Show: Immediately after President Biden's farewell speech this evening where he warned about the rise of oligarchs, searches spiked on Google for "What is an oligarch." (which is true) Google replied, "Don't worry about it."

  • should require visual mockups of what that would look like if it were applied to past instances of lying by that government.

  • Who fact checks the fact checkers? There is no ultimate source of truth (in this world, anyway) to whom we can appeal. That's the whole point of free speech.

  • 'Fact checking' is largely pointless (Score:3)

    by IDemand2HaveSumBooze ( 9493913 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @08:17AM (#65095907)

    There is only value in 'fact checking' if

    a) there is a body that can objectively evaluate claims and is sufficiently well-informed to determine if they're correct and

    b) most people believe this body to be completely objective and sufficiently well-informed.

    One of the problems in the current age of hyper-partisan politics is that pretty much any organisation or public body is associated with a particular ideology and so many will assume that anything they say is motivated by that ideology. In US I feel there's already been a collapse of trust in any single source of objective truth (apart from God, for those who believe in such a being). For Democrats, there's Democrat thruth and Republican lies, for Republicans, there's Republican truth and Democrat lies. And of course there's all kinds of flavours of those two versions of truth floating around the Internet, and you can always pick the one you like the most.

    In Europe things are a bit better in that respect but it feels like they're heading towards the way things are in the US.

    To put it another way, the purpose of fact checking is to educate the people about what is correct and what is false. And you can't educate those who actively refuse to be educated. So even assuming fact checkers will be largely correct in what they say, which is a very big assumption, if people won't believe them anyway, the excercise is largely pointless. Indeed, if you believe that fact checkers are biased towards an ideology that is opposite from yours, you may well decide that if they claim something to be false, it's probably true.

    The EU governments can't dismiss those who no longer trust them as a lunatic fringe, because that fringe keeps growing by the day and in some places is no longer a minority anymore. We can't go back to the days of newspapers and TV news being the only authoritative sources of information. Internet is a Wild West and it's the only way it can be. Trying to put that genie back in the bottle will only get you accused of being authoritarian. If governments want people to trust them, the best they can do is try to convince everyone that out of all the possible sources of information out there, they are the most trustworthy.

  • Google *should* push back (Score:3)

    by RobinH ( 124750 ) on Friday January 17, 2025 @08:25AM (#65095929) Homepage

    The rules that Meta was using for fact checking was overly politicized and strayed way too far into the realm of opinions.

    For instance, all the media outlets loudly proclaimed that "now Meta would let you say being trans was a mental illness." You can make the argument that being trans is not a mental illness and cite the DSM 5 as evidence, but you can also make the point that there was a lot of pushback within the psychology community against the DSM 5 because the committee that put it together and approved it was accused of caving to political pressure instead of sticking to the scientific method and evidence. Both are sound lines of reasoning. You could also make some reasonable claims about trans being a mental illness because such a large percentage of trans people seek therapy. Again, that doesn't prove it either way, but it's a reasonable thing to say. And the definition of mental illness is blurry (my wife, who is a psychologist, would say it's a disorder when it interferes with your day-to-day life). You can find psychologists who think trans people generally have a mental illness and you can find some who don't.

    The most likely situation was that within the internal culture at Meta, the only possible opinion you were allowed to have was that trans is not a mental illness, and therefore there was nobody to push back against putting that on the fact checker's list of Meta-approved facts.

    So why should we trust Meta or Google for that matter to be the arbiter of what is true or not true? And even worse, why do we want these organizations to be forced by law to say something is true or not true based on a list that the government gives them? That's the worst of all possible solutions.

    • The social media sites used fact-checking as a means of avoiding dealing with behavior-checking. I would like to think your post would pass content moderation anywhere since it's a fairly objectively written statement that doesn't call for harmful actions. The challenge that social media has is that many statements that are problematic in terms of fact due so to justify problematic behaviors and those statements are often made using dog whistle terminology.

      Engagement is down across social media such a

  • I was actually looking forward to fact checkers pointing out that the Jews don't control all the banks and seed oils aren't actually bad for you. GMO's, Teflon and plastic bags aren't actually killing you, and chiropractic doctors are not medical doctors.

    • I was actually looking forward to fact checkers pointing out that the Jews don't control all the banks and seed oils aren't actually bad for you. GMO's, Teflon and plastic bags aren't actually killing you, and chiropractic doctors are not medical doctors.

      Hmm....

      I think I'm going to pour myself a drink (scotch on the rocks), light up a cigarette and ponder all you points you have put forth.....

  • Europe, by which I mean the EU plus the UK, is increasingly totalitarian. Germany is throwing people in jail for posting memes, and even for commenting on memes. The UK has (in one incident among many) jailed a woman for "stirring up racial hatred" for her social media posts made after an illegal immigrant stabbed three young children in her area.

    Which brings us to "fact checking". The problem is that the fact checking is not (and possibly cannot be) neutral. The fact checkers may have their personal agenda

    • In Germany a former member of the Left - so a proper lefty - abandoned that party, added an anti-immigrant policy to her policy mix and is now polling 5-8%. The conniptions of the main stream media who desperately want to label her 'Hard Right' but will get laughed at if they do, is a running joke.

  • If they will not fact check their news/content, then they should be required to label that content as "non fact checked".

    This is similar to the ethics of disclosing LLM/"ai" use in generated content.
    There must be transparency in the use (or lack of use) of these technologies.

  • And the whole issue of fact checking is a demonstration of why they can't be trusted!

  • Until the truth started coming out

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