Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also found that fake news was more commonly re-tweeted by humans than bots.

They said it could be because fake news tends to be “more novel”.

The most common subject matter was false political news.

Other popular topics included urban legends, business, terrorism, science, entertainment and natural disasters.

Twitter provided its data for the research.

The firm told the BBC that it is already engaged with trying to devise a “health check” to measure its contribution to public conversation.

“False news is more novel, and people are more likely to share novel information,” said Professor Sinan Aral, one of the study’s co-authors.

While the team did not conclude that novelty on its own caused the re-tweets, they said false news tended to be more surprising than real news, which may make it more likely to be shared.

Prof Aral, Soroush Vosoughi and associate professor Deb Roy began their research in the aftermath of the Boston marathon bombing in 2013.

“Twitter became our main source of news,” said Dr Vosoughi.

“I realized that … a good chunk of what I was reading on social media was rumours; it was false news.”

The team used six independent fact-checking sources, including Snopes and Urbanlegend, to identify whether the stories in the study were genuine.

Their findings, published in the journal Science, included:

• false news stories were 70% more likely to be re-tweeted than true stories
• It took true stories around six times longer to reach 1,500 people
• True stories were rarely shared beyond 1,000 people, but the most popular false news could reach up to 100,000

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Source: BBC

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The Police in a statement said it had taken note of fake news reports of criminal activity over the weekend.

[contextly_sidebar id=”JQbE8soQ6hI33cUYaDlCh0Ky1T0KugB3″]It believes such fake news reports are intended to cause fear and panic by devious persons.

“The Police Administration has monitored a number of fake news of criminal incidents particularly false news of robbery attacks on social media, which are believed to be calculated attempts by unscrupulous persons to cause fear and alarm to the public and to disturb the public peace.”

“An example of such false publication is the news that there were robbery attacks on certain banks in Accra. Reports from the regions show that there was no record of robbery on any bank in Ghana over the weekend,” the statement added.

Such reports come in the wake of the increased reports of robbery attacks and violent crime.

The dramatic increase in the robbery cases led to the government scaling up the already-ongoing operation ‘Calm Life’ which is aimed at combating criminal activities in all parts of the country.

The government said military personnel were going to be deployed onto the streets of major cities nationwide to assist the police as part of efforts to halt the surge in robberies.

The police, in the statement continued to assure that it had not relented in its efforts to curb crime.

“The Police Administration assures the public that vigorous efforts including the patrolling of crime hot spots, intelligence gathering and reviewing operations are underway to frustrate efforts of criminals and those involved in crimes to be arrested will face the full rigours of the law,” they stated.

Find below their full statement

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By: Delali Adogla-Bessa/citifonline.com/Ghana

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That tool is now live, and you can see for yourself if any of the pages you liked were created by the Internet Research Agency.

You can find the tool in Facebook’s Help Center, and it will show you a list of the various pages that you follow that are linked to the Kremlin-backed group, as well as when you liked and followed it.

You can also log in with your Instagram account. However, the tool won’t tell you if you shared or even saw content from the pages.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg initially dismissed the notion that his company could have influenced the 2016 presidential election, but the company later admitted that Russian-backed organizations placed ads through the site, and that upwards of 10 million people saw them.

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Source: BBC

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Posts from a 4chan messaging board that falsely identified the gunman as an individual who was not involved were circulated online.

Google says the posts only appeared in its Top Stories section if users searched for the erroneous name.

Facebook said it took down the posts within minutes.

Speculation gone viral

The problem occurred when users began speculating about the identity of the gunman on 4chan, a controversial anonymous messaging board.

The users named an individual on the Politically Incorrect message board, claiming that the person was a “far left loon” and a “social democrat”.

The comments were picked up by several blogs and news sites, including an article by the right-wing political website, the Gateway Pundit.

Many users then searched for the erroneous name on Google. The internet giant’s algorithms traced the original source of the story back to the 4chan message board and posted a link to it in the Top Stories section.

“Unfortunately, early this morning we were briefly surfacing an inaccurate 4chan website in our search results for a small number of queries,” a Google spokesperson told the BBC.

“Within hours, the 4chan story was algorithmically replaced by relevant results. This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”

However, Google said only a small number of search queries were made for the name, which suggests that not many people would have seen the 4chan link.

As for Facebook, the social network told the Associated Press that it began removing results relating to the Gateway Pundit and 4chan within minutes.

The Gateway Pundit’s White House correspondent Lucian Wintrich told far-right conspiracy website Infowars that the article was only online for 10 minutes before it was taken down.

Despite Facebook’s efforts to remove hyperlinks to the story, users had made screenshots of the incorrect story and continued to circulate these images online, which were harder to detect and take down.

“We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused,” a Facebook spokesman said.

Who is responsible?

Google and Facebook have been criticised several times in the last 12 months for promoting content later found to be false, particularly relating to breaking news events.

Both tech giants have announced measures to fight inaccurate news in the last few months.

“Google and Facebook are much bigger than any media company now, but they insist that they are not publishers, that they are merely platforms, and as platforms, they don’t need to take responsibility for their content,” Prof Tim Luckhurst, head of Kent University’s Centre for Journalism told the BBC.

“Governments create laws that allow broadcasters and newspapers to be sued, so it’s up to the government to stand up to these websites and say that if anything relating to terrorism or false information is published, they can be sued.”

Prof Luckhurst pointed out that in the past, Google and Facebook had been quick to tweak their algorithms when requested to do so by the Chinese government.

“Algorithms are not organic creations – they are the product of very clever software writers.

“They can tweak them when the Chinese government asks them to, they can tweak them to do target advertising, but if you ask them to tweak their algorithms in relation to terrorism or untruths, they say, ‘We’re not publishers.’

“But they’ve demonstrated that they clearly can do it, and so they should do it.”

Individuals who shared the content online could face legal action.

“It’s for individuals to take responsibility for what they post on social media, this person could make a lot of money from suing all these people who shared the screenshot online,” said Dominic Ponsford, editor of the Press Gazette.

“Google should be only indexing bona fide news sources – it should be straightforward to check what is a bona fide news source and what isn’t.

“It’s kind of astonishing that Google’s not doing that, given the huge concern in America about fake news.”

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Source: BBC

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It follows mounting criticism of the social media firm for not doing enough to root out fake news on its platform.

It has also just launched a new feature in four countries that will publish alternative news links beneath problematic articles.

But several experts said the measures did not do go far enough.

“Presenting audiences with context is helpful,” said Tom Felle, a senior lecturer in digital journalism at City University.

“But it does nothing to stop the spread of this material, or to stop traffic going to fake news peddlers who are making money out of creating this material.”

Facebook has been criticised as being one of the main distribution points for fake news, which many think influenced the 2016 US presidential election.

Voters were also flooded with hoax stories during the French presidential election in May.

‘Updated AI’

The firm has previously been reluctant to take down potentially fake news stories, arguing that it does not want to be an “arbiter of truth”.

Instead it identifies potentially false stories through a mixture of artificial intelligence (AI) and user detection. These are then sent to independent fact-checkers who place a flag next to hoax stories to alert readers.

On Thursday, however, the firm said it would start using “updated machine learning” to enhance detection.

“If an article has been reviewed by fact checkers, we may show the fact-checking stories below the original post,” added Sara Su, product manager of News Feed, in a blog.

A spokesman later clarified that these stories would not be “direct responses” to fake articles, but factually accurate reports that offered an alternative.

On Thursday, the firm rolled out a new “Related articles” feature in the US, France, Germany and the Netherlands.

The feature, which the firm has been testing since April, places links to other news coverage beneath highly popular or questionable stories, offering users “more perspectives and additional information”.

Brooke Binkowski, managing editor of fact-checking magazine Snopes, told the BBC: “I applaud their efforts to ‘flood out’ fake news, a method of which I have been a proponent for a long time.”

However, she said that while AI was “a good tool, it is also a blunt one”.

Mr Felle said if the firm really wanted to stop fake news, it needed to back the news industry in a better way.

“If Facebook wants to help journalism it needs to put its hand in its pocket and support quality, trusted news organisations to better reach audiences, and advertisers.”

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Source: BBC

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FIFA’s decision this week not to reappoint ethics chiefs Hans-Joachim Eckert and Cornel Borbely means an end to the reform process, the pair said.

Infantino’s predecessor Sepp Blatter is serving a six-year ban from football for ethics breaches.

“We took over the organisation at its deepest point,” said Infantino.

“We are rebuilding Fifa’s reputation after all that happened.”

Infantino, 47, took over as Fifa president in January 2016 after the 81-year-old Blatter’s 17-year reign ended in a corruption scandal.

Chief investigator Borbely and ethics adjudicator Eckert said “hundreds” of cases of alleged wrongdoing – some involving senior officials – were being looked into by Fifa’s ethics committee before they were ousted.

In response to their claims, Fifa released a statement on Wednesday, saying it wanted to “better reflect the geographic and gender diversity that must be a part of an international organisation like FIFA”.

“There are a lot of fake news and alternative facts about Fifa circulating,” said Infantino, speaking before the Fifa congress in Bahrain.

“FIFA bashing has become a national sport in some countries. It was right but FIFA has changed now.”

Last month, high-ranking Fifa official Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabahresigned a day after denying claims linking him to a fraud case. He denies any wrongdoing.

Infantino said the “new FIFA” under his leadership was a “transparent organisation” that was not “fiddling around”.

He added: “If there is anyone who still thinks that he can enrich himself and he can abuse football, I have one plea for them – leave football now. We don’t want you.”

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Source: BBC

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The case was brought by the country’s Green Party after its leader was targeted by a false account.

The court said postings not just in Austria but worldwide must be deleted. Facebook has not yet commented.

The ruling is seen as a victory for campaigners who want to make social media platforms combat online trolling.

The appeals court in Vienna ruled that postings against Greens’ leader Eva Glawischnig – and any verbatim re-postings – should be removed.

It added that merely blocking the messages in Austria without removing them for users abroad was not sufficient.

The court said it was easy for Facebook to automate this process.

A Green lawmaker, Dieter Brosz, said Facebook could no longer claim it was just a platform and needed to take responsibility for tackling hate postings.

Internet giants including Facebook, Twitter and Google have all come under fire in many countries for failing to remove hate speech from their platforms promptly.

Last month, German ministers approved plans to fine social media firms up to 50m euros ($53.3m; £42.7m) if they fail to remove hate speech and fake news quickly.

The companies have recently announced measures to address the issue:

• Facebook said it would hire 3,000 people to help stop hate speech, child abuse and self-harm being broadcast on the website
• Google said changes on how its core search engine works would help stop the spread of fake news and hate speech

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Source: BBC

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He told supporters in Pennsylvania that he was keeping “one promise after another”, dismissing criticism as “fake news” by “out of touch” journalists.

Mr Trump decided to skip the White House Correspondents’ Dinner – the first US leader to miss the event since an injured Ronald Reagan in 1981.

Earlier, huge rallies were held against Mr Trump’s climate change policies.

• The verdict on Trump so far
• The two faces of Trump’s America
• Trumponomics: 100 days quiz

Mr Trump’s approval ratings hover at around the 40% mark – believed to be lower than any other president at the 100-day marker.

At the rally in Harrisburg, the president said the media should be given “a big, fat, failing grade” over their coverage of his achievements during his first 100 days and told the cheering crowd he was “thrilled to be more than 100 miles from Washington”.

He quipped that at the same time “a large group of Hollywood actors and Washington media are consoling themselves” at the correspondents’ dinner “that will be very boring”.

Until now, late president Ronald Reagan in 1981 was the last US leader to miss the annual dinner, when he was recovering from an assassination attempt.

Addressing the journalists and celebrities at the dinner in Washington, Reuters White House correspondent Jeff Mason defended his profession, saying it was “our job to report on facts, and to hold leaders accountable”.

“We are not ‘fake news’. We are not failing news organisations, and we are not the enemy of the American people,” Mason said.

Turning to his election pledges, Mr Trump said the first 100 days had been “very exciting and very productive”.

He said he was “delivering every single day” by:

Mr Trump also said the administration of Barack Obama had resulted in “a mess”, stressing that he was ready for “great battles to come and we will win in every case”.

On climate change, Mr Trump said “a big decision” would be taken within the next two weeks.

He earlier described climate change as a hoax, vowing to pull the US out of the Paris Agreement.

But despite Mr Trump’s claim to be keeping his promises, he has failed to start construction on the wall he plans along the US-Mexico border – or to get Mexico to pay for it.

“We’ll build the wall, folks, don’t even worry about it,” the president said.

On another campaign promise, to label China a currency manipulator, he said now was not “the best time.”

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Source: BBC

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The changes involve different measures for ranking sites and people checking results are accurate.

In a blog, Google said the changes should thwart attempts to abuse its algorithms that let extremists promote their content.

Google was criticised last year for giving prominence to groups seeking to deny that the Holocaust took place.

Rate and replace

Ben Gomes, a vice-president of engineering at Google’s search division, said it was making “structural” changes to tackle the new ways people had found to trick its algorithms.

In particular, he said, many groups and organisations were using “fake news” to help spread “blatantly misleading, low quality, offensive or downright false information”.

To combat this, he said, Google had added new metrics to its ranking systems that should help to stop false information entering the top results for particular search terms.

In addition, he said, it had updated the guidelines given to the thousands of human raters it used to give feedback on whether results were accurate.

The guidelines included examples of low quality and fake news websites, said Mr Gomes, to help them pick out “misleading information, unexpected offensive results, hoaxes and unsupported conspiracy theories”.

Analysis: Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC technology correspondent

Google has done its best to play down the extent of fake news and hateful material – or what it prefers to call “low quality content” – in search results.

The company keeps repeating that this affects only 0.25% of queries.

But the fact that searches such as “Is Obama planning a coup?” – or even “Who invented stairs?” – produced such questionable results meant it had to act.

These searches threw up a prominent “snippets” box telling you that, yes, President Obama was planning a coup, or that stairs had been invented in 1948.

Now both boxes have gone, and Google’s almighty algorithm has been tweaked so that such content is less likely to rise to the top.

What’s interesting is that a company that has put such faith in technology solutions is turning to 10,000 humans to try to make search a better experience.

This giant focus group, which tests out changes in the search algorithm, has been told to pay more attention to the source of any pages rated highly in results, looking round the web to see whether they seem authoritative and trustworthy.

Questions are bound to be raised about whether this panel, which Google says is representative of its users, is impartial and objective.

Google’s Ben Gomes, a veteran who’s been wrestling with the intricacies of search since arriving as one of the earliest employees, believes it is now on the path to getting this right.

But with so many people trying to game the system, the battle to make search true and fair will never be over.

Google also planned to change its “autocomplete” tool, which suggests search terms, to allow users to more easily to flag up troubling content, he said.

Danny Sullivan, founder of the Search Engine Land news site, said the changes made sense and should not be taken to suggest that Google’s algorithms were failing to correctly index what they found online.

“It’s sort of like saying that a restaurant is a failure if it asks for people to rate the food it makes,” he said.

“The raters don’t rank results,” said Mr Sullivan.

“They simply give feedback about whether the results are good.

“That feedback is then used to reshape the algorithms – the recipes, if you will -that Google uses.”

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Source: BBC

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I’d asked this after reading an article that suggested a relatively new feature that gives answers – or Snippets as the search company call them – to queries, rather than just links, had been producing some troubling results.

The piece said a search asking which US presidents were in the Ku Klux Klan had listed several as members of the KKK, despite there being no evidence for that.

It also featured a search for “Proposition 63”, a gun control measure, that had produced a Snippet describing it as “a deceptive ballot initiative that will criminalise millions of law abiding Californians”.

And then there was “Is Obama planning a coup?” which had resulted in a Snippets box describing “Western Center for Journalism’s exclusive video”.

This apparently says: “Not only could Obama be in bed with the Communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a Communist coup d’etat at the end of his term in 2016!”

Now, in these web searches, you see some context, not least in the links below the Snippets box, which provide rather different results.

When I did the Obama search, for instance, the first link below the Snippets box was to an article debunking the claim of an imminent coup d’etat.

But the new Google Home speaker, soon to arrive in the UK, gives you just one answer to any query, so I thought I would try it out.

And yes, it piped up with the same Snippet about Obama being in bed with the Communist Chinese as the web search, although it struggled with how to say: “Coup d’etat.”

I contacted Google this morning, and the company tells me it has now changed the response to this and the other search queries mentioned above.

“Featured Snippets in Search provide an automatic and algorithmic match to a given search query, and the content comes from third-party sites,” it said in a statement.

“Unfortunately, there are instances when we feature a site with inappropriate or misleading content.

“When we are alerted to a Featured Snippet that violates our policies, we work quickly to remove them, which we have done in this instance.

“We apologise for any offence this may have caused.”

For all the talk of the sophistication of the search algorithm, this is more evidence that, as a Google spokeswoman told me, “search isn’t perfect”.

The trouble is that levels of trust in its perfection are very high.

Ofcom’s recent research into the media habits of children found that among 12- to 15-year-olds, Google came second only to BBC sites as their preferred source of “true and accurate information about things going on in the world”.

In a world where we throw questions at a machine that responds in a pleasing almost human voice, that level of trust in imperfect technology could rise, with dangerous consequences

It is Facebook that has taken most of the heat in the controversy about fake news.

It has begun rolling out a feature that sees allegedly fake stories flagged as “disputed” for some users.

But Google, another technology company that hates to be described as a media business, is a hugely powerful force in the distribution of information.

It will now face increasing pressure to introduce more human oversight of algorithms that sometimes struggle to differentiate between facts and fake news.

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Source: BBC

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