Google's Eric Schmidt: Fake News Can Be Detected
Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt and former Google Senior V.P. of Products Jonathan Rosenberg on companies pulling ads from Google and YouTube over extremist content, controlling extremism and fake news online and how the company's business model boosts innovation.
President Trump took to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) again Thursday morning to push back on media reports he claims are false regarding his ties Russia.
During an interview with the FOX Business Network, Eric Schmidt, executive chairman of Google parent company Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), said fake news is a problem and explained how it can be detected.
“[Fake news] is essentially a ranking problem,” he said.
Even though Google is good at detecting relevant and irrelevant information, computers should also have the ability to detect “malicious, misleading and incorrect information and essentially have you not see it,” he added.
In his opinion, false information is a big problem on social media.
“Social media thinks in terms of links, not rankings. There’s undifferentiated links,” he said. “It’s like I’m going to link here and here, and all of a sudden they’ve discovered what they think is a woman who’s a passionate activist, who’s in fact a computer, run by the Russians or whatever stereotype you have.”