Spread of fake news epidemic '˜alarming' says Google boss

During a visit to Leeds, Matz Lukmani, attribution product expert at Google, told The Yorkshire Post that the new processes the company had put in place to remove fake news and extremist content from its websites were making good progress.

“There is content out there that is questionable but as a company we have invested heavily in human and automated processes to cast the content, flag it and take it off our properties,” he said.

“The rate it’s happening is pretty alarming and just like any road block, when you see a problem you put in more processes to protect against it.”

At its most extreme, fake news comprises deliberately and maliciously contrived statements which are cynically distributed in the guise of real news with the aim of deceiving for political or financial gain.

More frequently, it is an unsubstantiated rumour indiscriminately posted on social media sites which rapidly gains credence, to the distress of those featured in it. The Yorkshire Post is backing a national campaign against fake news.

Earlier this year, Google faced a backlash from advertising clients in the UK over extremist content on its video platform YouTube.

Mr Lukmani said: “As a company we have made serious attempts in the last few weeks to resolve that and we have seen good progress there. A lot of advertisers that had concerns are now looking at the reports and feeling more comfortable about advertising again.”

Mr Lukmani was speaking ahead of an event hosted by digital marketing agency iProspect, part of the Dentsu Aegis Network, at The Tetley in Leeds.

The conference, entitled Future Focus: Driving Business Growth in the Digital Economy, also heard from Facebook’s partner manager John Carr, who shared his tips for using the social network to attract customers.

Meanwhile, James Lodge, director of mobile at the Dentsu Aegis Network, warned the 120-strong business audience that Chatbots - computer programs designed to simulate human conversation - are set to have a ‘massive impact’ on how consumers start to behave.

“We are impatient and time poor. Whenever I pick up my phone, like when I want to order an Uber, I want it quickly and I want an answer quickly,” he said. “I don’t want to wait for us, humans, because we’re slow.”

He added that virtual personal assistant devices such as Alexa and Siri could eventually make mobile apps redundant.

“As a consumer I don’t access the application any more, I ask Siri to open Spotify and it opens Spotify. Then I ask it to play a song and it plays a song,” he said.

“I don’t think businesses need to scrap their application strategy just yet but I do think it will change how we’re feeding these virtual personal assistants. I could ask Google to find me a new pair of trainers to go running. Google knows enough about me to go and find the right supplier based upon my behaviours. We need to think about how we’re defining and transforming our data and how we expose it into different virtual personal assistants.”

Peter Coates, director of digital marketing agency iProspect, added: “It’s not going to be long before we see an entirely different transition away from smartphones and mobile devices into artificial intelligence.

“We’re already starting to see things like Amazon echo take away the visual interface of the internet which gives a totally different perspective on brand experiences yet most of us are still focused on whether our website is up to scratch.”