The Google news feed is at news.google.com. For many years it’s had a Fact Check section that gave links to Snopes and Politifact and several other sites. A few days ago I noticed it was missing.
Going to their support page on fact checks I got a “This page is no longer available” error message.
I’m putting this in P&E because I have to believe this was a political decision. Fact checks are the last things this administration want widely disseminated.
Alphabet’s net income was $100.1 billion in 2024. It must be deathly scared that a Trump attack would take that down to $99.9 billion and lose them their bragging rights.
They know where their bread is buttered. Democrats (at least a small but vocal contingent of them) talk about reigning in power, regulation of online media, and breaking up monopolies. Trump and his flappers talk about making great big beautiful deals for anyone that supports them. Just as Jeff Bezos folded like an empty wallet in a ten minute meeting where he was presumably told that the alternative would be losing NASA and NSSL contracts critical for his space launch company Blue Origin, all of these people who are afraid of risking even a little bit of their wealth and power are complying in advance with added performance to curry favor. They’re not dumb, but a lot of them are looking pretty short-sighted after discovering that Trump intended to make good on his ill-conceived economic plans,
As Trump took office again I noticed Google News featuring more right wing bullshit “news” stories, and I stopped checking in with Google News.
Treating those sources as valid invalidated Google News for me.
In what may be a similar issue, I’ve noted that the “recommended” local news feeds on my smartTV seems to always put Fox News and Fox local affiliates at the front of my list. And that’s a lot harder to edit or customize than my google news feed.