Exclusive

Google to contribute $25 million to new EU fund to fight fake news

The Covid-19 pandemic and the U.S. election last year spurred a massive spike in misinformation, with some blaming social media for not being more proactive in tackling the issue.

 The fund has a duration of five years. (Representative image/Getty)
The fund has a duration of five years. (Representative image/Getty)
Alphabet unit Google will contribute $25 million to the newly set up European Media and Information Fund to combat fake news, the company said on Wednesday, amid criticism tech giants are not doing enough to debunk online disinformation.

The Covid-19 pandemic and the U.S. election last year spurred a massive spike in misinformation, with some blaming social media for not being more proactive in tackling the issue while regulators have indicated they may take action via heavy-handed restrictions.

Also read: Google agrees to pay Italian publishers for news

The European Media and Information Fund, launched by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the European University Institute last week, aims to enlist researchers, fact-checkers, not-for-profits and other public interest-oriented bodies to help in the fight against fake news.

"While navigating the uncertainty and challenges of the last year, it has proven more important than ever for people to access accurate information, and sort facts from fiction," Matt Brittin, head of Google's EMEA Business & Operations, said in a blog post.

The fund has a duration of five years. The European Digital Media Observatory, which is a European Commission project set up last year and whose members include fact checkers and academic researchers, will evaluate and select the projects.

Also read: Call to follow Australia to make Facebook, Google pay for news reaches Rajya Sabha

Follow and connect with us on , Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube

Sponsored Stories
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/digital/google-to-contribute-25-million-to-new-eu-fund-to-fight-fake-news/81774887
brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-27
420744
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:SJISSG36ZGUTBHCWWEWFBEAYFRUGA2ED
<urn:uuid:876502c8-fae1-44fa-b9af-0326f80e3b33>
2022-07-07T04:37:59Z
23.36.196.44
text/html
sha1:SEQVX3RAFXNZO3BDDLD6FDYDBTHZHVA5
<urn:uuid:8a98a29f-da24-43aa-9e93-290c69e0a8b1>
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/digital/google-to-contribute-25-million-to-new-eu-fund-to-fight-fake-news/81774887
response
<urn:uuid:99c938bf-4234-4fdc-b19b-bed6ee43c74e>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-27
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for June/July 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-223
software: Apache Nutch 1.18 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.3-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/