New partnerships and initiatives to strengthen fact-checking online

Fact checkers are on the front line in the fight against mis and disinformation. Everyday, they use their verification and investigation skills to determine what can and can’t be trusted so that online browsers can avoid false claims. 

Every year, reliable facts become more important but every year, we continue to see bad actors spread false and misleading claims. We want to support fact checkers to address these claims as soon as possible and reach as many people as possible when they do. 

Building on our important work with a new partnership with AAP 

We are excited to announce we will be supercharging our partnership with the Australian Associated Press, a partner we’ve worked with since they launched their fact checking unit in 2019.

This new phase of the partnership will increase AAP’s speed and quantity of fact checks and put them on the screens of users in Australia and New Zealand along with their hundreds of news publisher subscribers. 

For the first time, AAP FactCheck will also analyse global misinformation trends and produce video explainers so people can understand how each claim fits into a broader picture. They will also translate fact-checks into different languages (Arabic, Simplified Chinese and Vietnamese) for distribution to local news outlets and social media. The more people that see and read AAP’s FactChecks, the stronger our online environment will be.

Partnering with Squiz Kids to build important digital literacy skills in schools

Education is also key to stopping the business model of misinformation - false claims germinate when they find an audience. We’ve worked with Squiz Kids on Newshounds, a media literacy module to help children “stop, think and check” before they believe, and potentially share, what they see online. 

More than 2000 classrooms in New Zealand and Australia use Newshounds to help teachers help their students decide what they should trust. Their work has shown to be invaluable in lifting teachers’ and parents’ confidence when discussing media literacy with children.

Our continued efforts in information literacy 

'About this image' gives people a quick way to check the background and context of images they see online. You can access it by clicking on the three dots on an image in Google Images results, or by clicking ‘more about this page’ in the About this result tool on search results. Launched last year in English globally, today the tool is live in 40 additional languages including Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Thai, and Vietnamese.

When you click on the three dots next to a website in search results, you can learn more about a site before visiting it through the About this result feature. By tapping on the ‘more about this page’ tab in that menu, you will get more context about the website, such as how Wikipedia (when available) or others have described it in the news or reviews. Today, this feature is available in 40 additional languages, including Japanese, Korean, Indonesian, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese and Tagalog. 

We are committed to building on these efforts and look forward to the seeing the impact of these important partnerships 

Reliable information is essential for every facet of life and if more people have access to it, they can make small and big, fun and serious, short term and long term decisions with clarity.