Google doesn't have any good options here. They can either ignore the problem of fake news, or they can become the arbiters of what is or is not fake news. If the latter, the boundary between filtering out misinformation and actively manipulating public opinion is rather fuzzy.

As a news consuming public, our best option seems to be to not use Google as our primary news filter. Long term, we probably need an entirely different kind of news aggregator that isn't under the control of any single entity as you're suggesting, but I'm not sure what that would look like and how it would work.

Imagine if various organizations you cared about had a feed (RSS or something) of links to stories and/or important search terms.

Your reader polls those feeds and uses some weighted algorithm to produce a set of custom news, possibly by consulting a public index like Google (or even a news outlet directly, redirect in to it with the search terms of choice).

It's still an echo chamber, but if you've got fake news pushing fiends on the list of sources you trust you've already got problems.

Also relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvtNyOzGogc

Sinclair Broadcast Group is doing basically this already, just in a low tech way and requiring its local TV stations to promoting their political agenda.

I disagree.

There has always been a definable difference between fact and fiction. Both have a place on the net but where fiction masquerades as fact with the intent to decieve, we have a duty to use all the tools at our disposal to destroy that ruse and choose more factual sources on which to base our decisions.

I for one welcome our new news overlords.

This is a naive viewpoint I see pop up a lot. People pushing "fiction" think it's a "fact" and there's no full-proof way to convince them otherwise or even perfectly distinguish the two. People will tell you that it's a fact that vaccines cause autism or Iraq has WMDs or America is a white supremacist country. In reality, "facts" are linguistic simplifications of reality that inherently omit information and the distinction of "fact" from "fiction" is itself a simplistic way to attempt to describe the accuracy of a statement. On a personal note, the people most convinced that they are pushing facts are the ones I'm most skeptical of.

To insist that all points of view are valid, and that truth is somehow unknowable is a viewpoint very common in academia.

Using the scientific method, meta-studies and suchlike our species has built an enormous corpus of knowledge, I'm happy to let that evolving concensus be the basis of our decisions.

For example the fact that vaccines do a more good than harm by an order of magnitude is no longer up for debate. There is a lunatic fringe who disagree, their unfounded fiction should not be shown to curious first time parents on google.

To insist that everyone can pick and choose reality and that we should all be wary of "facts" is to cause real harm.

You're bringing up the other extreme (postmodernism), which I wouldn't agree with either. I'm arguing against certainty. We are stumbling along trying to communicate information as accurately as we can in order to produce predicted outcomes we deem desirable. Hopefully the evidence on an issue becomes so overwhelming that we can broadly reach a reasonable consensus. However, that consensus is subjective and dynamic. There is no objective process that will perfectly delineate "fact" from "fiction" as our Google News overlords would have you believe.

What makes you believe that Google will destroy this deceptive content?

Even more worrisome would be that the more they go down this path, the more governments will come to them to censor "offensive" stuff.

Same with advertisers. How long until the recent "advertiser-friendly" policies, which have been implemented for Youtube and stop monetization for any Youtuber that might offend an advertiser in any way, will be implemented for news, too?

Picus News - The global leader in fair, unbiased, and impartial reporting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9OrmOAuuWc

We also do security, surveillance and operate 100.5 % of the satellites around earth. (Looks familiar yet?)

I read Apple news exclusively. It's pretty awesome and hopefully will soon support micropayments.

One day? That day is now.