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Google's Fact-Checking Tool 'is Clearly a Way to Control Minds of Users'

© AFP 2023 / PARK JI-HWANVisitors sit on a bench at a lobby of an office of Google Korea in Seoul on August 11, 2010
Visitors sit on a bench at a lobby of an office of Google Korea in Seoul on August 11, 2010 - Sputnik International
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Google's newly introduced fact-checking feature may help political establishment in Western countries suppress criticism and control the mindsets of Internet users, the president of the Belgian People’s Party, Mischael Modrikamen, told Sputnik on Monday.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — On Friday, Google said in an official blog post that the company has launched a new feature, to be available worldwide, in which results of searches and news would be integrated with information from various fact-checking websites, ultimately determining whether the information is considered true or false.

“This is clearly a way to control the minds of users. There is a political will of people such as Merkel and others to avoid criticism, to suppress criticism and keep ‘open society’ as the only viable option for our Western societies,” Modrikamen said.

The politician stressed that parental guidance was the only form of Internet censorship that was necessary, as it would adequately prevent under-age children from receiving access to information on terrorist and other deviant topics.

“The Parti Populaire [People’s Party] is against any ‘control’ of the acceptability of posts on internet providers. … Adults are adults and don’t need to be pampered by leaders who want to stop criticism of their policies,” Modrikamen added.

According to Google, the new feature was introduced as a part of its efforts to help combat the spread of misinformation and fake news. Fact checks would not be provided by the company itself and would instead use fact-checking findings from such web sources as PolitiFact and Snopes. According to the company's blog, the international fact-checking community currently consists of 115 organizations.

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