According to a recent study conducted by Storyzy which looked at 1,800 fake news sites representing 1.7 billion visits per month, an average of 22 new fake news sites per month were created in the U.S. since the beginning of 2017. These numbers are staggering, and difficult to track by hand. Robots are the most effective way to detect these new sites and eventually stop the increase and spreading of fake news, a trend which began accelerating in 2016 during the U.S. presidential campaign. Furthermore, brands might be advertising on these sites without even knowing they are doing so.

Currently, manual lists fail to catch up with the pace of new fake news sites. The well-known public lists of fake news sites, such as Politifact, Open Source (updated recently on April 2017) or FactCheck.org, are no longer online. The challenge in creating a manual list is that in order to be usable, updates must be made very frequently. However, users may not know how often the list is updated nor whether a recently-emerged site has been added to the list or not. Updating these manual lists is difficult because they are made and maintained by humans. It is beyond the reach of one human being to scan the entire web and keep up with the pace of fake news sites being created regularly. For a robot, though, this doesn’t present as much of a challenge.

However, a robot must be able to recognize whether a site contains fake news site or not. At Storyzy, we have developed a robot that is able to automatically identify every new fake news site. For example, last August when the neo-nazi website “The Daily Stormer” became active again after having been shut down, our robot was able to detect the newly active site.

24 new fake news sites per month in 2016

Through an analysis based on the creation dates of the 1800+ fake news sites on our list, we noticed that 24 new sites on average per month were created in 2016 and 22 new sites on average per month in 2017.

We also found that the number of fake news sites that emerged in 2016-2017 is equal to the total number of fake news sites that emerged in 2011-2015. This inflation is probably due to the societal and political atmosphere created by the U.S. presidential campaign, but since the election the rate of newly-created fake news sites is still high.

There are several different brand safety solutions to avoid fake news content, but our experience shows that these solutions are far from perfect. The recent Uber case illustrates this: after they decided to remove their advertising from Breitbart, Uber found that their ads remained despite efforts to take them off. Uber blamed its media agency and decided to sue them.

If you are an advertiser and you want to avoid displaying your ads on sites like Breitbart, the only way to ensure this happens is to use an updated list of fake news sites created by a robot. Considering the volume of sites on the internet, using a manual analysis won’t be sufficient.

(Peter Dazeley/Getty Images)

What you don’t know can hurt your brand

Since August, we have found more than 1,000 brands displaying their ads on fake news sites–and most of these brands have no idea this is happening. That list of brands is growing every day. We assume that some of these brands don’t care about funding or appearing on these kinds of sites, but many do. Brands often purchase their programmatic campaigns through media agencies and, like Uber, they request a brand safety solution, but these are only somewhat effective. Referring to an exhaustive blacklist, updated dynamically, is the only way for brands to ensure that their ads will not run on fake news sites.

We also found out that most of the sites identified by our system as fake news are using content recommendation widgets, more than two-thirds of 2,000 sites. Outbrain, Taboola, Revcontent, Content Ad, Zergnet and Adblade are the main providers of content recommendation widgets. In these widgets, you can find content that often leads to clickbait sites with a lot of display advertising. Brands that advertise on these websites are indirectly funding fake news sites.

In order for brands to completely avoid a presence on fake news sites, automated solutions offer wider protection than manual solutions.

Stan Motte is the co-founder and CEO of the tech start-up Storyzy, which was founded in 2012 with the goal of fighting misinformation on the web, first with an automated fact-checking tool, and today with an automated way to detect fake news sites.

Pierre-Albert Ruquier has 18 years of experience in digital information and news distribution. He is the CMO of Storyzy.

The post How Fake News Sites Can Hurt Your Brand appeared first on MediaShift.

Google is funding extremist and fake news sites through AdSense, its platform dedicated to publishers, despite its own policies. This is because it only removes ads at the page level. Analyzing the 700+ fake news sites* on its automated blacklist, Storyzy found that 90% of those using programmatic ads are affiliated with Google AdSense.

One of the main reasons for the presence of ads on extremist and fake news sites is the fact that Google removes ads only from certain pages, not from a whole site. In a post from May 2017, Google announced that from then on, it would remove ads from pages that violate its policies. They were explicit that this would be carried out at the page level and not at the site level. Scott Spencer, Google’s sustainable ads director, explained:

“As we roll out page-level policy action as the new default for content violations, we’ll be able to stop showing ads on select pages, while leaving ads up on the rest of a site’s good content.”

In concrete terms, a given brand’s ads may have been removed from pages with racist content on an extremist site but still appear in its weather forecast section, meaning that Google and the brand are providing revenue to such sites. So it is not a surprise that, in September 2017, 90% of fake news sites which are monetizing their audience through programmatic advertising are using Google AdSense (according to Storyzy statistics). Their audience represents 120 million monthly visits.

Since July 2017, Storyzy spotted on these fake news sites more than 600 different brands’ ads, including big names such as McDonald’s, Walmart, AT&T, Adobe, Visa, Nespresso, American Express, Verizon, Hertz, Volkswagen, Goodyear, Microsoft, Dell, Toyota, and others.

Google AdSense Content Policies Are Clear

Google AdSense policies about “dangerous or derogatory content” are clear and they are applicable at the page level:

“We believe strongly in freedom of expression, but we don’t permit monetization of dangerous or derogatory content.”

However, when a brand’s ads appear on specific “safe” pages of an extremist site because those specific pages do not violate Google policies, the brand is still funding both the extremist site and Google.

Are Google’s Rules Wrong At Page Level?

It is public knowledge that Breitbart.com has been blacklisted by nearly 2,600 brands since November 2016 (that applies to the entire site, not only specific pages). Not all content on the site is extremist, racist, or contains false information. These brands removed their ads despite the fact they could appear alongside articles from respectable agencies like the Associated Press. For example, in the screen shot below you can see an AP article on Breitbart that has been blacklisted by these brands.

So what is the best approach for a brand? Removing ads from the entire site, or just from certain pages? Nearly 2,600 brands chose the first option, probably because they do not want to fund Breitbart. So if you are a brand and you do not want to create revenue for extremist and fake news sites, perhaps the only solution is to blacklist the whole site and not only its pages that violate Google AdSense policies.

To be fair, Google says it can sometimes remove an entire site. However, we have noticed that 90% of extremist and fake news sites are running programmatic display ads, including Breitbart, which are still affiliated with Adsense.

Conclusion

If brands want to control their ad placement, they cannot rely only on Google. They should additionally use a real-time dynamic blacklist of sites where they do not want their ads to appear. This will provide a real-time update, which is necessary because sites are emerging, changing their domain name, disappearing and coming live again all the time. For example, thanks to our algorithms at Storyzy, we detected this week that the neo-Nazi site The Daily Stormer has become live again under another domain name. In addition, an automated blacklist is run by algorithms that are politically neutral.

*The Storyzy fake news sites dynamic blacklist includes 9 categories: false information, extreme right, extreme left, conspiracy, propaganda, hate, pseudoscience, satire and clickbait.

Stan Motte is the co-founder and CEO of the tech start-up Storyzy, which was founded in 2012 with the goal of fighting misinformation on the web, first with an automated fact-checking tool, and today with an automated way to detect fake news sites.

The post How Google AdSense and Brands Continue to Fund Extremist Websites appeared first on MediaShift.