Google shares fact-checking tools

INDEPENDENT media outfit FYT and Google recently held a webinar titled “#FYTCOVID19: Fighting vaccine misinformation” to share tips on how to verify online information:

Use Google Search operators — These are short commands that help filter Search results. To find exact matches, enclose Search queries in quotation marks. Using the “+” and “-” symbols between two terms will include or exclude related matches, respectively. You can also limit results from a specific website by using “site:”, or view results from a specific time range by choosing “custom range” in the Tools option. A complete list of search operators can be found at ahrefs.com/blog/google-advanced-search-operators.

Confirm when a post was uploaded — The date and time of when a post was uploaded is important when relating a source to a context. This is usually easily identifiable on some social media platforms, where hovering over the date and time or selecting “Inspect” allows you to view precise upload details. You can also use InVid to verify the exact local upload time of YouTube videos.

Use reverse image search — Images or footage can be easily used in the wrong context. There are a lot of available tools online to verify the original source of an image such as Google Image Search, Yandex, Bing, Tineye, and Reveye among others. For videos, InVid’s verification plugin allows the extraction of multiple keyframes and do reverse image search on them.

Identify the geolocation — Sometimes, a simple reverse image search can help identify where a photo or video was taken in order to verify if an incident took place where it claims to have happened. If not, it will be helpful to look out for street layouts, statues and monuments, architectural details, street signs and shopfronts, license plates, as well as terrains and topographies.

Be keen on details when watching videos — Be sure to watch videos right through because details can be crucial. Watch out for camera movement and take time to pause to catch the decisive view you need. You may also use the apostrophe and period keys to advance or reverse frame by frame. Don’t forget to listen — you may be able to pick out place names, accents, dialects.
Utilize Google Maps — If you cannot be physically present in a certain location, you may use Google Maps’ Street View. You may even view old street view images of the same location through the “historical view” function.