I warned about this a few months ago.
Google is rolling out something similar with its “knowledge panels” for publishers. Search for the New York Times and the panels will tell you how many Pulitzers the paper has won. Search for Front Page Magazine and the panel note describes it as, “Political alignment: Right-wing politics”. No note listing a left-wing political alignment appears in the panel for the New York Times despite its recent laudatory series about the Soviet Union and Communism.
The Google Blog casually mentions that the panels will also list, “claims the publisher has made that have been reviewed by third parties”. You get one guess as to who those “third parties” will be.
And it's here now. As the Daily Caller notes, lefty sites are exempt, while conservative sites get smeared.
When searching for a media outlet that leans right, like The Daily Caller (TheDC), Google gives users details on the sidebar, including what topics the site typically writes about, as well as a section titled “Reviewed Claims.”
Vox, and other left-wing outlets and blogs like Gizmodo, are not given the same fact-check treatment. When searching their names, a “Topics they write about” section appears, but there are no “Reviewed Claims.”
In fact, a review of mainstream outlets, as well as other outlets associated with liberal and conservative audiences, shows that only conservative sites feature the highly misleading, subjective analysis. Several conservative-leaning outlets like TheDC are “vetted,” while equally partisan sites like Vox, ThinkProgress, Slate, The Huffington Post, Daily Kos, Salon, Vice and Mother Jones are spared.
Of course they are.
"Fact checking" is a censorship scam in which media remoras attack conservative sites and then call on social media companies to censor them as fake news.
Front Page Magazine's Reviewed Claims consists of Snopes spam. (Snopes is the least professional and the least credible of the fact checkers.). Neither of the two Snopes posts that Google lists actually address Front Page Magazine.
The first fact check is, "Did a Law Professor Claim the 2017 Solar Eclipse is 'Racist'?" - Snopes is fact checking a joke. The joke is at the expense of a bizarre Atlantic race baiting article trying to link the eclipse to racism. The Point mocked the article. Snopes fact checks a joke (though seemingly not Front Page's joke) and declares it false.
The second fact check is, "Las Vegas Shooting Rumors, Hoaxes, and Conspiracy Theories". The post doesn't appear to mention Front Page or contain any links to it. Despite that Google lists it under Reviewed Claims.
This is partisan harassment and a smear campaign. It's another warning that Google has become too powerful. And it's leveraging that power in abusive ways.
The is a basis for antitrust action against Google. But on an everyday basis, stop using Google for search. Use Bing, use DuckDuckGo, but don't use Google.