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On Monday, those companies responded by making it clear that they would not tolerate such misinformation by taking pointed aim at fake news sites’ revenue sources.

Google kicked off the action on Monday afternoon when the Silicon Valley search giant said it would ban websites that peddle fake news from using its online advertising service. Hours later, Facebook, the social network, updated the language in its Facebook Audience Network policy, which already says it will not display ads in sites that show misleading or illegal content, to include fake news sites.

“We have updated the policy to explicitly clarify that this applies to fake news,” a Facebook spokesman said in a statement. “Our team will continue to closely vet all prospective publishers and monitor existing ones to ensure compliance.”

Taken together, the decisions were a clear signal that the tech behemoths could no longer ignore the growing outcry over their power in distributing information to the American electorate.

Facebook has been at the epicenter of that debate, accused by some commentators of swinging some voters in favor of President-elect Donald J. Trump through misleading and outright wrong stories that spread quickly via the social network. One such false story claimed that Pope Francis had endorsed Mr. Trump.

Google did not escape the glare, with critics saying the company gave too much prominence to false news stories. On Sunday, the site Mediaite reported that the top result on a Google search for “final election vote count 2016” was a link to a story on a website called 70News that wrongly stated that Mr. Trump, who won the Electoral College, was ahead of his Democratic challenger, Hillary Clinton, in the popular vote.

By Monday evening, the fake story had fallen to No. 2 in a search for those terms. Google says software algorithms that use hundreds of factors determine the ranking of news stories.

“The goal of search is to provide the most relevant and useful results for our users,” Andrea Faville, a Google spokeswoman, said in a statement. “In this case, we clearly didn’t get it right, but we are continually working to improve our algorithms.”

 

[HStallion]

Cue the screaming about censorship, the media rigging things and so much blather and bull shit from the alt right and Trump's fanbase

 

[Chris R]

Impressive timing by these two.

It's almost like they wanted to ensure they could keep "abusing" the current tax system for a few more years before being called to task.

 

[greycolumbus]

Not gonna give brownie points for reacting to what they see as a fuckup. They both know the deal.

 

[Nibel]

Throwing buckets of water at a burnt forest

 

[HariKari]

Cue the screaming about censorship, the media rigging things and so much blather and bull shit from the alt right and Trump's fanbase

reddit, even the defaults, has been completely overrun by Trump supporters. Top comment is about how this should apply to CNN.

 

[Codeblue]

Just in time for Breitbart to be the media wing of the White House.

 

[Yoritomo]

reddit, even the defaults, has been completely overrun by Trump supporters. Top comment is about how this should apply to CNN.

I still can't figure out if the_donald is a few trolls with some bot voting or some weird ass alt-right cult with enough people to overpower all of reddit.

 

[Afrodium]

I still can't figure out if the_donald is a few trolls with some bot voting or some weird ass alt-right cult with enough people to overpower all of reddit.

Dude Donald Trump was elected President of the United States

 

[LiK]

Too little too late.

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

I still can't figure out if the_donald is a few trolls with some bot voting or some weird ass alt-right cult with enough people to overpower all of reddit.

Well, don't discount foreign intervention. What's stopping a few bad actors from hiring/forcing english speakers to astroturf. It already happens for their personal interests and if Donald is going to give up on NATO or not be aggressive with Russia, why wouldn't they get 100 or 1000 people to do that all day?

Or even our Republican party and it's various arms (brietbart, fox news). We know other bad actors are trying to tilt the scales.

Just looking at comment sections, something does not seem right.