Fake news

But the story, that the acquisition had been suggested in the will of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, was bogus.

It was removed after two minutes, though Apple's shares did briefly rise in value.

Dow Jones said the news appeared as the result of a "technical error" and should be ignored.

The unintentionally published fake news described the acquisition as "a surprise move to everyone who is alive" and quoted Google employees as saying "Yay".

It also stated that Google would move into "Apple's fancy headquarters".

Google is rolling out their new feature called Fact Check.

Fact Check is designed similar to the fake news fighting tool recently announced by Facebook. Google owns one of the biggest news consumption platforms in the world, and the company says the fact checks are “presented so people can make more informed judgments.”

For three days, an ad will appear at the top of users' news feeds linking to advice on "how to spot fake news" and report it.

The campaign, which will be promoted in 14 countries, is "designed to help people become more discerning readers", the social media firm said.

But experts questioned whether the measure would have any real impact.

"Until Facebook stops rewarding the architects of fake news with huge traffic, this problem will just get worse," Tom Felle, a lecturer in digital journalism at City University told the BBC.

Facebook has now started testing a fake news killer tool that they announced earlier in December, the Guardian reports. The tool shows a warning message when a user tries to share a spurious link.

A glimpse of Facebook’s fact-checking tool shows a Newport Buzz story “The Irish Slave Trade – The Slaves That Time Forgot” marked as ‘disputed by Snopes.com and Associated Press’. It alerts the user about the authenticity of the news content.

But now the two web giants are under pressure over another kind of fakery - fake advertising.

On this week's Tech Tent we hear about the advertising industry's mounting anger over a problem that is damaging its credibility with its clients. When advertising began to move online, there was the promise of much better targeting and much more accurate measurement of how well a marketing message performed.

Instead all sorts of issues, from bots that generate phony views of ads to the placing of advertisements next to unsuitable content, have shaken confidence in the industry.

Germany's justice minister has drafted a law that seeks to impose the fines as part of efforts to police toxic chat.

Heiko Maas said the voluntary efforts of social networks to tackle the problem had not gone far enough.

The proposal requires sites to run 24-hour helplines and to delete flagged content within seven days.

'Utterly impossible'

Social media firms such as Twitter and Facebook were getting better at handling illegal content, said Mr Maas, but both had a long way to go.

Fake news, false stories that masquerade as real news are not new.

In the spring of 1917 some of Britain's most influential newspapers published a gruesome story that has been called "the master hoax" - and I think we finally have proof about where it came from.

Britain was at the time trying to bring China into the war on the Allied side.

In February a story appeared in the English-language North China Daily News that claimed the Kaiser's forces were "extracting glycerine out of dead soldiers".

Google and Facebook are partnering with journalists to help prevent fake news stories from spreading during France's presidential election.

Google News Lab and the non-profit First Draft News have launched a verification project called "CrossCheck" that will help French newsrooms identify and quickly debunk hoaxes, rumors and other false claims.

At least 17 major news organizations are taking part in the project, including Le Monde, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Liberation, BuzzFeed and France Medias Monde, which manages Radio France Internationale and TV station France 24.

The world's largest social network said it would enable German users to flag potentially false stories.

The stories will then be passed to third-party fact-checkers and if found to be unreliable, will be marked in users' news feeds as "disputed".

It is the first major rollout of the fake news features announced by Facebook in December.

New reporting features are being rolled out, along with other changes designed to combat the spread of misinformation.

Facebook was widely criticised last month after some users complained that fake news had influenced the US presidential election.

The new features include the ability to flag fake stories, as well as possible future changes to Facebook's algorithm.