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Fake news and solution
Fake news is one of the biggest cyber threat impacting people and society. What do you think about the solution for Fake News ?
Also - Is technology doing enough or mature enough to detect fake news ?
And, social media companies are doing enough in this subject ?
Any technology reference would be great.
7 answers
Unfortunately, I don't think there is a solution for fake news. Things that are clearly factually wrong are relatively easy to disprove to the masses, though you will always have your deniers. The more dangerous fake news are those things that are rooted in some fact but then twisted by one faction or another for their own purposes to sway public discourse down a partisan path that becomes extreme. That extreme view is identifiable as fake when viewed objectively, but by the time it reaches this point, it becomes gospel to those who willingly or unwittingly participated in fomenting it.
It is a consequence of social media that is as negative as any positive aspect of it, and far more dangerous. People who go to a movie do so for their enjoyment and quietly enjoy the entertainment. Scream fire in that same theater and mass panic erupts that can be impossible to quell.
It seems to me that AI technologies are well-suited to detecting fake news items. After all, AI solutions have the capacity to "learn" (to at least a limited degree) and adapt to trends in bogus content. Not only that, AI can address a far greater volume of content than human teams can. However, just as with human content content monitors, we'll need to offer the AI some good initial training on what characterizes fake news.
Facebook has created the "war room", https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/oct/18/facebook-war-room-social-media-fake-news-politics
https://www.newsguardtech.com/ is another solution
I think its a collaborative effort. Technology can not solve the fake news problem completely. AI can detect fake news but can create as well. Illusion and Artificial facts are not new for technology.
It require a combination of -
- Technology
- Education and Awareness
- Strong policies on channels such as Social Media.
However, point no 3 mentioned above is little debatable. Freedom vs absolute freedom is a very complicated debate.
A good observation -
Pay attention to quality (spelling and punctuation errors) and timeliness (is it a recent news or an old one).
Check the website and control both the domain name and thetop level domain (e.g. .com is different from .co).
Is there any about page on the website?
Did you find other sources sharing this news? If so can you trust these?
All of the methods mentioned above for detecting fake news are good, but require a lot of education on the part of the reader. This may be too much of a generalization, but I think the people most likely to do this checking are also less likely to take fake news for granted in the first place. One of the reasons fake news spreads so quickly and easily, I believe, is that it is quick and easy to share. Judiciousness and source checking take time and effort which run counter "quick and easy."
There are websites that analyze product reviews for signs of fake reviews and flag green, yellow or red. You have to go to the site and enter the product to get a report, but it seems that this technology could be used for news sites as well.
Also, what about a browser extension that rates the source based on its track record of veracity. There are countless apps already available for pop-up and ad blocking. I would think that a cyber security company like Symantic could apply their heuristics to run at a page level and provide a warning or rating in the address line.