Fake news on Facebook and Google may have met its match (original) (raw)

A website, falsely identifying itself as 'BBC News' with links connecting it to the real 'BBC News,' reports the death of pop singer Britney Spears June 13, 2001 in London, EnglandGetty Images / Sion Touhig / Staff

Facebook is working on a solution to its fake news problem. In fact, Mark Zuckerberg has said it is creating multiple ways to reduce the spread of false stories on its social network.

However, fake news isn't just a problem for Facebook. Google and Twitter have their own problems with inaccurate news. It's likely there isn't one solution that will fit all services.

To help propose ways in which fake news can be highlighted online, a hive mind has gathered. Led by Eli Pariser, the co-founder of Upworthy and author of The Filter Bubble, a group of interested individuals has been crowdsourcing ways in which fake news could be limited.

Inside a Google Doc, volunteers are gathering ideas and approaches to get a grip on the untruthful news stories. It is part analysis, part brainstorming, with those involved being encouraged to read widely around the topic before contributing. "This is a massive endeavour but well worth it," they say.

They are told to keep a record of solutions, know who the key players are, and delve into the murkier side of fake news. "One can’t assume there is criminal intent behind every story but, when up against state actors, click farms and armies of workers being hired for specific ‘gigs’, it helps to know exactly how they operate," the document explains.

At present, the group is coming up with a list of potential solutions and approaches. Possible methods the group is looking at include: more human editors, fingerprinting viral stories then training algorithms on confirmed fakes, domain checking, the blockchain, a reliability algorithm, sentiment analysis, a Wikipedia for news sources, and more.

There's also resources for startups interested in the area and a huge amount of background reading for those wanting to learn more.

However, the group acknowledges that not all of these potential methods will work to tackle fake news. "A number of the ideas below have significant flaws. It’s not a simple problem to solve – some of the things that would pull down false news would also pull down news in general," Pariser writes.

The document is just one attempt at fixing fake news from those outside of the large tech companies. In just 36 hours, four students proposed a solution to the fake news issue. The team, during a hackathon, created an algorithm called FiB that adds a verified (or unverified) tag to stories on Facebook – they've released the code as an open-source project.

Despite Zuckerberg's claims it would be "crazy" for fake news on Facebook to have influenced the election, fake news may have more of an impact than believed. A study from Stanford University recently revealed that students have trouble working out the credibility of information online.

The work by the US academics tested whether education scholars could tell what was editorial content and sponsored posts on news websites. "Students, for example, had a hard time distinguishing advertisements from news articles or identifying where information came from," the University says on its website.

This article was originally published by WIRED UK