If you were asked to solve the 'fake news' problem, how would you solve it?

I am working on a new idea Shrimp ( domain shri.mp), and our mission is to fix the fake news problem.

We have nailed down the user experience in three directions. I would love your thoughts on these three ideas - 1)Build a secure browser so that it can work across the web and mobile devices which will automatically sync up with an online database of all the fake news articles, so whenever someone clicks on a link, he will be alerted. We initially built a Chrome extension and decided to scale it up using Firefox source code.

2)Develop a software like an antivirus which scans every link that you receive through social media especially via messengers such as WhatsApp and Fb where they spread the fake news. There is also a synergy that I see using existing networks such as Reddit or Jelly user's to vote down the new articles which are fake and not just sending out patches or updates.

3)Build a rating system for journalists where we can rate the authenticity of articles based on that like NY times will embed our code just like how they do for like button - it will act like a trust score.

Do let me know your thoughts :)

"How do you 'solve' fake news?" is a question fraught with peril.

What does "solve" mean?

What does "fake news" mean?

Is it possible that opinions may vary on what these two things mean?

On these points, reasonable people of good will can have differing points of view.

In my more cynical moments, however, I hear the echoes of the beginnings of the war on drugs. Except far more frightening -- because this is a war on thinking. By people who sincerely think they are doing a noble act.

If you want to do something about the problem, cut demand. Make smarter readers.

I think a lot of this could simply be done on a domain level, i.e a site that publishes fake news once is likely to be generally less trustworthy. Then it would be up to sites like Google and FB to remove them from their listings (as is already done with spam) and not accept any ads linking to them (as is done for all kinds of illegal goods).

Come to think of it, even a site's PageRank should be a useful signal, as it (ideally) reflects the trust other sites have in this site.

I'm afraid that you might need to validate this idea before jumping in and spending a lot of time and money on it.

The problem is people who fall for and spread fake news don't want to be told it's fake news, they just want to have their world views validated.

The route of community building is interesting and I can see many people following that. If you see the latest development at Biz Stone's Jelly, their vision is to make a trust score on users and build credibility. The challenge is how quick a community can respond. Fake news is growing like the snowball effect the more it spread on the social media the more it becomes a problem. We need to put a filter before we share the news inside our network - like a verified posting :)