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

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

#12
post #7

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.

Agree with your point on how people fall for it - but the most important thing we are trying to solve here are the actual credible facts - and not opinions of those facts. :)

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

#13
I am not a technical person. This is a non coder/lay person's point of view, okay?

With that disclaimer, there are some things you have to do: 1. Determine a lie detection strategy. Memes mutate. Tracking the way news changes and differs ever so slightly would require some kind of crawler bot that constantly compares and contrasts several versions and iterations of the same news. Can real news mutate? Probably not. Fake news would keep changing with each pattern because that's it's purpose..to spread and it would use every advantage it can find..2. Pattern recognition. There is a certain pattern to how fake news channels spreads before it comes main stream. 3. Reputation system or rankings. 4. Humans develop deception detection methods as we get more exposed to more deception. So to detect fake news, expose your (what I can only imagine) code or bots or whatever to fake news. 5. Karl popper's falsifiability. Science has the demarcation problem to distinguish between science and pseudoscience. I would like to think of it as science vs unexplained phenomena or non-science.(example: I don't think homeopathy is pseudo science and am reluctant to label it as such..I am also reluctant to label it science) Study scientific method in theory before getting into technical code.

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

#15
You can't solve it anymore than you can have 100% "objective" news.

People need to be free to read all viewpoints and come up with their own opinions.

Most of the time, news is called "fake" because it says things which, in the context of our preconceived values, leads to contradictions or absurdities. Viewed from a different value system, the same facts can have totally different meanings and consequences. Other times, "fake news" is just smear tactics for a larger political agenda.

A site claiming to identify or prevent "fake news" just winds up being another opinion site.

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

#18
Cryptography - centralized/decentralized certification of special > elements. User can install cert authorities like [NYT, RT, Reuters] or whatever their preference, who serve as independent consensus auditors of sorts. To prevent leakage of which user is reading which article, maybe repurpose some kind of provably-anonymous voting scheme like [0]. Then use the look up of the hash of the article to name it

[0] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.05000.pdf

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

#20
My biggest concern is who determines what is fake news? Seems as though people are now shouting "fake news" if a story doesn't fit within their belief system or agenda.

I don't think a voting platform is the solution either because you then get the herd mentality and it can so easily be gamed.

I am not even convinced that "fake news" is the issue. I am more on the side that our society has lost its ability to truly evaluate what they read or have any real level of critical thinking at all. If more of our society questioned what they read or even took the time to truly read things, I am not so sure this would be an issue. Rather, so many simply go by what an excerpt says in their Facebook or Twitter feed or what their followers are saying.

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