4 facts about fake news

Image created from Freepik

Do you know how close you are to misinformation and fake news?

Here are some facts:

1. According to Ipsos survey, 86% online global citizens believe they’ve been exposed to fake news. Among them, nearly nine in ten report having initially believed that the news was real, at least once.
2. In the digital age, people decide which content can be seen by the public. However, the process is usually rash. Twitter users are twice more likely to retweet fake news than authentic news, and 70 percent of Reddit users up-vote news posts without bothering to read them.
3. Once a piece of fake news has been spread out, it would be really hard to justify. According to research, due to the misinformation that Obama is not an American citizen, even now about 20% of Americans believe it to be true.
4. Misinformation can cause a profound effect on the economy. A piece of fake news claiming that Barack Obama was injured in an explosion wiped out $130 billion in stock value.

Fake news is as long as human history. From Octavian’s propaganda campaign to corona virus news, it seems impossible to stop people from making misinformation. However, if we just sit down and wait for the changes to come, the situation will never become better.

Since visual contents usually become a powerful tool to spread fake news, we start our journey from ensuring the authenticity of videos and photos. Our open source project, Starling Capture, offers to upload visual contents on block chain. With the unique hash code enveloping each visual property, we can keep pictures away from tamper and misuse.

For the upcoming 2020 US election, there should be more and more misleading information on the internet. To fix the situation, you can do something today. Check out our GitHub and join the project, let’s get back the trustworthiness of information together!

Reference

[1] Fake News: A Global Epidemic Vast Majority (86%) of Online Global Citizens Have Been Exposed to it
[2] Twitter users are twice as likely to retweet fake news stories than authentic ones
[3] Mookherjee, Satadruta. (2019). Three Studies in Misinformation. ProQuest. 
[4] Cao J., Qi P., Sheng Q., Yang T., Guo J., Li J. (2020) Exploring the Role of Visual Content in Fake News Detection. In: Shu K., Wang S., Lee D., Liu H. (eds) Disinformation, Misinformation, and Fake News in Social Media. Lecture Notes in Social Networks. Springer, Cham. 
[5] A short guide to the history of ’fake news’ and disinformation

photo credit

[1] https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/hidden-fake-news-words-yellow-paper_8601371.htm
[2] https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/social-media-icon-blocks-laptop-blue-background_2573249.htm#page=1&query=propaganda&position=26