Decoding Fake News. Trudia.org prototype out today!
With our machine learning lab, we democratize access to valid news and media and will succeed despite Google, Facebook and alike.
At the beginning of this year, I figured the underlying problems behind fake news and filter bubbles wouldn’t disappear anytime soon. As a son of a world press award-winning photographer, I always had a tweak for media, news, and information.
As a child, I experienced the changing facets of the media business right at the kitchen table. Not a necessarily pleasurable experience since lower newspaper and magazine circulations resulted in significantly lower incomes for journalists. So no wonder, my interest in finding a solution to tackle fake news quickly turned into an obsession.
In June this year, I finally found the perfect co-founder I was looking for. Timo isn’t just exceptional smart and friendly, he also decided to quit his Ph.D. in Machine Learning to turn our vision of better media into reality. In 2014 Timo started an app called Instappear, which — despite having most features Snapchat has nowadays — did not go viral.
As the past defines the future, our small team is super excited to launch our first product today. We truly believe to have a serious edge above all competitors, who are nothing less than most big tech giants.
With Elon Musk ranting about how he wanted to build a journalist network we knew time is super precious. Facebook and Google are also building some kinda stuff to avoid fake news, but the main thing they are trying to avoid are regulations.
This post will guide you through the bigger picture behind Trudia, provide insights into our tech stack and serves as a manual to our prototype.
Bigger Picture:
Today’s buzzword is fake news. The problem behind is way deeper than “just” this and is part of a bigger crisis in the media business.
10 years ago, a daily newspaper had up to 24 hours to write and review an article before it was published. Nowadays, you have to publish an article within 30 minutes - if you're lucky. If you are a hyper-blog (like Gawker used to be) or focus on breaking news, every second count. The currency of the web is attention. And your reader only pays attention to the very first headlines trending trough his Twitter, Facebook or Google news. If you’re second you’re last. And if you’re last too often, you make no money and need to shut down your operations. If you can decide between double-checking your sources or paying your rent next month — which option do you choose?
And then there is the second problem: Modern media and journalist are extensively self-referencing. Everybody does it and in general, there is no problem with it. But it becomes a significant problem when you‘re producing media.
Ever wondered why so many blogs are referencing themselves? Because it’s both easy research AND increases their SEO ranking for old articels at the same time.
It’s like when your good old newspaper constantly reprints itself and makes you buy their archive, too. That’s nothing I’d be interested in…
The research is done via Google, Facebook and alike. And yes, the PUBLISHING is also done via the same platforms. And if you do research, monitoring and publishing vastly via those big platforms no wonder, fake news spread way easier and more often.
If you have 30 minutes from idea to publishing for one article — how many pages on google can you scroll through? How many sources will you properly read?
Trudia: Research has to become significantly quicker and smarter.
My thoughts about better media can be clustered in three main categories:
#1 Tech: Geared towards media and news validation.
#2 Business: Models enabling and enforcing trustworthy news and media.
#3 Society: Change and awareness needed to re-invent media.
In this article, I want to focus on #1 “Tech” and give background on our machine learning prototype which went online today.
Trudia.org is the launchpad for our moonshot.
Trudia is short for “trust media” and enables a community built around high journalist standards. We believe the future of better media will be using the latest tech structured around trustworthy news and content.
Trudia is our launchpad. Today we launched our first rocket, providing everyone with vital insights into how our moonshot will succeed. The future of media is bright, exciting and better than anything we ever had in place.
Houston, we have a solution.
Our Prototype:
Our prototype acts like a rating platform for news, media, and information found online. On Trudia.org you can validate any link to any content. In the background, we screen your article, video or tweet, parse the relevant information and run several tests.
Those testings are based on the German Press Code (GPC).
In general, we check for common sense high journalist standards. However, nowadays, it appears you need to reference a higher level source to make even this basic claim valid. It is always the darkest before dawn, they’ve said…
In the background, we’ve built (and ongoing improve) a state of the art machine learning lab. This lab normalizes the criteria outlined in the German Press Code into a rating from 0–5*. And frankly: this is a revolution.
For the first time, everyone can check the trustworthiness of media in (almost) real time.
This is something no news or media channel could ever build on their own. Now everyone can get unique insights into HOW news and media are made. Thereby, we also enable everyone to make better-informed decisions.
Our basic version enables everyone to review the core features of our rating and will always be free of charge. We purposely built this lab open to everyone, enabling you to participate in our insights and benefit from the intelligence gathered by Trudia in the background. These were insights previously exclusively held by secret services, hedged funds or shady technology empires.
We democratize access to trustworthy news and media. We hope this will fundamentally change the way we interact with news and media found online.
How the Trudia prototype works
On Trudia.org you find six different sections: Validation, About, Team, Pricing, Membership, and Login.
For now, I want to go into details regarding “Validation” so here is how our prototype works:
1. You stumble upon an article online.
https://medium.com/trudia/the-war-of-the-worlds-in-1938-cd0073cd5df1
Previous to Trudia you wondered if you could trust this content and start to check the sources and claims. If you’re unfamiliar with the domain you’ll try to understand if this publishing might be biased.
2. Enter the link to the article into the white box.
3. Hit “Validate!”.
In the background, Trudia reviews your article, parse the relevant information and checks for high journalist standards.
4. See the rating.
If Trudia reviewed your article previously you can see the rating instantly, which will be between 0–5 stars.
0 means it is exceptional bad on all criteria, while 5 is the equivalent to winning the Pulitzer price.
In general, if an article scores above a 4 it is trustworthy and obeys high journalist standards.
5. Access the details.
If you are a Trudia member you can dive into the rating and find additional details on how and why we assigned a specific rating to a specific article.
Sometimes, the rating is still in progress. You can leave your contact details and the Trudia team will get back to you as soon as the review is done.
6. Enjoy our research.
And yes, please dig into the details on your own and form your own opinion. We are here to help. But at the very end, thinking and forming opinions is still up to you! :)
From now on Trudia.org has your back in checking for trustworthy journalism, news and media online!
We hope you like our product and are always looking for feedback! Say hi via sayhi@trudia.org and feel free to subscribe to our email newsletter or WhatsApp group.
