Chrome tells you if something is fake news
Fake news is something that we are confronted with when we use the internet. Incorrect or misleading information can just be used for all kinds of purposes. In politics to win people over, but also to influence public opinion. Trump even presents his own Fake News Awards, with fake news that was spread over himself. Facebook lets people decide for themselves whether something is fake news. But fake news can be difficult to distinguish from real and reliable news.
Eyeo, the company behind Adblock, is working on a project where fake news is automatically recognized for the user. This is possible through the Trusted News browser extension. The system “scares the integrity and credibility of online news sources in a democratic way,” according to Eyeo. Trusted News is only suitable for Chrome. After installation, an icon will appear next to the browser bar. When a user is on a website, Trusted News indicates whether the content is reliable or not. A green check mark means a credible news source and an orange ‘B’ indicates possible biased content.
In fact, the system can also tell you whether something is implausible, satirical, clickbait, user-generated content or hateful. If the system does not recognize any of these cases, then there is ‘unknown’. The system learns on the basis of databases, in collaboration with Metacert Protocol. Feedback from users will also play an important role in improving the system. This database will be decentralized to Ethereum Blockchain. Trusted News is only available for English web pages.
The more feedback, the smarter the system eventually becomes. Therefore, it does not hurt to add it to Chrome. And if you think that you yourself always immediately realize that something is fake news, this system may surprise you.