The rise of fake news and the need for content filters based on artificial intelligence

Social media has become full of fake news and the need for smart filters based on artificial intelligence to distinguish fact from lies is felt more than ever. Fake news has become an almost inevitable part of the social media experience, exposing many users to misinformation.

For a few more clicks

Social media has now become a large part of our information exchange infrastructure. There are currently 3.48 billion active social media users worldwide, and individuals and organizations have recognized the importance of these platforms as a primary means of engaging with the public. From celebrities to world leaders, such as former US President Donald Trump, everyone uses social media to communicate their messages and stories. These platforms have effectively become tools to influence public opinion.

However, not everyone who discovers the power of social media messaging has good intentions. Additionally, many social media users are not prepared to critically evaluate the narratives they read. This situation has made social media a fertile ground for the spread of fake news, false stories and misinformation, requiring tools to help preserve the truth. On the other hand, producing yellow content with the aim of getting more views or clicks has led to spreading false or misleading information.

Fake news and the dark side of social media

A discussion of fake news and social media would be incomplete without mentioning the 2016 US presidential election. The impact of fake news shared online on election results is still a matter of wide debate, but what is certain is that a sophisticated campaign by foreign state actors to spread misinformation via social media has taken place on the eve of the American people’s most important decision. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russia’s efforts to influence the election shows that influence and influence on social media by an organization called the Internet Research Agency was one of the three main elements of these efforts. The campaign was active on all major social media platforms and relied heavily on the distribution of false, misleading and inflammatory content. Regardless of whether these efforts actually affected election results or not, they have been highly effective in undermining public trust in American democratic institutions and fueling social discord.

In recent years, we have also seen the dangers of spreading fake news. The anti-vaccination movement has grown increasingly widespread, spreading lies about the alleged dangers of vaccinations for diseases such as smallpox, polio, and measles. Social media platforms have given the anti-vaccination movement a powerful tool to spread unscientific and dangerous misinformation. Anti-vaccination fake news has become so common on these platforms that some social media companies have begun trying to curb misinformation. For example, Pinterest began blocking search results for terms like “vaccine” in 2017, and Facebook announced that it would no longer recommend or display ads for pages that spread vaccine rumors. As this anti-vaccination movement, fueled by fake news, spreads, we are beginning to see its effects. As of May 2019, more than 760 cases of measles have been reported in the United States in 2019 alone, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the measles virus was declared eradicated in the United States in 2000, it is spreading again due to declining vaccination rates and weakened public immunity.

The need for media literacy in dealing with fake news

It’s clear that steps need to be taken to curb the tide of fake news, and social media companies are under increased pressure to more closely monitor content on their platforms. Of course, the sheer volume of posts published on these platforms every minute makes it very difficult for human observers to monitor them. With the emergence of the problem of fake news, the demand for solutions based on artificial intelligence has increased greatly. Posts containing fake news on social media have certain behavioral patterns that artificial intelligence programs can use to identify such cases; including more shares than likes on Facebook or certain patterns in the timing of posts and texts. To effectively combat fake news, AI programs must be able to accurately identify these patterns. To this end, developers use machine learning techniques to improve these capabilities.

Data technology company TSXV is developing tools to help social media tackle the rise of fake news. The Nexalogy subsidiary developed this technology for the social media intelligence market, which uses a social discovery engine to find new audiences, identify trends and eliminate spam by analyzing data from more than 500 million tweets, 85 million blogs and 8.8 million Facebook pages. does The technology has also been adapted to combat fake news and improve media literacy. Datametrex’s NexaIntelligence program uses similar principles to identify fake communications that spread false information and foreign advertising. Datametrex has deployed its technology to a wide variety of public and private partners, including the US and Canadian governments.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning tools are critical to countering the spread of misinformation on social media. It is nearly impossible to efficiently collect, filter, analyze, and manually identify all the data on specific topics in social media. The use of artificial intelligence and machine learning simplifies this process and enables the analysis of millions of data in minutes. “We live in a world where we need to be able to tell who’s good and who’s bad, especially when it comes to national security,” said Andrew Reeve, CEO and Chairman of Datametrex. “Ad campaigns are so common that we believe tools like ours are not a luxury but can become a necessity.”

The European Union is also trying to fight fake news by funding the Fandango project. This nonprofit initiative works on software tools for journalists and fact-checkers to help them root out misinformation and propaganda. These tools include identifying photoshopped images and deep fakes, tracing the source of information, and providing generated sources for the verifiable data necessary to refute false claims. GoodNews, another project aimed at identifying and combating fake news, analyzes a wide range of characteristics of real and fake news and uses this information to assign points to posts.