Tech
Four Students Solve Facebook Fake News Problem In 36 Hours
Brooke James
First Posted: Nov 16, 2016 02:11 AM EST
The massive social media website has been facing increasing criticism as of late, with users especially calling foul over its role in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. According to critics, the site has allowed propaganda lies disguised as new stories to spread, most of which are unchecked.
Yahoo! News noted that spreading false news has become so bad on the site that President Barack Obama himself called it a "dust cloud of nonsense."
However, as noted by Business Insider, CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself was not too concerned of the issue, stating that fake news is only a small percentage of the things shared on the site, and would not have too much impact to the public -- despite Facebook vowing to do better in differentiating fake news from real news.
That being said, how difficult could it be for Facebook to find a way to block fake news? Apparently, not as difficult as the company makes it out to be, considering that a group of four students were able to find an algorithm to determine real news from fake ones -- in under 36 hours.
During a hackathon at Princeton University, four college students -- Nebanita De from the University of Massachussetts at Amherst, Anant Goel from Purdue University, Mark Craft and Quinglen Chen of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign -- were able to make a much needed News Feed authenticity checker.
According to De, their checker, called "FiB: Stop Living a Lie" classifies every post, including pictures, fake links, malware links and news links using artificial intelligence. They take into account website reputation and look into malware and phishing database, to begin with. Following the analysis, a browser plug-in adds a tag in the corner that states whether or not a news story is verified.
The extension is an open-source project that can be used by any developer. But while it is not a total solution, it is a start.
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First Posted: Nov 16, 2016 02:11 AM EST
The massive social media website has been facing increasing criticism as of late, with users especially calling foul over its role in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. According to critics, the site has allowed propaganda lies disguised as new stories to spread, most of which are unchecked.
Yahoo! News noted that spreading false news has become so bad on the site that President Barack Obama himself called it a "dust cloud of nonsense."
However, as noted by Business Insider, CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself was not too concerned of the issue, stating that fake news is only a small percentage of the things shared on the site, and would not have too much impact to the public -- despite Facebook vowing to do better in differentiating fake news from real news.
That being said, how difficult could it be for Facebook to find a way to block fake news? Apparently, not as difficult as the company makes it out to be, considering that a group of four students were able to find an algorithm to determine real news from fake ones -- in under 36 hours.
During a hackathon at Princeton University, four college students -- Nebanita De from the University of Massachussetts at Amherst, Anant Goel from Purdue University, Mark Craft and Quinglen Chen of the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign -- were able to make a much needed News Feed authenticity checker.
According to De, their checker, called "FiB: Stop Living a Lie" classifies every post, including pictures, fake links, malware links and news links using artificial intelligence. They take into account website reputation and look into malware and phishing database, to begin with. Following the analysis, a browser plug-in adds a tag in the corner that states whether or not a news story is verified.
The extension is an open-source project that can be used by any developer. But while it is not a total solution, it is a start.
See Now: NASA's Juno Spacecraft's Rendezvous With Jupiter's Mammoth Cyclone