How Fake News can be Stopped using Blockchain?

Col. Inderjeet Singh, Cyber Security Expert, Director General, Cyber Security Association of India is explaining different ways of how blockchain technology prevents users from getting fake news. For e.g. Blockchain pointing to unified content stored in IPFS or Swarm, Smart contracts, an application of blockchain technology would be of great use in the detection of fake news, etc.

Delhi: In 2020, the internet has turned out to become a different place than it was originally intended to be. We can safely say that the World Wide Web is under siege. One of the world’s greatest inventions has fundamentally broken. On the internet, misinformation, bots, and trolls are dominating the online political discourse.

Any major event, whether global or local, will see misinformation popping up. The recent Coronavirus epidemic saw a flood of misinformation being spread over the internet like the virus itself. Misinformation is dangerous and it can actually have long-term ramifications on the people, therefore, we should be careful before we share any article or message on Social Media or any other platforms.

Col. Inderjeet says, "Fake news is a major problem in the era of Artificial Intelligence. In the world of digital media, we do get lots of news every day about various issues which may get more views but could be fake news. Such fake news creates panic among people and many people do believe such news and shares among friends using several mediums like various social networking sites and other chatting platforms."

Although, similar dysfunctional scenarios involving misinformation and propaganda have been around for ages — in one form or another — the problem of fake news is becoming a real threat to our connected society. Unfortunately, misinformation examples of the 2016 Presidential campaign in the US and the Brexit campaign no longer require any explanation.

Misinformation is a threat to the internet and as such to our society. It is the ease of creating, diffusing, and circulating such content, combined with the difficulty to track it and control it on time, which makes it a significant threat and a hard-to-solve problem. In addition, bad bots currently account for approximately 20% of all internet traffic and they are continuously evolving and expanding. It has become easier and financially feasible to hire an army of bots to bring damage to your commercial competitor, political opponent, or any player on the internet. Reviews are fake, followers on social media are fake and ad clicks are fake.

Col. Inderjeet further adds that Fake news has serious consequences for our ideals of democracy, liberty, and society since fake news can be used to influence people for political purposes and to fulfill agendas that are not necessarily pro-social. We can see that fake news is not only a nuisance but can lead to great harm by noting examples wherein the dissemination of false messages on the social networking site resulted in the killing of many innocents. There are many similar examples worldwide where the false information was promulgated for deceiving the public and society.

To make matters worse, even ordinary fake news is dangerous. It has the potential to influence online political discourse. AI-powered fake news, however, with deep fakes, we will soon be unable to tell what is true and what is not - the times when something was perceived as true just because it was ‘Seen on TV’ or in a video, are gone. We have entered a period of a ‘high-tech propaganda’ in which people and media are found to participate at scale — intentionally or not.

According to statistics and different surveys are done, around 88 percent of news readers do believe that fake news is a real issue and it is not a small issue. According to statistics by Statista, India is the country where around 300 million social media users do forward messages on WhatsApp. Hence, such studies have revealed that Indians do not check out whether the news is fake or not but forward it.

The cause of all these problems lies in how the internet was developed. When the internet was created, the original creators did many things really well. They created standards such as TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, etc. However, unfortunately, they also forgot two important standards: a decentralized self-sovereign identity protocol to use your offline identity online and a decentralized reputation protocol, to be reputable and accountable online, even when you are anonymous. These crucial protocols were never conceptualized thirty-odd years ago because the initial concept was that only trusted actors would have access to the network.

The increase of fake news raises alarms it is important to move to transparent information flow by restoring the role of the media with blockchain technology.

Fake news has become one of the greatest threats to democracy and free debate. Unfortunately, for many, fake news is not being perceived as a problem at all as it is not affecting them personally or because they feel it is unavoidable to push certain issues. Above all, there is disagreement about what constitutes as fake news and by who, how big the problem is, and what to do about it.

There comes the usage of blockchain- a peer-to-peer technology that uses transparent, distributed ledgers to record information in a way that makes it virtually impossible to falsify or hack. The blockchain has been proposed as an answer for everything ranging from cryptocurrencies to identifying counterfeit wines — so why not for combating fake news as well?

Col. Inderjeet very strongly feels, "Blockchain technology has recently revolutionalized many businesses by developing solutions that can provide trust, security, and privacy. Blockchain provides a mechanism for maintaining a distributed tamper-evident ledger to record the transactions in a data structure named blockchain, hence the name blockchain. "

Blockchain can be leveraged to preserve and verify the integrity of the news and other multimedia content being shared online. The key function of the publisher’s management protocol is to intelligently distinguish in a decentralized fashion between credible and non-credible sources of news/information. The system uses three types of smart contracts that are used to enroll, update, and revoke the identities of news organizations.

Different ways of how blockchain technology prevents users from getting fake news:-

• Consider a global, immutable distributed registry of labeled ‘fake news’ and other classes of misleading content. A decentralized blockchain system would let different stakeholders join the blockchain network. Such a blockchain network would consist of several news agencies, publishers, editors, and news validators. This ‘fake news’ registry, would be accessible by all — humans and machines. By all media and news companies in the world. This could be blockchain pointing to unified content stored in IPFS or Swarm — an immutable system hosting samples of the world’s content, unified and labeled in terms of trustworthiness.
• Different news agencies can share news on such networks. Moreover, once the news is shared, different publishers can publish it on the websites. A major role will be played by the news validators or readers, for validation of news. Blockchain would let users trace the source of the news. Different readers can validate the source of the news if it is coming from the right resources. It uses a decentralized platform, which let any person to be a part of such blockchain from any corner.
• Smart contracts, an application of blockchain technology would be of great use in the detection of fake news. Such smart contracts are coded which for further validation of the news. A blockchain network would have different stakeholders, readers, and publishers. if more users validate the news source, then there are more chances it will be real news.
• IT research and analysis firm Gartner has predicted that by 2023, up to 30 percent of news and video content will be authenticated by the blockchain, helping to counteract Deepfakes technology. By using blockchain one can authenticate news photographs and videos, as the technology creates an immutable and shared record of content that ideally is viewable to consumers.
• Blockchain technology has proven to be a great technology, which allows users to secure and validate data. In addition, with the use of blockchain technology, it has become easier to validate transactions and give proof of authenticity. Such methods in mass media communication are useful since it will not let any more spread of fake news. Hence, currently, several countries are using blockchain technology for preventing the spreading of fake news.

You can follow Col. Inderjeet on twitter @inderbarara, insta:inderbarara