Using Blockchain to Rein in the New Post-Truth World and Check the Spread of Fake News

Abstract

In recent years, "fake news" has become a global issue that raises unprecedented challenges for human society and democracy. This problem has arisen due to the emergence of various concomitant phenomena such as (1) the digitization of human life and the ease of disseminating news through social networking applications (such as Facebook and WhatsApp); (2) the availability of "big data" that allows customization of news feeds and the creation of polarized so-called "filter-bubbles"; and (3) the rapid progress made by generative machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) algorithms in creating realistic-looking yet fake digital content (such as text, images, and videos). There is a crucial need to combat the rampant rise of fake news and disinformation. In this paper, we propose a high-level overview of a blockchain-based framework for fake news prevention and highlight the various design issues and consideration of such a blockchain-based framework for tackling fake news.

«Deepfakes»: el pròxim repte en la detecció de notícies falses

“…En los últimos años, las noticias falsas se han convertido en un tema que amenaza el discurso público, la sociedad humana y la democracia (Borges, Martins y Calado, 2019;Mackenzie y Bhatt, 2018;Qayyum et al, 2019). En un escenario donde el caos reina en gran parte del ecosistema de información del que dependen las sociedades (Lin, 2019), la información falsa se propaga rápidamente a través de las redes sociales, donde puede impactar a millones de usuarios (Figueira y Oliveira, 2017).…”

“…Dada la facilidad para obtener y difundir información errónea a través de las plataformas de redes sociales, tanto en forma de publicación como en los comentarios (Atasanova et al, 2019), cada vez es más difícil saber en qué confiar, lo que genera consecuencias perjudiciales para la toma de decisiones informadas (Borges et al, 2019;Britt et al, 2019). De hecho, hoy vivimos en lo que algunos autores identifican como un escenario de posverdad, que se caracteriza por la desinformación digital, el sesgo mediático (Hamborg et al, 2018), la generación de información falsa y la distorsión deliberada de la realidad, para manipular creencias y emociones e influir en la opinión pública y en actitudes sociales (Anderson, 2018;Qayyum et al, 2019).…”

A Data Verification System for CCTV Surveillance Cameras Using Blockchain Technology in Smart Cities

“…This issue has emerged because of the development of various accompanying technological marvels. Qayyum et al [34] have presented the cutting edge-to the point of producing disquietude-of realistic-looking fake data and concentrated explicitly on the marvels of fake news. To address the fake news issue, they have proposed a blockchain-based structure for the identification and alleviation of fake news.…”

Fake News, Disinformation, and Deepfakes: Leveraging Distributed Ledger Technologies and Blockchain to Combat Digital Deception and Counterfeit Reality

“…b) An open protocol for tracking news credibility: Qayyum et al [9] introduced the concept of Proof-of-Truthfulness (PoT), where any node in the network can verify whether a content is or not part of a blockchain. Content is stored in a Merkle tree, a binary tree built using hash pointers in which nodes at the n − 1 level contain hash pointers to the content stored at the n level.…”

“…For example, a smart contract can be used to store relevant information such as publisher identity, status, reputation score, public key, timestamp, and then broadcast the content to the P2P network. Moreover, smart contracts can be used to register, update and revoke the identities of different organizations (e.g., publishers), as well as to determine their status and reputation score [9].…”