HomeBlockchainNew York Times: the blockchain to combat fake news

New York Times: the blockchain to combat fake news

The New York Times, a well-known American newspaper, has revealed new details about its blockchain-based experiments, revealed for the first time in March of this year.

Yesterday, a new website called News Provenance Project went online, explaining how the newspaper’s research and development team plans to use Hyperledger Fabric’s blockchain to combat fake news.

Fighting fake news

The project aims to combat misinformation and fake news, which harm both small and large publishers.

“We are creating a system for recording and sharing contextual metadata on photos using Hyperledger Fabric, a private, open source, permissioned blockchain framework. We are developing a technical proof of concept in collaboration with IBM Garage, which has carried out similar projects in other sectors”.

The New York Times will be testing blockchain technology until the end of 2019 to find a convenient and efficient way to ensure the authenticity of the media.

In fact, some techniques to generate false news are simple: recycling of old images, selective cropping and editing, slowing down and speeding up videos.

The project aims to store contextual metadata of a piece of news on a blockchain. It will include the time and place when and where a photo or video was taken, who took it and the information on how it was modified and where it was published.

Project updates

The Times plans to publish updates on the project throughout the process, followed by a full report once the pilot project is complete.

Further confirmation of the project came from a tweet by Vivian Schiller, CEO of Civil Media, a former employee of the New York Times, and a long post on Medium by Sasha Koren, project manager.

 

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