A Chrome blockchain extension against fake news: Leggi qui l’articolo in Italiano
A Chrome blockchain extension against fake news: it’s called TrustedNews and it’s an extension of Google’s famous browser.
A traffic light against fake news
It can be installed for free and every time you browse a website a traffic light appears: if the colour is green, for TrustedNews the site publishes content based on facts or events, therefore it is considered reliable. If, on the other hand, the colour is red, it is not considered reliable because it knowingly publishes false or misleading information.
However, in cases where TrustedNews does not have sufficient data to accurately evaluate a website, the colour grey is shown.
In addition, in the case of satirical sites, the colour blue is displayed, and in the case of politically distorted content or unsubstantiated or distorted news, the colour orange is displayed.
Also in red, but with an X, sites containing malicious content are marked, while in red and with a C are clickbait.
Finally, pages with user-created content are marked with a U and the colour grey.
Feedback and the MetaCert token
TrustedNews is developed by the team of the famous Adblock Plus plugin, it is open source and in order to classify websites, for now, it relies on four third-party fact verification organizations: PolitiFact, Snopes, Wikipedia and Zimdars’ List.
However, the plan is to evolve it to use user feedback, collected on the blockchain, in collaboration with MetaCert Protocol which already has an anti-fraud URL registry based on blockchain technology.
In this way, the database of user feedback will be decentralized through the use of Ethereum‘s blockchain, with a new protocol and logical system to reward with MetaCert tokens those who will contribute to the collection of data.
Initially, they will add a centralized feature that will allow users to provide feedback, but then this database will be decentralized on the blockchain.
In this way, positive feedback can be appreciated and rewarded by the users themselves, while negative feedback will not be rewarded.
The system is currently only available for English-language websites.
