Calgary researchers develop method to detect fake news
Posted May 27, 2020 9:36 am.
CALGARY (660 NEWS) – Researchers at the University of Calgary have come up with a new way to detect fake news.
The new method focuses on analyzing the digital supply chain of a website and has a 97 per cent true positive rate, outperforming several fake news detectors currently available.
According to Dr. Raymond Patterson with the Haskayne School of Business, in the first few seconds you connect to a website, there could be as many as 250 third parties the site is connecting to.
“Who are you spending your time with as a website? Who are you sharing your users’ data with. Could that indicate whether or not you are trustworthy or untrustworthy.”
Researchers from @haskayneschool have created a fake news detector by combining machine learning and heuristics, which analyzes the digital supply chain of websites https://t.co/vl9GYDnGeW #UCalgary pic.twitter.com/KFKVHCltpT
— U Calgary (@UCalgary) May 26, 2020
Patterson said a more potent fake news finder can be created by combining their method with current content-based tools, revealing both the trustworthiness of the source and the content.
“Perhaps there are some news agencies which sometimes propagate real news and sometimes propagate false news, and our whole point was that’s a fool’s errand because they are very good at deception,” said Patterson. “But a tiger can’t change its stripes. At the heart of it all is a business model.”
Patterson and other researchers have found that commonalities and differences in third parties can predict if a news website is trustworthy or not.
“Our paper provides proof of concept. Is it practical? Does it work? Could this be taken further by other researchers?” said Patterson. “You put something out there and then the whole gang of researchers around the world chips in and over time you push the boundary of what is possible.”
On top of this method, Patterson said web users should always question what they read and hear and fact check often. He added you should avoid making important decisions based on rumour or speculation.
