Social media is a great place to get news and updates from around the world. It can be used to spread information about a missing child, a missing person, a missing dog, warning about accidents or traffic jams, but at the same time with great power comes great responsibility. Cheesy, I know, but there are times when one must decide if a particular piece of news is the truth or a rumor as irresponsible sharing can sometimes lead to the false dissemination of information. Well the good news is that soon you might not have to figure it out for yourself, thanks to a new tool that is being built that will reportedly be able to verify online rumors from social media sources.
This tool is being built by researchers at the University of Sheffield and according to Dr Kalina Bontcheva, the leader researcher, “Social networks also provide useful information. The problem is that it all happens so fast and we can’t quickly sort truth from lies. This makes it difficult to respond to rumours, for example, for the emergency services to quash a lie in order to keep a situation calm,” which is why this lie detector tool is being built. The tool will be able to analyze text and also examine social media accounts have been created simply with the purpose of spreading lies and rumors. Unfortunately this lie detector will not be made available anytime soon as the project will run for three years before a customized tool will be made available for more commercial use.
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