College Students Design Browser Plug-In That Detects Fake News

Fake news is becoming a huge problem and many companies know it. Companies such as Facebook are working on ways to help users identify fake news, and recently during a hackathon held at Yale University, a group of college students managed to develop a browser plug-in that detects fake news that you encounter on the internet.

The plug-in which is dubbed “Open Mind” was developed by Michael Lopez-Brau, Stefan Uddenberg, Alex Cui, and Jeff An, all of whom hail from different universities and also from different fields of studies. What the plug-in does is that when it detects a website that is known to contain fake news, it will display a warning to users, kind of like how Google warns users when they’re about to enter a website that might have malware on it.

However it doesn’t just stop there as it will also use what is known as sentiment analysis technology. This helps to analyze and identify major players and political slants, and will then be able to offer up stories on the same topic that have a different viewpoint. According to An, “So let’s say there is an article that is very pro-Trump on a topic. We would then try to give you something more left of centre. We can go out and find for you that alternative article.”

However at the same time the group is also trying to avoid extreme points of view, where if you are reading a far-left article, it won’t try to offer you a far-right article as a counterpoint. For more information about the extension whose beta is planned for early 2018, head on over to its website.

Tyler Lee
Categories: General
Tags: Chrome, Google