Hoaxy and Botometer are important tools used in fight against the spread of misinformation online. With the recent upgrades, these tools together enable users to observe whether information spread across Twitter is shared by real people or pushed by a computer program designed to sway public opinion.
Another tool, Fakey is introduced to educate people to recognize genuine news from credible source, hence save them from popularizing fake news from misleading sources.
Hoaxy is a search engine that depicts if the stories spread on twitter to the users are from low credibility sources.
Hoaxy’s new functions show users about the stories that are trending on Twitter, ranging from low to high credibility sources. It also indicates the proportion of the users likely to be “bots” (automated accounts) spreading the stories.
Botometer is a joint project of the Indiana University Network Science Institute (IUNI) and the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research (CNetS).
Botometer formerly called BotOrNot is an app that checks the activity of a Twitter account and gives it a score based on how likely the account is to be a bot (an automated account). Higher scores are more bot-like.
Botometer often categorizes “organizational accounts”, like @BarackObama, as bot accounts.
The upgraded version of Botometer employs updated machine learning algorithms to identify “bots” with greater accuracy.
Fakey is a tool in form of an educational game which is designed to help teach people how to distinguish between false or misleading reports and genuine news.
In this web and mobile news literacy game, players earn points by fact-checking false information and hitting like or sharing accurate stories.
The tool helps people develop responsible social media. An Android app is available, and an iOS versions will be launched shortly.
The bots give a false impression about a product or a specific topic onlineby creating hype with the comments and likes of the people who are unaware of the information authenticity.These automated accounts are commonly used by political campaigns, celebrities, and advertisers to popularize their products or push their agendas.
Earlier, to recognize the authenticity of any information users had to analyze the headlines and use their intelligence. But the 3 tools have made it easier to trace the spread of any online news or hashtag across twitter.
All three tools combined help individuals understand the role of misinformation online. It also helps to detect the authenticity of the virally spread formation and revealing people or groups behind illegitimate sources.
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