Proof of credibility: A blockchain approach for detecting and blocking fake news in social networks

Abstract

Rumors and misleading information detection and prevention still represent a big challenge against social network developers and researchers. Since newsworthy information propagation is a traditional behavior of most of the users in social media, then verifying information credibility and reliability is indeed a vital security requirement for social network platforms. Due to its immutability, security, tamper-proof and P2P design, Blockchain as a powerful technology can provide a magical solution to overcome this challenge. This Paper introduces a novel blockchain approach called Proof of Credibility (PoC) for detecting fake news and blocking its propagation in social networks. The functionality of the PoC protocol has been simulated on two datasets of newsworthy tweets collected from different news sources on Twitter. The results clarified a satisfying performance and efficiency of the proposed approach in detecting rumors and blocking its propagation.