ProBlock: a novel approach for fake news detection

Abstract

The world is diving deeper into the digital age, and the sources of first information are moving towards social media and online news portals. The chances of being misinformed increase multifold as our reliance on sources of information are getting ambiguous. Traditional news sources followed strict codes of practice to verify stories, whereas today, users can upload news items on social media and unverified portals without proving their veracity. The absence of any determinants of such news articles’ truthfulness on the Internet calls for a novel approach to determine the realness quotient of unverified news items by leveraging technology. This study presents a dynamic model with a secure voting system, where news reviewers can provide feedback on news, and a probabilistic mathematical model is used for predicting the truthfulness of the news item based on the feedback received. A blockchain-based model, ProBlock is proposed; so that correctness of information propagated is ensured.