Sunday, February 23, 2014

Pheme, Internet lie detector

Can the internet technology distinguish the truth from lies? A project which several universities and companies join in is challenging this issue.

BBC News: Lie detector on the way to test social media rumours

Pheme, derived from a Greek Goddess of rumor, is a service to evaluate the credibility of comments in a Social Network Service. The statement is categorized into some classification according to its reliability, such as "inspection", "controversy", "misinformation", and "disinformation." Pheme also can identify the account which is created exclusively to create spams.

As far as reading these articles, I think that Pheme is not so special, compared to other internet services such as search engines, virus scan softwares, and spam filters. Even now, it is not so difficult to identify the origin of a rumor spread on the internet. Google real time search has enabled it. So it is certain that Pheme will be launched in 18 months as planned. The efficacy will be argued.

If Pheme or similar services are utilized, some programmers related to spams will establish another method to spread disinformation more natural and hard to be recognized. It is a spiral between a runner and a chaser, likely to Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Nonetheless, this kind of rumor detectors will help us to avoid from misinterpretation by unintentional mistake.

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