The Internet Fights Back Against Disinformation
There’s a constant battle for information on the internet these days. More so in the last five years with things like Q anon, the Trump administration, politicians, and celebrities. Sometimes it’s hard to discern what's real, and wants not.
Lately there has been the introduction of people and organizations that try to combat disinformation. Groups that scour the internet and look to find what people are talking about and whether it’s a dependable source of information. As we have seen with the recent acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk and his verification war, it’s good to know that people still care to find out the cold hard non-bias truth.
First, we have the European Digital Media Observatory.
According to their website, The European Digital Media Observatory (EDMO) brings together fact-checkers, media literacy experts, and academic researchers to understand and analyze disinformation, in collaboration with media organizations, online platforms and media literacy practitioners.
They use science to verify whether or not things are credible using algorithms and computer learning software to combat deep-fakes and track news reports traveling through online sharing. They also provide and advocate training for a wide range of people and organizations trying to provide accurate and meaningful information.
You can find them at https://edmo.eu/
Bad News is a place where education is gamified to help people with Identifying the good and the bad ways to send and accept social media posts. You head there and determine whether posts like tweets are constructive or dangerous.
Give it a try here: https://www.getbadnews.com/en/play
Bot Sentinel is a free platform to help people find and detect weird or fact accounts such as bots, Isolates them and determines if they are trustworthy. Just in time for the mid-terms, they now have realtime election trackers as well.
You can visit here: https://botsentinel.com/
There’s a lot of resources on line to combat disinformation right at your fingertips, I found a lot of info at the RAND corp. website which has some of the above site.
Visit them at https://www.rand.org/research/projects/truth-decay/fighting-disinformation.html
You can prevent disinformation at a ground level at home by checking sources and news outlets. Tammie Toren has an article you can read here to arm yourself that way as well.
Happy hunting.