Time for tech to step up with a single truth view

Fake News needs stamping out. It's undermining democracies and right now it's costing lives.

Every time a Covid denier or anti-vaxxer spreads their evidence-empty theories they risk not only many lives, but - no doubt unwittingly - they also support an insidious racism. 

Ask yourself - who would want to target the South Asian Muslim community with the bullshit about pork and alcohol products in the vaccines? Who benefits from creating extra risk of Covid death in a community already over-represented in the list of victims?

Just as we all have a role to play in preventing the spread of the virus, so we all have a role to play in preventing the spread of fake news. So crank up your crap filters. Challenge with facts or just block and walk away (don't feed the troll...)

But we could use some help in this. We have the tech to be much smarter in our response to fake news - and more scalable.

Through data validation and verification - and the application of AI and ML to unstructured data, we have made great leaps in personal identity. Customer Data Platforms enable clear sight of the individual - where-ever you tread digitally - whether that be web, mobile, voice and increasingly in the digitally augmented real world. It's why when (potentially) Alexa listens, Facebook targets you with an ad.

We call it the Single Customer View - aka the one version of the truth. Once established as a kernel it is built upon with each new data discovery - person A is - called X, lives at Y, eats at Z. These remain true until updated - always back to that single person A as the kernel.

Given the alarming and real challenge of Fake News, it's time the same tech guns were turned on fact, rapidly evaluating the source of the kernel of the fact, ranking it for quality and quantity of source to provide an early estimate of accuracy - and then built upon with a network of validation. Posts could be red / amber /green flagged in real time.

Imagine the frustration of the anti-vaxxer whose links to sources are instantly red-flagged for reputation? That might wake them up, too.

Yes, I know, there are questions about whose version of the truth we test by. Google already offers more weight to links it trusts. The BBC already decides what stories it will broadcast and how it will tell them. Our access to 'truth' IS already edited.

The web was meant to be a way that truth could always find a way - overcoming state control or media mediation. But the last few years have taught us that our mass congregation in social networks makes (some, too many of) us vulnerable to influence and control by bad actors.

Those bad actors exploit human vulnerabilities (and build bots to do the same). Now good actors must step up and rebalance - subjecting lies to scrutiny and giving those susceptible to believe them to the tools to alert them to the distinct possibility they are being sold a pup.

Image via UN