news detective

We make truth transparent.

News Detective enables community moderation to reduce misinformation and spread media literacy at scale

Incubating at MIT Sandbox and MIT DesignX

Honorable Mention for MIT DesignX awards

can't keep up

Social media companies hire professional factcheckers to check articles one-by-one. There are only a handful of factcheckers, compared to the billions of social media posts. There are nowhere near enough factcheckers to check all of it.

Artificial intelligence won't solve this either. AI is just an extension of humans. Fake news is made to trick humans. If fake news can trick humans, it can easily trick AI.

Plus, neither professional factcheckers in the shadows nor algorithms actually let users see why something is misinformation, or let them debate and learn media literacy organically.

Crowdsourcing, letting regular users rate articles, can handle the volume and make the process transparent. But crowds aren't always that wise. Some people are biased. Some people are inexperienced. Some people are bots.

the answer: news detective

News Detective is a platform that uses moderated crowdsourcing, professional factcheckers, and AI.

crowds

Social media users rate articles for truthfulness and provide evidence on website

professionals

Professional factcheckers and more experienced users rate other users

ai

AI sorts claims to prevent redundancy, giving factcheckers the power to do more.

Ratings/explanations of highly-rated users appear on social media, both educating new users and bringing them into the News Detective universe.

growing a culture

More experienced users rate new users.

Only when a user has a high enough rating do their fact checks count

As new user ratings increase, they get more power to moderate newer users

Builds up a culture of people who know what they are doing

democratic and transparent

With news detective, it’s not social media companies deciding what’s true. It’s everyone. And it's not a mysterious process: you can see what the ratings are, who rates, and why.

Currently, misinformation starts as a few small pieces of misinformation that snowball into a big one. But with News Detective, we nip misinformation in the bud. As misinformation grows, these fact-checks follow it just as fast.

The internet is amazing. Just as we unleashed its power to produce information, we need to unleash it to figure out which information is actually true. Who knows, we could find ourselves in a world where we all know what’s going on, a world where democracy is less threatened.

Let’s get back to arguing about real things!

get involved

We're looking for people to join the team (including potential cofounders). We are currently searching for:

- A skilled software developer to work on development and expansion of the News Detective platform and integration into other sites.

- A business development professional to assist us in building partnerships, fundraising, and improving user experience.

If you have a passion for technology and a desire to make a real impact in the field of media, we would love to hear from you! Please reach out to us on our contact form with your qualifications and a brief introduction of yourself.