Supplementary article for misinformation detection model.

I recently published a project that I worked on and in it, I made a deliberate attempt to avoid talking about the commercial applications of this project. I mainly spoke about my inspiration behind making the program but I never mentioned its real world application except the lynching incidents.

In this article, I intend to make one such application clear.

Messaging Apps : In an overwhelmingly large fraction of the world, sms is no longer the predominant mode of text or multimedia communication. This rise has been an effect of large companies building alternative peer to peer, internet based application that are usually free and always a fraction of the cost of sms. The reason they can provide such staggering value is because their messaging business models are often supplemented by  other products in their portfolio, however that is a conversation for another day.

          The only relevant point is that this rise has put us in a situation where we are constantly bombarded with an influx of unverified information and the sensationalism of may news articles convinces us to forward such texts.

This is where a model like the one I demonstrated could come in. Imagine a situation where you find a news article in your news feed and you decide to share it with an individual or a group. You hit the share button and tap on your favorite messaging app. This opens up the thread of the person but before you actually send the article, the app could give you a non intrusive pop up that tells you that the article you're about to send has a high likelihood of being fake. This allows you to make an educated decision and gives you an insight about the potential consequences of your decision.

Ultimately it still relies on the end user being responsible enough to not send out a potentially harmful article without further verification however this small step could make all the difference to a majority of us who have no ill intent but are just victims to information fatigue.

Why would companies implement this into their messaging platforms ?

The answer is perhaps the simplest part of this exercise. Due to the rise of violence in India as a result of misinformation propagated through messaging apps, the companies are under scrutiny for not doing enough to protect the people. As a consequence, we have already seen marketing material asking the consumers to be more mindful of the things they share. However this is a non solution since that's what caused the problems in the first place. A model that could prompt the user informing him/her about the authenticity of the article could go a long way towards preventing such incident in the future.

This also gives a promising commercial opportunity for wider roll out.