How could blockchain help tackle FAKE NEWS AND SCAMS?
Written by @RealScrout (Telegram @)
10 BTC for 20 BTC?
There have been many well-known instances of fake news and manipulation within recent years, from politics, markets and, naturally, crypto.
From Musk offering 2–1 on your crypto to Bezos offering it whilst flying to space on seemingly official Blue Origin youtube channels, manipulation is becoming more accessible to the market. [1]
There is only so much that can be done to tackle these scams, especially when the official account of the individual in question is used. This legitimises the post, especially if it has a blue tick, as done on Twitter and youtube. There is seemingly little that can be done to tackle this, as, for instance, if the US presidential Twitter account is hacked, fake news could be easily spread with little initial rebuttal. 2FA and secure passwords can only go so far before the individual can be fully compromised.
A further future possible compromisation of governments and individuals is the rise of voice reproduction and deep faking.
With many taking the news at ‘face value’ (pardon the pun), the risk of manipulators deep faking individuals in power is rising by the day. If, for instance, the Prime Minister of the U.K’s official Twitter account got hacked, and a deep-faked video of them was posted, mass confusion and lack of trust can ensue. Video evidence is used as one of the main staples of validity to an event, especially in the time of trial by public opinion if an unverified video were to circulate online. [2]
This is where blockchain could come in. Blockchain could be used to validate an original video and the source of the video. This can add a new level of authentication if it is, for instance, posted from the wallet of the actual individual. There could be a system to authenticate such videos, where an automated ‘blue tick’ can be given to the actual footage. This would significantly reduce the risk of deep fakes, as government messaging can be authenticated and not speculated. [3]
There is, naturally, a risk to the authentication key held by the publisher of such content to be exposed, hacked or sold to third parties and governments, but requiring a hardware key plus a keyphrase will solidify this as a safe way to verifiy the information from authentic sources. The blockchain will be of further use as a chronological, irrefutable database of content and videos; as stated in the paper referenced as [3],
“The experimental results show that the proposed method has better detection capabilities and robustness toward various kinds of tampering, such as copy-move, insert, and delete, as compared to other state-of-the-art methods.”
This could be greatly harnessed by social media companies and video services to ensure a safer environment to tackle fake news and foreign government interference. If a database is created by decentralised and open group of individuals, or even a tech giant that allows the code to as visible as any blockchain currently, then creating a repository of real, traceable information will greatly tackle misinformation and scams, as unless you meet the individual face to face and nothing has been done to tackle such issues presented, it may get even harder to distinguish the truth from the scam.
Website: www.lunarstation.io
Telegram: https://t.me/lunarstation
Twitter: https://twitter.com/lunarstation_
Reference list
[1] The South African. (2020). Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and others hacked in crypto scam on Twitter. [online] Available at: https://www.thesouthafrican.com/technology/twitter-scam-elon-musk-jeff-bezos-and-others-hacked-in-unprecedented-cryptocurrency-attack/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2021].
[2] Foley, J. (2021). 14 deepfake examples that terrified and amused the internet. [online] Creative Bloq. Available at: https://www.creativebloq.com/features/deepfake-examples [Accessed 22 Jul. 2021].
[3] Ghimire, S., Choi, J.Y. and Lee, B. (2020). Using Blockchain for Improved Video Integrity Verification. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 22(1), pp.108–121.
[4] https://miro.medium.com/max/2596/1*-KXJB7qDJNo-6O_aajVq0g.png. (n.d.).
