Scientist have developed a new system that can identify if a 140 character long tweet send by a user is telling the truth or not. The creators called Pheme believe that this system could be very useful to the police to prevent the spread of false reports like it happened during the London Riots of 2011 where false information was being send through Twitter.
“People do believe things they hear on the internet, in critical situations, you can instead show reliable information or alert the authorities before things get out of hand.”
Every tweet will be divided into one of the four main categories which are the following: speculation, controversy, misinformation or disinformation. The system then looks at the tweet and comparing it with sources (established news outlets and experts) and will look at the history the user had to identify a fake or real twitter account.
The program isn’t expected to be finished until beginning of 2016 and the estimated cost is of about £3.5 million so don’t worry about any of your friends looking at your twitter history to see if you are lying or not, unless you have very rich friends.
