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A Statista report reveals that according to a global study conducted in 2019, 62% of respondents felt that there was a fair extent of fake news on online websites and platforms. Social media is considered the least trusted and a significant contributor to the fake news domain.  

There is no doubt that digital transformation has created a better economy but there are prices we pay for the benefits we incur. Cybersecurity and fake news dominate this. There are many innovations targeted towards ensuring cybersecurity but what about fake news? How far are we from controlling them? 

Fake news has been a challenging obstacle for the news and media industry since the public is losing trust and reliability in media and authenticity is questioned. Every piece of news is now seen with suspicion since we never know whether it is real or fake. 

Are we Far from Fake News?

Fake news has an alarming impact on politics since many politicians and political groups are targeted through manipulating content, especially during elections. There was a surge in fake news during the 2016 US presidential elections.  According to a 2019 report by Economic Times, “With the number of posts they worked on and busted rising 20-50% this year, fact-checkers are now looking at expanding the scope of their work next year by hiring more people, introducing fact-checking in more Indian languages, and conducting more awareness workshops.” Since the report, there has not been any decline in the fake news scenario we saw increasing fake news with the onset of pandemic regarding vaccination, virus, etc.

Tracing the Fake Tracks through Blockchain

Fighting fake news is nothing news and fact-checking has been a conventional method to distinguish fake news. Recently blockchain rose in the discussions of battling fake news and it is said that the transparency offered by blockchain technology helps. Blockchain is a disruptive technology that leverages Distributed Ledger Technology that tracks and store digital currencies and transactions. Apart from being used in cryptocurrency blockchain is now being adopted in various industries to enhance operations and ensure better supply chain management. 

Blockchain can never control fake news, instead can trace them and verify their authenticity at an increased pace. Blockchain is famous for its decentralized and traceable nature. Instead of depending on a central controlling server, with blockchain, news can be validated and seen by various entities and can be updated consistently. The Gartner Top Strategic Predictions for 2020 mentions that by 2023, up to 30% of world news and video content will be authenticated as real by blockchain, countering deep fake technology. Blockchain creates immutable content that cannot be manipulated and it only allows to add to the chain of blocks. 

Safe.press, a platform developed by Block Expert uses IBM’s blockchain technology to authenticate news and provides instant proof. Another initiative in this area is by the New York Times when they announced that their R&D team is launching The News Provenance Project in 2019 that works on a blockchain-based solution to control the spread of fake news. 

Considering the increasing technological innovations we can expect blockchain to become the new way of confronting and killing fake news.