A talk on Fake News and Blockchains, given during the University of Sussex's Digital Discovery Week
Below is the title and abstract of the Presentation:
In my paper Fake News - a Technological Approach to Proving Provenance Using Blockchains, I introduce a prototype of an innovative technology for proving the origins of captured digital media. In this talk, I will give a brief overview of that prototype.
In an era of fake news, when someone shows us a video or picture of some event, how can we trust its authenticity? It seems the public no longer believe that traditional media is a reliable reference of fact, perhaps due, in part, to the onset of many diverse sources of conflicting information, via social media. Indeed, the issue of 'fake' reached a crescendo during the 2016 US Presidential Election, when the winner, Donald Trump, claimed that the New York Times was trying to discredit him by pushing disinformation. Current research into overcoming the problem of fake news does not focus on establishing the ownership of media resources used in such stories - the blockchain-based application introduced in the article is technology that is capable of indicating the authenticity of digital media. Put simply; by using the trust mechanisms of blockchain technology, the tool can show, beyond doubt, the provenance of any source of digital media, including images used out of context in attempts to mislead.