The New York Times to use Blockchain Technology to Combat Fake News

The New York Times to use Blockchain Technology to Combat Fake News

The New York Times Company has revealed a project to tackle the issue of fake news and misinformation. The project will use IBM’s blockchain technology, says the blog post.

According to the announcement, "The News Provenance Project" will initially target photojournalism. The reason is easy manipulation of digital photos.

New York Times intends to understand if providing context to the photos have any effect on users and on the published information on the internet.

Executive Opinion

Sasha Koren, the Project Lead on "The News Provenance Project", for The New York Times, said in the blog post, "By experimenting with publishing photos on a blockchain, we might in theory provide audiences with a way to determine the source of a photo, or whether it had been edited after it was published. In exploring the applications of blockchain for photojournalism, we hope to learn more about where and how it may be sensibly used for journalism as a whole."

Role of IBM Blockchain Technology

The project will use a permissioned blockchain network. Hyperledger Fabric is used as a permissioned, private, open-source blockchain framework. Contextual metadata about the photos such as the time & place of the captured photo, the original publisher, photo caption, the photo’s revision history, can be stored on the blockchain network and shared among different parties.

"The News Provenance Project" plans to use IBM blockchain for their Proof of concept. The PoC aims to provide readers with different ways to determine the source of a photo or whether it had been edited after it was published. According to the project website, the first phase will run till late 2019. The project aims to test if it can scale with its primary focus on photojournalism.

After its learning from the first phase, The New York Times revealed that it would later explore the technology for journalism as a whole. The publisher has also invited some other news organizations to join its initiative, notes the announcement.

P.C: Pablo, unsplash

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Udit Agarwal Opinions expressed by techsutram contributors are their own. More details

Udit Agarwal is a Digital Marketer and a Content Marketing Specialist, He enjoys technical as well as non-technical writing. His passion and urge for gaining new insights on gadgets, smartphones and technology has led him to Techsutram. He quenches his thirst for technology through his action oriented writing skills and a profound ability to stay up to date with latest industry trends.

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