Combating the spread of fake news on social media through a blockchain-led intervention

Fake news has been around for centuries. However, the advent of social media and mobile connectivity has made it a menace in our times. Often driven by financial or political motives, fake news is hard to contain, and has far reaching implications in various walks of life. The paper likens the online news lifecycle to the product lifecycle comprising development, introduction, growth, maturity and decline stages, and proposes a blockchain-driven intervention to minimize the spread of fake news. This intervention model proposes forming a peer-network of legitimate news portals, to evaluate news articles posted on social media, and add them to a blockchain based on authenticity. This process ensures creation of a blockchain of all authentic news on social media. Social media can then be tasked with adding a stamp denoting the outcome of this blockchain-driven validation, which will benefit readers when accessing news items on social media. The paper also discussed the technical feasibility & operational challenges of such an intervention model