Forged Images Detection to Stop Fake News on Social Media in India

The increasing penetration of Internet, availability of smart phones and its adoption by all generations especially Gen Z, the diffusion of fake information has been seen at its peak on social media during COVID-19 pandemic and society has faced the consequences of the same. Corona is a lethal virus which has spread along with fake news, rumors, and myth in entire world. This spread has left us with one of the most important questions why don’t people check the facts before blindly believing it? Thus, to control the fake news and information, a dedicated government regulatory body, a well-planned awareness program and a technical platform-based solution are required. Hence, this paper focuses on a methodical platform-based algorithmic system which can be inbuilt in platform to detect forged or tampered images used to spread fake information. In this paper, the focus is on a proposed block-based image cloning type of forgery detection which is very difficult as the background information of an image remains identical. Those identified images can be reported as malicious content and can be stopped from sharing on social media platforms. Authors have included the results of such fake images shared on social media in COVID-19 pandemic