Can the ‘Wisdom of the Crowd’ fix disinformation?

eam members assemble a puzzle during the problem solving phase of the "Whacky Relay" at the base track 2 May.
SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. — Team members assemble a puzzle during the problem solving phase of the “Whacky Relay” at the base track 2 May. (U.S. Air Force Photo/Dennis Rogers)

Thank goodness it’s Good Friday. In today’s newsletter, I highlight a project from my friend Claire Wardle that she hopes will allow researchers a new tool to fight disinformation. She is currently the director of Civic, the Coalition to Integrate Values Into the Information Commons , and she has proposed a project that she called:

“a Wikipedia of Trust,” a back-end contributor model where regular people could volunteer to flag, decipher, and catalog fake memes and bot activity, and add crucial cultural context to images and information that might be a zombie rumor.

“A Wild Plan to Crowdsource the Fight Against Misinformation”, Wired, by Emily Dreyfuss

It is the information equivalent of capturing virulent memes for study. The challenge as Claire highlights is that disinformation is moving from being out in the wild on the open web – or what remains of it – and public social networks to places hidden by algorithms and inside messaging platforms where they can spread in ways resistant to observation and rebuttal.

I also highlight CNN’s use of a new Snapchat service, called Curated Stories to cover breaking news. The tool has helped lure CNN back into Snap’s Discover. Will this be enough to stem Snap’s slide? I doubt it because what might be useful for media won’t necessarily address the fundamental user issues that Snap has.

Apart from those two big stories, we also have:

The ad tech bubble may be about to burst. US newspapers are struggling for cash in the rush consolidation. Sift launches ‘news therapy’ app. New media investment fund for LatAm. UK Telegraph aims for 1m subs.

Have a great weekend, and I’ll see you next week.

If you spot a good story about the business of media, especially digital, feel free to send it to me @kevglobal on Twitter. If you don’t get my international media newsletter in your inbox, you can get a taste of it and subscribe here