US develops web-based tool to monitor fake news on Facebook & Twitter

The researchers at the University of Michigan in the US have developed a web-based tool to help monitor the prevalence of fake news on social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. The tool uses a Platform Health Metric called the Iffy Quotient, which draws data from two external entities: NewsWhip and Media Bias/Fact Checker. NewsWhip, a social media engagement tracking firm, collects URLs on hundreds of thousands of sites every day and then gathers information on which of those sites have engagements on Facebook and Twitter. The Iffy Quotient queries NewsWhip for the top 5,000 most popular URLs on the two social media platforms. Then, the tool checks to see if those domain names have been flagged by Media Bias/Fact Check, an independent site that classifies various sources based on their reliability and bias.