COLORADO SPRINGS/BRUSSELS/HOUSTON -- Fact checking website Lead Stories (leadstories.com) and the fakery education and debunking Facebook page Unfakery (Facebook.com/Unfakery) are happy to announce they will be collaborating in the fight against fake news by exchanging data and sharing digital tools. Both organisations are strongly convinced the cooperation will be mutually beneficial and both will gain valuable resources to help them accomplish their respective goals.
Lead Stories is a fact checking website which uses the Trendolizerâ„¢ engine to monitor thousands of known fake news, prank and satire website in order to find trending content to fact check. Trendolizer is also used to detect and monitor the growth of networks of related websites because many misinformation websites are part of larger groups of sites operated by the same people.
The Unfakery page hunts for fake profiles on Facebook used by bad actors to spread links to misleading websites, and tracks and reports those profiles that spread such fakery. Unfakery also shares tools and tips to help people become better information consumers online.
Fake profiles on Facebook are often used to spread links to websites containing misinformation or fake news. More often than not these sites are themselves part of larger networks of related sites. Tracking down who is spreading links to sites in such networks often reveals more fake profiles.
As part of the collaboration Lead Stories will provide Unfakery with access to its Trendolizerâ„¢ tool in order to better map these networks and Unfakery will provide Lead Stories with lists of links to new misinformation websites being spread by the fake profiles it discovers. This will help both of them do a better job in exposing fake news, misinformation and the people behind it.
Felicia Cravens, founder of Unfakery, said "I was excited to discover Maarten's work at Lead Stories. Not only has his debunking work been thorough, it's usually been FIRST. Speed and accuracy are critical in the fight against fake news, and Lead Stories' Hoax Alerts beats everyone in the field for both. Partnering with Maarten gives Unfakery new opportunities to reach and educate our audience faster, backed by reliable information. Our collaboration will also result in an ever-broadening net in which we can catch fakers as they spin their new sites up, and fight back against them."
Maarten Schenk, co-founder and editor of leadstories.com, in turn had this to say about the collaboration: "I've been following Felicia's Unfakery for a while now and I would often find myself adding new sites she discovered to my own lists of sites to monitor in Trendolizer. And sometimes I would tip her off about related websites so she could in turn use them to find more fake profiles. As her byproducts are our input resources and vice versa it only makes sense to work together. It will help us find trending hoaxes from new sites faster and it will help Unfakery expose more bad actors. What's not to like?"
