What is WT:Social and can it solve fake news?

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It is not a surprise if I tell you that the internet is flooded by fake news, and that is a
problem with notorious consequences. Of course, there are people and news-checkers organizations trying to find a solution, besides the efforts
from Twitter and Facebook executives, insufficient in some cases, doubtful in others, to say it softly.

As US Presidential elections are getting closer, it has become critical to find a solution from
this problem, while social media has been playing each time a more prominent role in the
election campaigns, with the fake news making disasters.

Let’s visualize this influence with two facts: According to Facebook itself, 126 million
Americans got Russia-backed content in the previous months of 2016 elections, from 80.000
different fake posts generated by Russia-backed websites[1]. And for the Brexit campaign,
political parties invested more than $260 000 just in Facebook ads, [2]. After Brexit, an
investigation from TheGuardian found a connection between Boris Johnson and a firm ran
by his own ally, Lynton Crosby. This firm promoted fake news on Facebook ads in the
interests of its clients, which ranged from significant polluters to the Saudi government.
Later, it was found that this same firm was generating Facebook groups promoting a no-deal Brexit.[3]

But here we won’t discuss if Zuckerberg or Jack Dorsey are doing enough, or the possible influence of a government in another country’s elections. We will talk about an apparently attractive solution to this problem: WT:Social.

So, what is precisely this new platform? Who is behind it? How does it work? Do we really need another social network? Would it be helpful to solve the fake news problem? How has it been my experience with it? Let’s discover that in this video.

I started to understand this project when I read their self-description: “a unique Wiki-based news platform.” And from that point, you know what to expect, this is a platform entirely news related, so it is not what we are used from a social network. There are not pictures from users in their vacations, memes, 15secs-long stories or the chance to post a long text explaining how ruined your love life is, it is mostly about news and the opportunity to comment on them directly in the website.

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