A Job for Elves

Logically is a fact-checking app that combines AI technology and human research to assess and label the truthfulness of news articles. The app has about 20,000 users after a soft launch in the UK, with a full launch planned for late 2020. The AI technology, a feature that makes the app unique, tries to match news claims to other sources and then human researchers take over to make a final judgment. The app has been busy fact-checking the extensive Covid-19 related misinformation. Some aspects, like technology glitches and slow fact-checking responses from researchers, still need to be worked out.

Teaching students to fact check encourages resilience and builds resistance to the post-truth phenomenon. In Finland, a school curriculum implemented at the national level equips elementary and high school students with a digital literacy toolkit geared toward recognizing disinformation online. In addition to specific exercises spotting fake news on social media platforms, a critical thinking curriculum is built into all subjects. Finland's success in fostering a social resilience against disinformation also draws on lessons from the country's oftentimes fraught history with its eastern neighbor.

France is at the forefront of efforts to integrate internet literacy into standard primary and secondary course requirements. By partnering with journalists and educators, the French government is working to stop the spread of misinformation by teaching students how to identify misleading tweets, articles, and other sources.

As word of the coronavirus outbreak spread, so did misinformation, so the World Health Organization began working with big tech companies to put a stop to it. Collaborating with the likes of Pinterest, Google, Twitter, and Facebook, W.H.O. has posted content that disputes the incorrect information across platforms and sites in order to make "falsehoods harder to find in searches or on news streams."

Verificovid was started by a group of friends to combat pandemic-related misinformation in Mexico. They work with a group of government doctors to identify, track, investigate, and disprove misinformation. The group posts infographics with updated COVID-19 statistics on social media – mainly Whatsapp and Telegram – and offers medical tips via short audio messages and texts. They prioritize fast-moving misinformation that could cause the most harm and, along with sharing the truth, they investigate the origin of the misinformation and teach the public how to identify and stop fake news.

Volunteers from tech companies collaborated with epidemiologists to create a Covid-19 tracking site that works to monitor the spread of the virus and help people know if they have been in contact with anyone who may have been infected. Although registration to the site is still short of the goal number, 10,000 people have already provided their information.

Allowing news consumers to more carefully vet media outlets can help stem the proliferation of fake news. NewsGuard, a web browser plug-in gives users a “nutrition label” for news websites by ranking them on a scale of trustworthiness. The service employs trained journalists and is working to make its plug-in available in libraries, as well.

Vaccine Talk is a Facebook group for evidence-based discussion to help both pro- and anti-vaccine people wade through all of the conflicting, and oftentimes wrong, information about the COVID-19 vaccine. The group has a tough reputation because of its strict moderation system and rules of discourse. Each of the group’s 70,000 members was approved by an administrator to join and committed to a code of conduct. Users must be ready to provide citations within 24 hours of posting and the moderators don’t hesitate to kick out members who lack civility, misrepresent themselves, or make unsubstantiated claims.

Santa Clara County City officials, together with the digital marketing agency XOMAD, paid 49 mico-influencers to promote COVID-19 vaccines and dispel misinformation. The micro-influencers were paid between $200 and $2,500, depending on their number of followers, frequency of posts, and level of engagement. Over two months, the influencers published 339 posts across Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram, which received 2.5 million total views and impressions.

Accredited social health activists (ASHA) across India fight COVID-19 related misinformation on WhatsApp. ASHAs provide basic health care to people in their villages, which puts them on the frontline of treating COVID-19 patients and educating people to dispel the many myths about the virus and its treatments. ASHAs' local interactions often identify prevailing myths, which they quickly dispel in their face-to-face exchanges and by posting in the many local WhatsApp groups that have been created. The local groups have been an effective mode of educating people and helped ASHAs gain villagers’ trust.