Researchers developed a web-based tool to monitor fake news on Facebook, Twitter

A web-based tool to monitor the spread of fake news on social media platforms has been developed by the Researchers from the University of Michigan in the US. The tool uses a Platform Health Metric called the Iffy Quotient and will supposedly draw data from two external entities namely NewsWhip and Media Bias/Fact Checker.
Working of the tool
- The News Whip will collect URLs from hundreds of thousands of sites each day and then it will gather information about the engagements of these sites on Facebook and Twitter.
- The Iffy Quotient will fetch information by querying NewsWhip for the top 5000 most popular URLs Facebook and twitter.
- Then the tool will check using the information at Media Bias/Fact checker whether the URL has been classified as iffy, ok, or unknown.
Newswhip
It is a social media engagement tracking firm to collect URLs of thousands of sites everyday and collect information whether these sites have involvement in Facebook and Twitter.
Media Bias/Fact Checker
It divides the URL into three categories, ‘Iffy’ if the website is on a questionable source or a conspiracy list and ‘OK’ if the websites on the lists such as Left Bias, Right Bias or Satire, and ‘Unknown’ if the website is not on any of the lists.