Truthy Researcher Launches New Fact-Checking Project

The head researcher behind the government-funded project to track “misinformation” and “hate speech” online is now getting into the fact-checking business.

Filippo Menczer, a professor of informatics and computer science at Indiana University, explained during a lecture earlier this fall that he is creating a new system to go along with “Truthy” that he hopes can automatically extract tweets to be “fact-checked.”

During his talk at Northwestern University, Menczer also falsely claimed that the Washington Free Beacon is an “alt-right” website.

Menczer explained the details of his latest project “Hoaxy” that is entering the battle against “fake news.”

“One of the interesting questions is how misinformation spreads,” he said. “Is it the case that all the people who believe in conspiracy theories [chemtrails, anti-vax] are just in their own isolated group or island, or is it the case that they are spread over the population?”

“So we’re trying to build a system, we call it Hoaxy,” Menczer continued. “We hope to be able to release it quite soon, where we are trying to allow people to visualize the spread of fake news.”

Menczer’s presentation provided a list of fake news websites, which included the Daily Currant and Drudgereport.com, and satire sites such as Click Hole and The Onion.

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