Decoding Democracy: A Social Media Accountability Project

Description

Asked to be interviewed for a story highlighting the "Decoding Democracy: A Social Media Accountability Project" that became a finalist in the A.I. and the News grant: An open challenge to educate society to navigate on social media for the betterment of society (recently found out that I made the finalist list  - only 12% accepted, no others from SU but institutions such as M.I.T. and BBC are represented).

The project will be used to combat the spread of false, malicious and divisive messages through AI on social media. While platforms currently take steps to make paid advertising more transparent by revealing creators’ identities, locations and intentions, they are not adequately addressing the volume of unpaid messages — images and memes that deliver targeted messages to specific audiences — but are completely unregulated.

My project is aimed at reaching this group, using tailored algorithms to find questionable elements in memes, and displaying a warning icon on the menu bar that would indicate the degree of veracity. A rollover feature would open a window for more detailed information. Eventually, it would be more proactive by displaying a prompt for the user to acknowledge that they are spreading suspicious material, while their account would display a negative rating based on their sharing history. Through a clear and direct response to unethical messages disseminated with AI through the public domain, a more reliable, honest, and impartial news ecosystem can exist.