AI-driven disinformation analysis and moderation: Are we there yet? By Kalina Bontcheva

1. AI-driven disinformation analysis and moderation:
Are we there yet
Kalina Bontcheva
K.Bontcheva@sheffield.ac.uk
Keynote talk @ TTO Conference, 08 October 2021
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WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297

2. InVID-WeVerify Plugin
The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No
825297

3. The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No
825297
● 50k users worldwide
● From 198 countries
● Fact checkers
● Journalists
● Human rights defenders
● Teachers and scholars
● NGOs and government
organisations
Who uses it?

4. Main video tools initially offered
The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No
825297
“Swiss Army knife” toolset

5. New features available now
The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No
825297
Designed with end users

6. The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No
825297
The Verification Assistant

7. WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297
Assistant
The Assistant guides users through the verification process. Given a URL of the content, it:
● Extracts relevant text and media
● Decides on and redirects to relevant verification tools for each of the extracted sections
● Runs extracted content against various third party verification tools
● Warns users if these third party tools return any results
The assistant currently supports various sites/video platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
It also suggests relevant tools should users wish to upload their own images/videos

8. WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297

9. WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297
Content Overview
&
Tool recommendation

10. WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297
Domain and Content Credibility Warnings

11. Blockchain database of known fakes
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12. Blockchain database of known fakes
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Image Similarity Example on Facebook Content

14. Matching against the database of known fakes
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15. WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297
Domain and Content Credibility: Social Accounts

16. The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant
agreement No 825297
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Social network analysis

17. The WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant
agreement No 825297
17
OCR for Images and Memes

18. OCR Tool
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Much better performance than Bing and
Yandex. They don’t recognize the print black
characters in a distant object with non frontal
perspective
Now being extended to non-Latin scripts and
screenshots

19. OCR Extensions under Development: Language ID

20. OCR Extensions under Development:
Text region detection & more scripts and Languages
Direct link to Google translate

21. Is Misinformation Believed? The Conversations Around It

22. Is Misinformation Believed? The Conversations Around It (2)

23. Is Misinformation Believed? The Conversations Around It (3)

24. Is Misinformation Believed? The Conversations Around It (4)

25. Twitter SNA
● Implemented authentication to avoid misuse of this component
● Completed a server-side implementation to address scalability issues
https://weverify-tsna-app.gate.ac.uk/
● Considerably enhanced the early version from 2019
● New bubble graph (top 100 most active accounts)
● New co-reference hashtag graph
● New socio-semantic graph
“tracing connections” between nodes
● New possibility to query again Twitter SNA
with top urls and see their propagation
● New features to export graphics & data
for using in Gephi or NetworkX visualisation
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26. Network visualisation
● Network layout: Two-step procedure
○ Setting first the positions of the communities
○ Separately setting the positions of the nodes into each community.
● Clear graph with no overlapping among communities
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27. Network visualisation
Examples
http://networkx.iti.gr/network/
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User graph Socio semantic graph
*Password-protected. Account: mever_user/network.

28. Network visualisation
Statistics and filters
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Betweenness centrality Filter by edge type

29. EnVisu4
CheckGIF: also with cropped images

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COVID-19 Misinformation Topic Classifier
Further details:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.03354

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Exploration and visualisation of COVID-19 misinfo
Joint work with First Draft:
https://datadeficits.firstdraftnews.org/
https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/data-deficits/

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Exploration and visualisation of COVID-19 misinfo
Joint work with First Draft:
https://datadeficits.firstdraftnews.org/
https://firstdraftnews.org/long-form-article/data-deficits/

33. Using WeVerify services for analysis in Google Sheets
(e.g. CrowdTangle output from FB, Insta, Twitter, etc)

34. Challenges in working on misinformation analysis
Scarcity of data
Several levels of veracity (a claim can be “half true”, “inaccurate”)
Ethical approval 🡪 social data is a kind of personal data
Requirements for data storage and usage
Difficulty to reach closed channels (e.g. WhatsApp)
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WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297

35. Other Challenges
Deep fakes
• Synthetic videos and images “look and sound like a real person saying
something that that person has never said.” (Lucas, 2018)
Preserve important social media content for future studies
Establish policies for ethical, privacy-preserving research and data
analytics
Measure the effectiveness of technological solutions implemented by
social media platforms
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WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297

36. Thank you!
Kalina Bontcheva
K.Bontcheva@Sheffield.ac.uk
QURATOR Conference, Berlin, 21 Jan 2020
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WeVerify project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 825297