A friend group of 5 people was mistaken as child kidnappers and reported by citizens to a WhatsApp group chat which led to the death of one of the friends, the beating of 2, and the injury of all 8 responding officers; this happened in India in 2018. During the same year, US stock market lost $136 billion because of the hacking of The Associated Press Twitter account which announced that then-President Barack Obama was injured. Now during the pandemic, people who receive fake news and were made to believe that COVID-19 is not real are putting their lives at risk. To this day, the trend of the danger posed by fake news is increasing tremendously thus, we need to stop it now before its negative effects become unimaginable. The good news is that we can.
In the past, information can only be distributed and spread if you have the capacity to publish in newspapers or broadcast in televisions and radios. But because of technology and social media, the publication and consumption of news and information has never been easier—everyone can post news and access news regardless of their money, status, profile, and affiliation. However, it has also exposed netizens to fake news that is sometimes even more believable, surprising, and triggering than real ones. The dilemma then becomes whether this much access to news has become good or bad for our society.
Decentralizing the system and giving power to more than one entity is good but the danger of mainstreaming spread of false information without verification should never be overlooked. The problem, though, is not with the access but with the lack of verification in the platform. But with Hedera Hashgraph, we can have the best of both worlds.
Hedera Hashgraph uses a consensus method allowing different users to collaborate and corroborate data in order to establish the fact and craft news and information that can be accessed and used by everyone. With this, all users are held accountable in ensuring its truth and accuracy and everyone benefits or suffers from such news. It also uses a “gossip of gossips” method which means each hash records the details of an event, together with how it was communicated involving the who and when of the communication, and the content of a preceding hash. This hash then gets communicated to another hash building a flow of information, hence, gossip of gossips. This makes the flow of the communication difficult to erase or reverse since each event contains a unique timestamp before being able to move on to the next event therefore, maintaining its integrity and consistency. And so, with the use of Hedera Hashgraph, as news is being written, it is being verified at the same time, with little to no room for reversing or erasing, not only by one entity but with the consensus of many. The track record of information including history, people involved, and path it took, strengthens in itself the credibility and validity of news, and this is possible with Hedera Hashgraph.
We should not be living in a world afraid of fake news but we should not give up the power of the people to share the truth with the rest of the world, either. Instead, we must strive to empower people to speak but protect our society through spreading only the truth, consequently helping everyone make better decisions and secure our future. And with Hedera Hashgraph, we can make this happen.