Adblock Plus developer eyeo GmbH, recently announced about soon be using blockchain technology. The technology will be reportedly used in the platform’s browser extension Trusted News, according to TechCrunch.
The source confirms that Trusted News has been launched in beta version for now. The extension is currently available solely for Chrome. According to the official information on the project’s website, the browser add-on “labels fake news media while marking trustworthy sources and stories”. Once the feature is added to the browser, the extension displays a small window with a brief description of a news source containing the labels “trustworthy”, “unknown”, “clickbait” or even “satire.”
Company’s director of ecosystems, Ben Williams told in the interview that the new project of Trusted News will include “an option wherein users can provide feedback on certain ratings, even disputing them if they disagree with a certain classification”. Williams also added: “they can say ‘hey I don’t feel like this site should be listed as biased because whatever’. And we’re going to use that feedback to make the product better. And then the next step is to decouple that from any server, and from any third party, and give it directly to the blockchain. So that that feedback can live on its own in that place and so that good feedback can be prized and rewarded among users, and people who are providing bad feedback won’t be. So that is the next step.”
Eyeo is meanwhile not the only company which work towards combating fake news. Back in November, 2017, Facebook announced about creating trust indicators which would be attached to articles on the social media platform. Later in March, 2017, Google announced about the company’s plans of focusing on trustworthy news. They will reportedly spend $300 million on creating the Google News Initiative platform.
