Inspiration
A big problem that we have seen in our area over the past few years is the wildfire-like spread of misinformation, largely stemming from social media and online/news. In order to combat this problem we decided to create a website that can check quotes and facts for validity, while also educating our users on the topic of misinformation.
What it does
Our website has 3 main elements. Firstly, a Twitter quote checker which tells the user if a statement was actually tweeted. Secondly, a fact checker that uses machine learning to check if a statement is true. Finally, we have a learn page that houses many resources so that our users can learn to spot misinformation on their own.
How we built it
We decided to create a website for this solution. For the front end, we used both HTML and CSS styles. The back end, however, was built primarily with python. To gather data we used a Twitter API which allowed us to get access to tweets for our quote checker.
Challenges we ran into
None of our team had front-end experience, so a lot of research was required to make an engaging UI. We also were challenged by the integration of python with HTML when we had to move the user input between different languages. However, we ultimately overcame this with the implementation of flask.
Accomplishments that we're proud of
With the short time period, we are happy to have made an engaging user interface with an accurate quote checker feature.
What we learned
We all learned front-end skills and concepts of machine learning. This challenge introduced us to a vast spread of computer and data science concepts. We learned about convolution neural networks for the classification of misinformation, how to make them more accurate, and how to present these services to users.
What's next for Get Checked
We plan to use the concept on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram for us to encompass more media. Additionally, we would like to use it for users to type in general claims and for the computer to accurately tell us if it is true to false.
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