Quarterly Outlook
Macro outlook: Trump 2.0: Can the US have its cake and eat it, too?
John J. Hardy
Chief Macro Strategist
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Blockchain tech kills fake news
Anders Nysteen
Senior Quantitative Analyst, Saxo Bank
Summary: Verizon, Twitter and Facebook unite to save the truth, and themselves.
The fake news industry is booming more than ever, polluting reliable news sources we have trusted for decades. The spread of disinformation is accelerated by algorithms that favour engagement, funnelling readers to extreme, attention-grabbing positions on blogs and biased new media outfits. Even worse, new developments in deep learning research have enabled the creation of realistic deep-fake images and videos, able to show politicians and other people in power saying things which they simply never said. This falsified and manipulated content is conquering the internet at a rapid pace, blurring the lines between what seems real and what is not. Working against this development, companies like Verizon and IBM are working on technologies to counter fake news with verification using a blockchain network.
In 2021, the mounting threat of disinformation and the erosion of trust in even well-established news providers reaches a critical level, demanding an industry response. Major media companies and social platforms are forced to impose new countermeasures against fabricated and misleading news. The enabling technology is a massive shared blockchain network for news content, which allows distribution of news in an immutable way with a validity check of both the content and the source. With a shared ledger structure, any content alterations would immediately be visible to everyone, and every news item is always traceable to its original source, suppressing misinformation that other sources can’t verify.
Companies like Twitter and Facebook invest heavily in this blockchain tech, motivated first and foremost by self-preservation as the threats of regulatory oversight we’ve seen in recent years become white hot. Alternative news sites peddling conspiracy theories like QAnon, disinformation about the coronavirus pandemic, falsified evidence of election fraud and more will suddenly become unavailable on major platforms. Reality wins, and echo chambers lose.
Trade: Buy Verizon, IBM, and social media companies.
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