Introducing & Evaluating ‘Nutrition Facts’ for Online Content

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Presented at CyberScience2020 2020 by

Matthew Spradling

Jeremy Strong

So-called ‘fake news’ – deceptive online content that attempts to manipulate readers – is a growingproblem. It has been blamed for election interference, public confusion and other issues, both in the United Statesand beyond. A tool of state intelligence agencies, scammers and marketers alike, deceptive online content is poisedto have growing consequences. This problem is made particularly pronounced as younger generations choose socialmedia sources over journalistic ones for their information. This paper considers a prospective solution in the form ofproviding consumers with ‘nutrition facts’ style information for online content. To this end, it reviews prior work inproduct labeling and disclaimers, considers several possible approaches to the challenge and the tradeoffs betweenthem.