A blockchain-based secured and trusted framework for information propagation on online social networks

Abstract

The online social networks facilitate to share information among the users based on their interests. The specific information being shared by a user may be legitimate or fake. Often, misinformation propagated by users and groups can create chaos and riots in the worst circumstances. Nowadays, a third party like ALT news and Cobrapost check the authenticity of the information, but it takes too much time to validate it. Therefore, there is a need to establish a new robust system to check the information authenticity within the network. In this paper, we envision a model for sharing the information securely at the peer level based on blockchain. In the proposed model, a chain is created by combining blocks of information. Each node in the network propagates the information based on its credibility against its peer nodes. The credibility of a node varies according to their respective information. Trust is calculated between sender and receiver using either of two ways, local trust and global trust. We evaluate our model using real datasets from Facebook and Live journal as well as synthetic datasets generated by using E–R network model and BA network model. The proposed model achieves high accuracy on real-world scale-free networks. The simulation results validate that the model can detect misinformation (fake news or rumor), as well as the source of information propagating nodes using network parameters by applying blockchain technology without the involvement of third parties.