To Share or Not to Share: Tabayyun Made Possible with MyVeri5

Abstract

The advent of technology today allows us to stay connected with family and friends, especially through social media applications, where communication can take place easily and in a timely manner. Most of the time we use the applications to share important information and urgent messages or news with our dearest ones because we care. But time and time again, we see headlines highlighting the misuse of these applications to spread false rumors and its damaging impacts. From the point of view of technology, there is almost no help at all in verifying the genuineness of a message shared. Users have to go great lengths to verify the news, but responsible users are not common these days. Furthermore the urgency of these messages sometimes calls to our natural instinct to protect our loved ones. Motivated by this challenge, we propose a mobile application; MyVeri5, to facilitate in checking the genuine status of messages. Through MyVeri5, users who want to verify a message can request to do so by forwarding said messages to the system’s server. The system’s server will forward the message to appointed authorized verifiers from appropriate domains for verification. The verified status of the message will be returned to the requesting user, along with his immediate friends list. MyVeri5 has the potential to minimize the impact of fake messages socially and economically, while still servicing the need for urgency to inform the loved ones. It also supports and upholds the concept of tabayyun, which advocates investigation of news before action and dissemination.