Kredibble

Richard Marmorstein
October 9, 2014
What
Kredibble is a social application that helps people identify and share the most credible news
and opinion content.

Why
In one word: misinformation. The most clickable news content is not always the most
credible. News articles that spread through social media routinely get things wrong: from
public health issues (like the Ebola virus), to the implications of court rulings or the results
of scientific studies.
Why is social media so full of false and misleading content? The reason is very
simple: because its not easy enough to identify and share credible content. Users
could check out Snopes or respectable news outlets before clicking Share, but they dont.
It takes too much time and effort. Thats where Kreddible comes in.

How
Kredibble does two things:
1. Generates meaningful measures of credibility that users respect.
2. Integrates these measures into users social media experience.
Measuring Credibility
Kredibbles takes a crowdsourcing approach to measuring credibility. Information about
the credibility of a news article is derived from user behavior analyzed through a system of
respect networks. Because an articles credibility is subjective, Kreddible doesnt impose one universal specification of credibility. Instead, users have the option to customize
their experience by specifying public figures, news outlets, and fellow Kredibble users
whom they respect. These fellow users respect yet more users, who respect still more
and so forth. Together, this collection of users determines a respect network. Credibility is
assessed by analyzing the interaction of a users respect network with an article.

Social Media Integration

To build a critical mass of users, Kredibble presents as many faces to the world as possible.
It provides dedicated mobile and web app interfaces for browsing, sharing, and evaluating news, and respecting. These interfaces also include elements of a gamified social
network, a la Quora or Reddit, to encourage users to provide feedback on articles, identify
misinformation, and engage with the application, so their behavior can be analyzed.
Secondarily, Kredibble provides Facebook and Twitter integration, as well as browser
extensions, so that users can immediately benefit from Kredibble in familiar social media
contexts. Kredible passively modifies a users news feed, displaying a credibility score
next to each news article, and optionally displays recommendations of top credibility
alternatives to an article. When a user visits the page of an article with a low credibility,
Kredibble intervenes more actively and displays a warning.

Conclusion
People love to criticize news articles. They do it for fun. Smart and dumb alike. Go to the
comments section of any news article, and see for yourself. Why not tap into this resource,
and let people have their fun criticizing the news, meanwhile actually doing some good and
improving our news feeds at the same time?