Introduction

Misinformation is profitable. There is always a business entity using misinformation for profit. In the 50s, tobacco companies purported that cigarettes were medicinal; they created advertisements proclaiming that physicians believed in cigarettes’ “medicinal” benefits. The tobacco industry hid the truth from consumers for as long as it could. Still, the United States Surgeon General’s report in 1964, showing that smoking cigarettes were harmful, became the pivotal point of the shifting public opinion on smoking cigarettes. With an all-time high in taxes against tobacco companies, cigarette smoking is at its all-time lowest profitability.

Today, misinformation is widespread on the internet. Different platforms intentionally spread misinformation to harm individuals and groups. The internet, however, is just another representation of many businesses through websites. For most businesses, websites are another source of income through the showing of advertisements. Demand Site Platforms (DSPs) are what allow the placement of ads on websites. Currently, DSPs deal with misinformation by blacklisting or demonetizing websites. However, DSPs only do so when they are actively told to by the advertiser. Thus, by being associated with misinformation, an advertiser’s reputation is damaged. A damaged reputation is a waste of money since it might deter customers from supporting the advertiser when the advertiser is supporting misinformation, intentional or not. This is where the Misinformation and Credible News Analysis Tool comes in. The tool allows advertisers not to support businesses that spread misinformation by rating how credible a page is on a website. Using this credibility score, the tool can decide whether an advertisement should be placed on that page based on its credibility. Unlike the current process where businesses must tell DSPs which websites the advertisers’ ads should not be placed on, NOBL Media has the capability to automate the process by allowing advertisers to simply tell NOBL Media what credibility rating a website should have for their advertisements to be placed.

Problem

NOBL Media collects advertisement information for advertisers who choose to use NOBL Media’s services. Once that information is collected, advertisers can see how their advertisement is performing in terms of supporting misinformation and how much money the advertiser is losing due to misinformation. Currently, NOBL Media’s business flow is interrupted by the following problems:

  1. NOBL Media customers do not have a way to visualize the data NOBL Media collects about the customers’ advertisements.
  2. NOBL Media cannot abstract the data so that it is easily understood by customers.
  3. NOBL Media does not have a way to directly give the customers’ advertisement data.
These problems remove NOBL Media’s ability to show proof that their service works for the customer. As a result, NOBL Media would be unable to retain current customers and attract new customers.

Project Requirements

Currently, the requirements for the project is composed of two aspects:

  1. A web application that is capable of user authentication and data visualization. This web application will connect to the backend consisting of an API and a database.

  2. An Application Programming Interface (API) that allows for connection of the web application to the database. This API is expected to be integrable to a NOBL user's website should they choose to. This API has different functionalities but primarily will be used for recieving data from the backend for visualization.

Official Project Description