Troy startup battling false news in Spanish

Richard Zack’s startup, Our.News, which fights misinformation by fact-checking news articles online for readers, just won a $63,500 grant to translate their product into Spanish.

Our.news partnered with the fact-checking company Colombiacheck and submitted a proposal to translate Our.news’ “newstrition label” into Spanish so it can be used by Spanish news readers.

The product is an internet browser plug-in which allows readers to see a “newstrition label” next to any news article they are reading. The label includes who the article’s publisher is, where they are located, the sources that are in the article, and if the article, or any claims in the article, have been fact-checked by a professional fact checker.

“Our articles, just like the nutrition labels on food, don’t tell you if something is true or false,” Zack said. “It is, ‘here are all the ingredients. Make your own decision.’”

Fact-checkers, journalists, and news professionals from Japan, India, China, France, and Germany have reached out to Our.news asking if the product will work in their languages, Zack said.

The expansion of the factchecking product is crucial during a global pandemic when misinformation spreads rapidly. Zack was surprised by not just how much misinformation was being created throughout the pandemic, but also by how many of the social media networks weren’t doing much to prevent the spread. “It was vast, and global,” Zack said.

Since the pandemic began in March, Our.news users more than doubled, Zack said.

The grant money is provided by the International FactChecking Network and Facebook, as part of the Face-checking Innovation Initiative, which fosters partnerships between technology companies and fact-checkers.

“It’s very encouraging that Facebook specifically believes that our “newstrition” product will be very helpful in other languages,” Zack said. “Our hope is that Spanish is the first of many languages we can translate to.”