StartupRealities

Startup No 172 - StartupRealities 2020 series SourceIdentifier is a corporate investigations company which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to research information sources up a chain of references until it reaches the earliest or original source. This is useful for identifying the sources of fake news or for tracing the ownership of shell companies up a chain of ownership to a physical person. CEO QUOTE "The Chinese have a saying: 饮水思源 (yǐn shuǐ sī yuán) - when you drink water, think about its source. We help companies and governments identify the sources of the water they drink, in the figurative sense." - said SourceIdentifier founder and CEO Souzanna Idensey . 1894 fake news illustration (image source: Wikipedia )

StartupRealities No 60 FlatEarthImplements is a company that produces scientific and pseudo-scientific instruments for members of the Flat Earth Society , with which they can conduct experiments in search of proof that the Earth is flat. The company's pseudo-scientific instruments (e.g. loaded gyroscopes) are more popular with Flat Earth followers than properly-calibrated instruments and therefore command higher prices. The reason for this logical contradiction is that Flat Earthers consider the pseudo-scientific instruments "untampered", while the calibrated instruments that do not support the Flat Earth hypothesis are considered "tampered". CEO QUOTES "We don't take a stance on the founding tenets of the Flat Earth movement. It goes back to ancient history and beyond - to primeval history. No one disputes their historical origins and we give them credit for their unwavering commitment to tradition." - noted FlatEarthImplements founder and CE...

StartupRealities No 16 EscalateTruth Limited is a fact-checking, fact-verification and fake news filtering company that plays the role of "arbiter of truth" in media. The company's verification process does not involve judgements on matters of opinion (e.g. is Donald Trump good or bad) but flags incorrect facts, fake news and factual lies. VERIFICATION PROCESS The company's fact checking and verification process goes through four hierarchical levels:      1. ALERT An investigation is triggered either after notification by a human reader or automatically as a result of an AI algorithm (spider or bot) spotting potentially incorrect factual information in the media. Whenever a reader uses the "citation needed" label (commonly seen on Wikipedia) to tag a piece of information, this triggers an investigation by EscalateTruth.      2. POPULAR VOTE The disputed facts are put to popular vote among online readers, who are given three possible options: True...