Fake news detectors, which have been deployed by social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to add warnings to misleading posts, have traditionally flagged online articles as false based on the story’s headline or content.

However, recent approaches have considered other signals, such as network features and user engagements, in addition to the story’s content to boost their accuracies.

Fake news detectors manipulated through user comments

However, new research from a team at Penn State’s College of Information Sciences and Technology shows how these fake news detectors can be manipulated through user comments to flag true news as false and false news as true.