Inflo is a cross between a news aggregator and social media platform which proposes a comprehensive revision to the way in which news is shared and accessed online by addressing the root of the problem. The underlying hypothesis is that an over-reliance on ads for revenue has driven current platforms to a voracious quest for engagement, which has in-turn favored content with attention grabbing headlines over that which provides informational value. We argue that such platforms leverage the provocative nature of sensationalized content and polarized comments to achieve their business goals, while both users and publishers are left with the short end of the stick; users with a deficiency of quality information, and publishers with dwindling revenue streams and less incentive to ma...[ Read more ]

Inflo is a cross between a news aggregator and social media platform which proposes a comprehensive revision to the way in which news is shared and accessed online by addressing the root of the problem. The underlying hypothesis is that an over-reliance on ads for revenue has driven current platforms to a voracious quest for engagement, which has in-turn favored content with attention grabbing headlines over that which provides informational value. We argue that such platforms leverage the provocative nature of sensationalized content and polarized comments to achieve their business goals, while both users and publishers are left with the short end of the stick; users with a deficiency of quality information, and publishers with dwindling revenue streams and less incentive to maintain high journalistic standards. Inflo addresses these issues by proposing mechanisms which improve the dynamics of news propagation on social media, and leverages a “Netflix for news” model which is set to benefit publishers in an unprecedented way. It is the goal of the proposed platform to bring about a shift in incentives of the publishers and social media users in a way which would ultimately have a major effect in curbing the spread of misinformation. Also described in this thesis are three technical modules which serve as the core intellectual property of the platform: 1) a machine learning based news content classification system, 2) a crowdsourced iterative bias elicitation algorithm, and 3) a gamification system to reward user contributed insights.