The internet has made it easier for people to get information and news that interests them.
Famous news outlets like BBC, ABC, New York Times, Al-Jazeera, CNBC, and many others also use the web to deliver news to their audience on time.
While using the web to transmit news is seen as an advantage, there is a disadvantage. Many miscreant sources who claim to be news sites try to benefit from the propaganda they spread using fake news.
Such sources are often sponsored by elements that want to create unrest amongst people, create hype, or gain attention from the masses.
Many people don’t even try to verify or even evaluate a suspicious piece of news and forward it to their circle to unintentionally become a part of the process of spreading fake news.
In today’s era, you must give a second thought to any news that looks interesting or informative before forwarding it to others.
Otherwise, you are not only becoming part of the process but encouraging those elements who are actually behind the process.
Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to evaluate or verify the truth behind a piece of news because they don’t know how to do it.
The good news is that you can quickly evaluate a piece of news and determine if it is true.
The reverse image search method can significantly help you in doing so. If you want to know how that is possible, reading this article until the end is necessary.
Further details are given below:
What Is Reverse Image Search?
Reverse image search is an advanced web search method that takes an image as a search query and delivers visually similar search results.
This method takes the help of the CBIR (Content-Based Image Retrieval) algorithm based on Computer Vision (A subset of AI) and Machine Learning. The working of this method is simple; users upload an image on a utility that allows them to perform a reverse photo lookup. Once the photo is uploaded, the CBIR algorithm scans, segments, and maps the content featured in the image to identify and match it with the deep learning library. After this phase, a web search based on obtained data is performed to deliver visually similar search results.
How Is Reverse Image Search Helpful In The Identification Of Fake News?
Many people will still ask how a fake piece of news is identifiable using the reverse image search. The answer is pretty simple; news you see online doesn’t come in long text paragraphs.
Instead, news outlets add relevant images to make their content engaging. You can use those images to perform a reverse photo search. Simply download the image attached to a suspicious news article from the news website you are viewing or copy its URL.
After doing that, access an efficient reverse image search utility.
Upload the photo you have downloaded from that particular web page, or simply paste the copied URL in the given box to perform a search.
Once you do that, the utility will come up with all relevant and visually similar image search results with their sources. Browse through a few given sources; if you find out that the image used by the new outlet you have viewed recently is used somewhere else with a different context, you have probably seen a fake piece of news.
However, you can’t make a call regarding its validity until or unless you verify that particular piece of news by consulting an authoritative news outlet like the ones we mentioned earlier in this writing.
Reverse Image Search Utilities That Can Help You
Here are some reverse picture search utilities that can help you evaluate a suspicious news piece and verify its truth.
Read on to know more.
Google Images
When you think of searching on the web, Google is your friend. The same is the case when you search for an image to evaluate a suspicious piece of news.
You just have to access Google image search and search by image or paste its URL in the given box. It will search through billions of images available in the database of Google and display visually similar search results with their sources.
However, if you don’t find your desired search results, many other options can help you.
Reverse Image Search by Smallseotools
Reverse image search utilities like Bing Visual Search, Yandex Images, and others can sometimes display more accurate image search results.
However, searching images online one all these utilities one by one will take a lot of time and effort. The best way to perform a photo search and get results from all the renowned platforms is through a third-party tool that allows you to search by image and display image search results from all efficient search engines in one place.
The reverse photo search facility by Smallseotools is capable of doing that. You can easily find relevant image search results and their sources from all the search engines in one place.
After getting the results, you can check which platforms use the same news images. You can evaluate those sources and know whether the news is authentic. Because if the news is fake, it will not be used by other authentic sources. And if the news is accurate, all the renowned news platforms will discuss the same news in their way.
That’s how you can use reverse image search for news evaluation.
