Why ten copies of a story count as one

Much of what you read online is copied. A news agency story is republished by dozens of outlets. A press release becomes ten articles with the same quotes. A blog post gets summarized, then summarized again. Search for the claim and it seems to be everywhere.

Why this fools people, and machines

More mentions feel like more proof. But if all the mentions trace back to one source, you have one source, however many links you can find. An assistant that simply counts links will be just as fooled as a person skimming search results.

What Telli 5 does instead

• Copies are counted once. When several pages repeat the same report, Telli 5 sets the copies aside and counts the original once.
• Opinion is labeled as opinion. Forum threads, blogs and reviews are shown as opinion, never presented as fact, and count for little in the score.
• Interests are weighed. Where a source looks influenced by someone with a stake in the answer, Telli 5 treats it with caution or leaves it out.

An example

Ask whether electric cars produce fewer emissions over their lifetime, and Telli 5 might find a peer-reviewed lifecycle study, a government energy agency report, and three news stories repeating the study. The answer cites the study and the agency report. The three news stories are shown too, marked “Counted once”, so they don't inflate the score. (Illustrative example.)

Why it matters most for news

When a story breaks, the same few facts spread fast. Seeing whether a story has independent sources, or is one report copied many times, is often the quickest way to judge how settled it really is.

See what Telli 5 weighs when it grades a source

More notes