Washing of content is a well -known way to spread misinformation. This tactic is used by propagandists in different countries and in different languages. The Information Laundromat (“Information Laundry”) allows you to track the networks of misinformation and identify non -obvious connections between propaganda resources. 

Laundering of information - albeit relatively new, but already established, term. As when laundering money, the task of laundering information is to hide the source, to issue dubious or false information for reliable, biased - for independent and objective. Washing often looks as follows: the message is published in social networks or on the forums, artificially unwinds there, and then, passing through several sources to varying degrees related to the news agenda, (des) the information is somewhat modified, becomes like the news and gets into the media, naturally, without indicating the primary source. But there are more complex schemes, one of these in detail Described Specialists of the BBC department to combat misinformation. 

The Information Laundromat The Alliance for Secocracy (ASD) of the George Marshall Foundation was developed to analyze information laundering networks. The tool helps to analyze the content distributing in the network and metadata sites. At the heart of work - search engines, tool checking tools for Copyscape plagiarism and database Gdeltwhich significantly expands the capabilities of analytics. GDELT tracks world news in more than 100 languages.

This tool can analyze the link, title or fragment of the text, and help find websites with similar or identical content and/or architecture. 

How does this work

• You introduce a URL address (list of addresses), the name or fragment of the text you want to check.
• The system analyzes and evaluates the similarity of your initial content with other sites if you check the content, or the site of the site, if you check the sites.
• On the results page, sites where similar content is discovered, the percentage of similarities with your primary source is sorted.
• When checking sites, three comparison levels are proposed, the analysis of which can help understand whether sites are elements of the same network. 

False positive, as well as false negative results, are possible, we saw them during testing, but this occurs only with a short or superpopulsa request that reduces relevance. If you are looking for a quote, the search will be quite accurate. 

"Information laundry" is truly multi-language. The choice of language is available, including low -widespread, for example, the Maltese, and the choice of a country (domain zone). 

The undoubted bonus of the instrument is that it can be used and not by directed by the authors, but, for example, to track fraudulent networks. It is partially suitable for analysis of vulnerabilities. 

In addition, this is an open code that, which Laid on GitHub. This means that it is possible to process code, introduce your own settings and, probably, even improve the tool. However, it is not necessary to finalize the code at all, you can simply use it from your working machine or expand in the cloud, but for this you will need relatively advanced skills in working with code and cloud systems.

Conceptual and technical restrictions

• The presence of a result in the issuance does not tell us about the intentions of the publisher and does not directly indicate the connection of any site with a laundering network. It is necessary to take into account the context and double -check the results of automatic search. The search results in themselves using The Information Laundromat is a starting point for further research, and not the truth in the last instance.
• Since the system uses third -party developments (Google, Bing, etc.), the quality of issuance depends on the changes in the work of their search and other algorithms, this should also be borne in mind.
• The Laundry copes with the media perfectly, but the results related to publications on social networks are very modest. 
• When connecting via VPN, the site may not work, there are restrictions for unregistered users, and it is very difficult to get registration. Therefore, the launch of the project looks more effective locally, on its own car.

According to the results of our testing, we can make the following conclusion: The Information Laundromat is a great working tool for a journalist or researcher not only propaganda, but also any other information that is actively spreading on the network. However, it should be borne in mind that the system is not intended to search for the source, rather - for the search for already washed stories and sites that distribute them. Search for the source can be organized using other tools, such as TGSTAT, expanded search or Custom -made Google machines.