News
Oxylabs’ "Project 4β" partners with Debunk.org to counter disinformation
May 2023 by Marc Jacob
"Project 4β," a pro bono initiative by Oxylabs, is delighted to announce a new partnership with Debunk.org, an organisation dedicated to countering online disinformation and state-sponsored internet propaganda. The partnership will provide Debunk.org with Oxylabs’ cutting-edge web scraping technology and expertise to combat false information online on a pro-bono basis.
The issue of disinformation in the digital age has long been of utmost importance. Due to recent events such as the pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war, the topic has now reached a critical level of significance: the rise of state-sponsored propaganda, social media manipulation, and disinformation makes it challenging to distinguish between accurate and false information without some level of expertise. Debunk.org is one of the most experienced organisations in countering disinformation and ensuring the public is aware of disinformation that targets them.
Through "Project 4β," Debunk.org will get free access to Oxylabs’ out-of-the-box solutions, such as scraper APIs and the world’s largest ethical proxy network, allowing the organisation and its volunteers to gather publicly available data, make the fact-checking processes faster, and enable to get valuable insights for their research.
"Project 4β" has recently established partnerships with professors and researchers from a number of esteemed institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, London’s Global University (UCL), Northwestern University, University of East London, Aivancity School for Technology, Business & Society, to name a few.
The program is also in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Department of Lithuania. The Oxylabs team is now developing a solution to help the department’s specialists automatically collect online ads offering potentially illegal products and services.
The solution will help the department’s inspectors save time and be more proactive in ensuring that citizens and legal persons comply with environmental legislation regulating environmental protection and the use of natural resources.
"Project 4β" is always on the lookout for new partnerships and welcomes academic institutions, researchers, NGOs, non-profits, and other organisations, working with the most challenging societal missions to join the program.
