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Italy's Red Button

Italy's Red Button
Willis Sparks
By Willis SparksJanuary 26, 2018
Willis Sparks
Willis Sparks is a senior editor for GZERO Daily. He is also a Director in the Global Macro practice at Eurasia Group, where he has worked since 2005. He has made speeches on international politics on every continent except Antarctica. Willis holds degrees from Brown University, the Juilliard School, Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, and the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. He also holds an honorary degree from the Moscow Art Theatre School. A native of Macon, Georgia, Willis has worked as a stuntman at New York's Metropolitan Opera. As a child, he declined an opportunity to spend an afternoon riding the Great American Scream Machine, a rollercoaster, with Ronald McDonald, for money. He has never regretted that decision.
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Great news for Signal readers in Italy. If you’re online and see a news story that looks fake, you can now use the “red button” system created by the government to have that story checked out.

Just log on to the website of the Postal Police, the folks responsible for battling online crime, and let them know you’ve got a story for them to check out. They will then use special software to figure out the source of that story and report back on whether it’s fake. If this system works, it will come in especially handy during Italy’s upcoming election season.

At a moment when confidence in the reliability of information has already made news before and after elections in the US, South America, Europe, and Africa, is there anything similar in the works in other countries holding elections this year — places like Brazil, Mexico, Hungary, and the US?

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