Panic Travels Faster Than Proof
Fake news moves at the speed of panic, long before anyone gets the chance to check it. By the time a claim is confirmed false, it's usually already been shared thousands of times over.
Days, Not Seconds
Established fact-checkers like Snopes rely on human review that takes days, an eternity when a claim is already spreading in real time.
Manual Search Fatigue
Verifying a headline yourself means digging through multiple sources mid-scroll, friction most people won't push through before hitting share.
No Tamper-Proof Trail
Even a debunked claim can quietly resurface later, there's no permanent, public record proving what was actually found.
the estimated speed at which misinformation spreads compared to verified reporting, while human review still takes days to catch up.
Cited by the FactShield teamTruth, Verified in Under 15 Seconds
The goal was to design and build a platform that returns a verdict on any claim in under 15 seconds, and once that verdict is delivered, it's permanently recorded on the blockchain, so it can never quietly be changed after the fact. The entire system, architecture, backend, and pipeline, came together in 30 days, start to pitch, during CityU's FusionX hackathon.
Judged by a panel of industry cybersecurity professionals, FactShield placed 1st overall.
How FactShield Verifies a Claim
Every submission, pasted text, an article link, or a video URL, moves through the same AI-driven pipeline before a verdict is ever shown.
Claim-by-Claim Breakdown
Rather than a single true/false stamp, the AI splits an article into individual claims, cross-references each against trusted global sources, and returns a three-tier verdict, Real, Fake, or Suspicious, along with the evidence behind it.
Immutable Blockchain Records
Every verdict is written to the Polygon network, generating a public, tamper-proof transaction hash. Once it's recorded, no one, including the team, can quietly edit or delete it.
Live Misinformation Heatmap
Submissions feed a color-coded global heatmap tracking where specific topics, health, politics, war, are actively spreading, turning a personal verification tool into a public early-warning system.
Under the Hood
FactShield runs a three-step pipeline: submit content, let AI analyze and score it, then commit the verdict permanently to the blockchain.
The AI layer extracts and cross-checks every claim against trusted global sources before scoring it; the result is then committed to the Polygon network as a public, immutable transaction, visible to anyone through the platform's own blockchain explorer.
1st Place, CityU FusionX Hackathon
Photos from the pitch and the win, judged by a panel of industry cybersecurity professionals.
Receiving certificates, medals, and the presentation cheque from CityU Dean, Assoc Prof Dr. Nurul Hafeez Ibrahim.
The championship medals earned for FactShield's approach to fighting misinformation.
system architecture, full-stack development & feature planning, me. Interface & UX design, my teammate, Shihab Dewan.