I’m at #TED2017 this week. I’m so grateful to be here. A lot to digest. There was a great talk yesterday about Cyber Security by Laura Galante.  One thing she said (I’m paraphrasing mightily here) really hit me hard…while our cyber security efforts focused on stolen credit cards, Putin was stealing the election. The Russians hacked our election. It’s a fact. Not #FakeNews.

As an early investor in Twitter, I was utterly shocked – no, sickened — at how effectively Twitter and Facebook were used to promulgate a compelling but false narrative – a false narrative that likely influenced the election in a country the world looks to for its democratic ideals. Really, the work was darkly brilliant because it used the self-reinforcing elements of Social Media. We tend to follow people like ourselves in social media. So when something gets inserted it reverberates around and around, gaining tracking and sadly credibility, reinforcing even the most absurd beliefs. Birtherism?! Pizzagate?!

Coincidentally, I got an inbound pitch this week for an AI startup focused on eradicating #FakeNews. This, coupled with a couple of TED talks, got me thinking about the best way to attack #FakeNews. Is it an AI toolkit that finds #FakeNews? Is it a site like WikiTribune that provides crowd-curated RealNews? Or a site like StopFake.org that debunks #FakeNews. Or is it something else entirely? Is it a movement – enabled by social tools — that encourages people to find empathy by connecting with people who are different, people outside their narrow social graph who help add balance and perspective to the conversation?

What *it* is I don’t know yet, but I know there is a huge social (and commercial) need for this company and I am sure a lot of people are “on it.”

Please send me deals that attack this problem head-on.