MisinfoMe

Archictecture

This project has two main deployments:

• collector: collects/updates the dataset
• web: serves the MisinfoMe app

          collector                            web
┌────────────────────────────┐    ┌─────────────────────────────┐
│ claimreview_collector_full │    │       misinfo_server        │
│         port:20500         │    │         port:20000          │
├────────────────────────────┤    ├─────────────────────────────┤
|        flaresolverr        │    │      twitter_connector      │
|         port: 8191         │    │         port:20200          │
├────────────────────────────┤    ├─────────────────────────────┤
|         dirtyjson          │    │         credibility         │
|         port:12345         │    │         port:20300          │
├────────────────────────────┤    ├─────────────────────────────┤
|            mongo           │    │ claimreview_collector_light │
|         port:20600         │    │         port:20400          │
└────────────────────────────┘    ├─────────────────────────────┤
                                  │            mongo            │
                                  │          port:20700         │
                                  └─────────────────────────────┘

The declaration is implemented with the scripts scripts/start_services_web.sh and scripts/start_services_cllectr.sh.

Collector

This deployment is updating every day the dataset and uploading it to a daily release stored on the claimreview-data repository, named with the format YYYY_MM_DD.

The container claimreview_collector_full is an instance of the claimreview-collector docker image and is configured with environment variables:

• ROLE=full: enables the daily update
• PUBLISH_GITHUB=true: to enable publishing data to GitHub
• GITHUB_TOKEN: to enable publishing data to GitHub
• GOOGLE_FACTCHECK_EXPLORER_COOKIE: needed to collect from Google Fact-check Explorer
• FLARESOLVERR_HOST: where to find the instance of flaresolverr (to collect from websites and avoid captchas)
• DIRTYJSON_REST_ENDPOINT: where to find dirtyjson microservice
• MONGO_HOST: where to find mongodb (to store data)
• MISINFO_BACKEND: where to find the public web API (to use the unshorten API)
• TWITTER_CONNECTOR: where to find the connector to twitter API

Flaresolverr is used to avoid the captchas. Dirtyjson is used to fix some broken jsons. Mongo is used to store data.

Web

The web deployment is more elaborated. It is made of a frontend and many microservices.

The main container is misinfo_server that is an instance of misinfome-backend that acts as public API and also serves the frontend.

Twitter microservice twitter_connector is responsible to retrieve timelines, users, tweets.

Credibility microservice credibility computes aggregated scores of credibility.

Claimreview microservice claimreview_collector_light provides access to the data

Installation

• get access tokens and create .env file
• start the two deployments
• init database for web

Docker-compose

# without docker-compose installed
docker build . -t martinomensio/misinfome
# run docker-compose image that will do the same:
# - mount /var/run/docker.sock to give control of docker
# - mount .env file that contains all the env variables with secrets
# - CLAIMREVIEW_DATA_PATH: pass the host data path so that the container know where it is to run docker-compose
# - COMMAND can be start.web or start.collector

# web
docker run -it --name mm35626_misinfome \
        --restart unless-stopped \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v `pwd`/.env:/MisinfoMe/.env \
        -e CLAIMREVIEW_DATA_PATH=`pwd`/claimreview-collector/data \
        -v `pwd`/backend/app-v2:/MisinfoMe/backend/app-v2 \
        -e FRONTEND_V1_PATH=`pwd`/backend/app-v1 \
        -e FRONTEND_V2_PATH=`pwd`/backend/app-v2 \
        -e INTERACTIVE=1 \
        -e COMMAND=start.web \
        martinomensio/misinfome

# collector
docker run -it --name mm35626_misinfome \
        --restart unless-stopped \
        -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \
        -v `pwd`/.env:/MisinfoMe/.env \
        -e CLAIMREVIEW_DATA_PATH=`pwd`/claimreview-collector/data \
        -e INTERACTIVE=1 \
        -e COMMAND=start.collector \
        martinomensio/misinfome

# with docker-compose installed
COMMAND=start.web bash scripts/main.sh
COMMAND=start.web.dev bash scripts/main.sh
COMMAND=start.web TWITTER_CONNECTOR_TAG=dev bash scripts/main.sh
COMMAND=start.collector bash scripts/main.sh
COMMAND=start.collector.dev bash scripts/main.sh
COMMAND=start.collector TWITTER_CONNECTOR_TAG=dev bash scripts/main.sh

TODOs:

• copy volumes before deploy (mm35626_mongo_volume to mm35626_web_mongo_volume and mm35626_collector_mongo_volume)

Auto-update

The submodules self-update the dependencies to avoid security vulnerabilities, and if successful they update the main repository to merge the changes.

• every week each submodule runs a github action that updates the dependencies, runs tests, rebuilds the docker image and tags it as dev
• the submodule notifies the main repository
• the main repository performs integration tests, updates the submodule and adds the tag latest to the docker images

The frontend instead is built and stored as an artifact, and deployed with the scripts/download_frontend.sh script.

Apache reverse proxy configuration

Apache configuration

/etc/httpd/sites/external

misinfo.me

        # section :80
        ## Misinfo Service (mm35626):
        # HTTPS https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/httpd/RewriteHTTPToHTTPS
        RewriteEngine On
        RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
        RewriteRule ^/?(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L]


        ProxyPass        / http://127.0.0.1:20000/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:20000/
        AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode


        # section :443
        ## Misinfo Service (mm35626):
        ProxyPass        / http://127.0.0.1:20000/
	ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:20000/
        AllowEncodedSlashes NoDecode

sudo systemctl restart httpd.service