In recent weeks, Facebook and YouTube have strained to explain why they won't ban Alex Jones' Infowars, which has used its verified accounts to spread false news and dangerous conspiracy theories on the platforms. Meanwhile, the midterms are approaching, and Facebook won't say definitively whether the company has found any efforts by foreign actors to disrupt the elections. Facebook did recently say that it will start to remove misinformation if it may lead to violence, a response to worrisome trends in Myanmar, India, other countries. The social media platforms are being called on to explain how they deal with information that is wrong--a question made even more complicated because the problem takes so many forms. To understand the many forms of misinformation and disinformation on social media, we recently spoke with Claire Wardle, the executive director of First Draft, a nonprofit news-literacy and fact-checking outfit based at Harvard University's Kennedy School, for Slate's tech podcast If Then. We discussed how fake news spreads on different platforms, where it's coming from, and how journalists might think--or rethink--their role in covering it. The interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Listen to If Then by clicking the arrow on the audio player below, or get the show via Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, or Google Play.

For most of the articles we write, we don't consult with the companies beforehand. This helps keep things objective and saves us a great deal of time not having to do the whole "back and forth" thing with some public relations firm that's getting paid good money while we do free work for them. Speaking directly to founders is almost always illuminating, but anything else usually just results in a mouthful of platitudes from company management that we're supposed to parrot to the masses and then say something cheerful at the end like "company X has a bright future ahead of it!" To endure that sort of pain, we usually ask that firms pitch us a few bucks to help feed our team of starving MBAs. Most of the time we will email startups we write about after the article goes out, and they're almost always grateful for the exposure.

The science fiction multiverse is well populated by all manner of robots. Pick your favorite: Dr. Who fans may favor K9, the Time Lord's mechanical mutt. Maybe the Transformers represent the coolest robots in the galaxy. The more literary-minded might prefer a character like R. Daneel Olivaw out of the Asimov universe. Those of us from a certain generation, however, will always have an affection for the Laurel and Hardy of robots--C-3PO and RD-D2.

Yemen's Houthi rebels say they attacked Abu Dhabi's international airport in the United Arab Emirates with a drone. According to the Houthi-run Al-Masirah television channel, the Sammad-3 drone launched three attacks on the airport on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if there was any damage or casualties. Abu Dhabi airport tweeted earlier in the day there had been an incident involving a supply vehicle that had not affected operations. It was unclear if it was related to the reported drone attack.

In the movies, transformers destroy cities. A rolling robot doctor called Amplus can help heal them, its creator says. Amplus is an advanced remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, that inspects water, wastewater and industrial pipes. The device can access points as narrow as 4 inches (about 100 millimeters) and crawl through lines regardless of flow or pressure. The 16-inch-long Amplus debuted at the American Waterworks Association (AWWA) conference in June, and was on display this month at Singapore International Water Week. Amplus is for real-time pipeline assessment.

'Sophia the Robot' is seen on stage before a discussion by Hanson Robotics about Sophia's multiple intelligences and artificial intelligence (AI) at the RISE Technology Conference in Hong Kong on July 10, 2018. Cancer is a complex and uncontrollable beast that mutates and changes the goalposts before you get into the politics and economics surrounding the issue. There isn't just one cancer either – the homogenous term is misleading into thinking the problem is even solvable. Scientists and technologists alike are seeing hope though - not through increased funding but technological advancement in the form of Artificial Intelligence. Recently attending CogX - one of the more robust and significant AI conferences in the UK - healthcare was very much on the menu.

Enjoy these six tech articles as we come down the homestretch into the weekend. Greg Otto at fedscoop wrote this interesting piece about IBM's Watson-as-a-Service. IBM announced last week it has moved its cognitive computing system into the cloud to form the Watson Discovery Advisor, allowing researchers, academics and anyone else trying to leverage big data the ability to test programs and hypotheses at speeds never before seen. Since Watson is built to understand the nuance of natural language, this new service allows researchers to process millions of data points normally impossible for humans to handle. This can reduce project timelines from years to weeks or days.

The public narrative around home robotics is largely split between social and functional robots, which differ in the types of services offered and their potential impact on jobs and roles traditionally filled by humans. Functional robots (seen below left) are built to handle specific tasks--cleaning, cooking, gardening, and security, to name a few--and could drastically affect the domestic labor market. Coverage jumped in January 2018, when LG showcased three new concept robots: Serving Robot, Porter Robot, and Shopping Cart Robot at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2018. Quid also found articles that mentioned a robot that can climb walls to clean and sort tupperware, one that can show your home to potential renters, and a home monitor that tells you if your kids walk the dog. Social robots (below right) aim to meet your emotional needs and are developed to provide companionship, care, or instruction.

Researchers in Japan used artificial intelligence to spot early-stage stomach cancer on endoscopic images with high accuracy. Researchers at Riken and the National Cancer Center in Japan have successfully used artificial intelligence (AI) to spot early-stage stomach cancer on endoscopic images with high accuracy. The researchers collected 100 endoscopic images of early-stage stomach cancer and 100 images of normal stomach tissue to test the deep-learning AI. The team says the AI was able to determine whether an endoscopic image showed early-stage cancer or normal stomach tissue in 0.004 seconds. In addition, the algorithm correctly identified cancer in 80% of cancer images, and confirmed normal tissues with 95% accuracy.

Sky Q could allow users to drop their remotes and control everything with their voice instead. The TV remote might have been a fixture of watching television for much longer even than Sky has been a part of the experience. But the company could allow people to swap it out for just shouting at their TV, it has suggested. Sky already offers its users the ability to talk to their Sky box, through the current Sky remote. Users can ask for particular films or channels, for instance, and they will come up, and Sky says that there are 11 million voice requests each month.