Exorde: The Battle to Set Information Free
“Information wants to be free…”
Was there ever a more complicated and misunderstood statement?
Most commonly attributed to Stewart Brand in the 1980s, who appeared to be merely saying that the cost of obtaining and distributing information is getting cheaper (despite its inherently high value), it was quickly co-opted into an exaggerated fear that internet piracy was going to destroy capitalism.
But as the great Cory Doctorow pointed out over a decade ago…
“Calling IWTBF the ideological basis of the (Digial Rights) movement is like characterising bra burning as the primary preoccupation of feminists.”2
From a certain point of view, Brand was right. Information has become easier and cheaper to obtain. And despite the hysteria, the fact that, if you dig deep enough, you can probably find the latest blockbuster movie on a warez site somewhere, doesn’t appear to be hurting Hollywood financially3.
No, the real challenge in 2022 is not obtaining information, it’s obtaining accurate, meaningful information in an age where Internet traffic is in the region of 8 billion gigabytes… PER DAY4.
Trying to accurately research literally anything has become almost impossible. The era of post-truth is not confined to the realms of politics but is woven into the very fabric of the net.
The problem with the sheer volume of information passing through the web on a daily basis can be broken down into three categories:
Information Populism
The democratisation of speech on the Internet means that information tends to rise to the top based on popularity rather than by importance or accuracy. Any fake news can become widely distributed without any trace of provenance if it is interesting enough. The truth is out there, but it’s often buried under a morass of faulty or limited information.
Social Media Gatekeeping
Social media platforms (and to a lesser extent, the search engines) are under great pressure to police the content they hold. Torn between the ideologies of free speech and protective censorship, these platforms are being asked to make impossible decisions that, in either case, hinder the free flow of information.
Aggregators
News sites and information repositories do an admirable job of handpicking the information they believe to be most relevant and useful to their audience, and are arguably the currently most reliable method of finding accurate information. However news sites are under pressure to cater to popular interests and can easily present information that is distorted by personal, political or geographic perspectives. Compare, for instance, the differences in news reporting in countries on the opposite sides of an international conflict.
And information repositories, particularly when it comes to subjects that arouse passions can be easily hijacked. Try, for example, to find a Wikipedia article that presents a balanced description of a controversial subject56.
Any one of these three categories could be an entire study on their own, but even a cursory glance well illustrates the challenges of trying to find balanced answers to even the most basic of questions.
Exorde Takes Up The Challenge
Exorde recently raised over a million dollars from its first round of funding to tackle this information challenge. Its goal is nothing less than the creation of a technology that assesses the entire flow of information on the Internet and produces neutral, unbiased analyses.
If successful, Exorde will make it possible to research any subject and obtain current, complete, unfiltered information that is not skewed by geography, ideology or resources.
To achieve this end, Exorde identified six necessary elements:
Decentralization
To remove any bias from the technology, it’s necessary to use a decentralization protocol that spreads its activity across a network of independent computers. This makes it extremely difficult for any individual or company to be able to manipulate the results for their own ends. This even extends to the subjects the Exorde protocol researches, allowing anyone with an interest in a subject to use the tool independently.
Blockchain
To gather the most recent information on a given subject, in its entirety, across the entire web, requires a huge amount of resources. Blockchain technology makes this possible by spreading the load across a network of contributors and validators and financially rewarding participants with EXD tokens.
Validation
Once information is gathered, it is critical that the source be independently verified to remove irrelevant material. The Exorde protocol includes this critical step and adds a “reputation” element so that responsible and effective contributors can be set apart from any bad actors.
Natural Language Processing (NLP)
Even with a large group of contributors using the Exorde protocol, the volume of data will be too great to review manually. NLP can be used, not only to identify subject relevance, but also to assess the tone of each piece of information (e.g. positive, fearful, neutral, etc).
Profits
The maintenance and growth of the Exorde project will necessitate that it generates income. While the long-term goal of the Exorde protocol is to make accurate information on ANY subject available to anyone with an interest, in the short-term, a program called the Exorde Index will allow the business to create revenue by providing information that will be useful to investors and business owners. Assessing current moods and attitudes towards specific cryptocurrencies, publicly-traded companies and brands, for example, has many marketable applications.
Open Source
Every element of the Exorde protocol AND the data it collects will be published openly and made available without charge. This is essential to prevent anyone now, or in the future, from tampering with or withholding data. There is nothing to stop, for instance, any other person or business from creating their own information gathering products using the Exorde protocol, and indeed we welcome anyone interested in exploring this.
Join the Exorde Project
Fake news, misinformation and bias are arguably the biggest threats to the Internet. Although the Exorde protocol won’t eliminate these problems (and indeed, it would be unwise to do so given that there have been many times in history when so-called “fake news” turned out to be correct7) it will provide a tool to…
- Uncover information that isn’t getting sufficient news media attention.
- Identify the differences in perspectives between different platforms, demographics and geographic regions.
- Create a more accurate picture of prevailing opinions.
If any of the above has piqued your interest, there are a number of ways you can join, and potentially profit from, the Exorde project.
Become a Contributor/Validator: No special tech skills are required to install and run the Exorde protocol software. If you have a PC and an interest in helping us collect information, join our Discord to get started: https://discord.gg/AgRdQaMz5d.
Right now we’re in the testing phase (Testnet), but the main Exorde protocol (Mainnet) is going live in December 2022.
Invest in Exorde: We’re still welcoming new investors in the Exorde Labs company and the forthcoming launch of our new cryptocurrency (EXD) that will power the Exorde protocol. For more information, please visit https://exorde.network/
Follow our Progress: Please follow, like and share our social media accounts to track our progress and help spread the word about the Exorde project.
