A much-needed internet culture of fact-checking is in the making ~TruStory
The internet has come a long way to the extent that it profoundly influences our way of life, our culture, our social behavior, and it even reflects the ethical conduct of human society!. Ten years back, most of us could not think of the idea that internet memes could replace editorial cartoons in daily newspapers, magazines, and other print media, but that has happened now. In our digital world of instant messages and social media, memes are the new word for our source of humor. Memes, which have become a part of our digital life, has come as trolls without paying real attention to it. Even the new internet slang words like “trolls” have come into our lives due to this evolution happening on the internet. Now, if you observe all the popular aspects on the internet today, they have all originated from somewhere in some forms and, over time has taken its present state. There is always a seed to begin. TruStory is one such seed for the fact-checked internet of the future.
TruStory is a new blockchain-based startup based in LA, USA. They bring an innovative idea of crowdsourced fact-checking of internet data. At first, they will focus on fact-checking only crypto-related data on the internet, but eventually plans to expand to anything and everything which can be fact-checked on the internet.
The Fake News Problem
When the internet explosion happened and still happening in some parts of the world, it gave greater collective power to human beings. As the internet is less censored and less scrutinized, it soon started reflecting all kinds of human behavioral aspects, including the human psychology of spreading wrong information. The popularity of social media has compounded this aspect. Practically every human being has the power of a media house. It can propagate any information using these social media and even do that hiding their own real identity. This is a TED talk below where it mentions the technology which can make fake videos of real people talking. Now that is even worse than propagating phony information with textual data alone.
Since the revelation of social media meddling with the US Presidential election in 2016, there has been a lot of pressure on social media to reassess their processes and algorithms to prevent fake media from propagating. The echo chamber effect most of these centralized social media platforms promote has come under the scrutiny of authorities. They are working on solutions for this, but it will be challenging for them to implement something compelling even with AI or machine learning. Since to identify the fact quotient of real-world data still requires the work of humans to bring all pieces of evidence and arguments of a fact to the table.
Fact-checking is getting fired up these days. There are websites already doing fact-checking media news like the ones below, to list a few.
PolitiFact: This one does fact-check on US Political news
Snopes: Snopes started as a site doing fact-checking on urban legends, common misconceptions, myths, etc. but now got expanded to fact-checking any viral misinformation on the internet
FactCheck.org: Not only is FactCheck.org a fact-checking website with an established history of journalistic rigor, but it is also one of the partners Facebook has recruited to combat fake viral news.
But all of these fact-checking sites, even though work independent and unbiased they all lack the Power of Crowd. The internet is designed for the global audience even though there are some geographic restrictions and power centers that can influence more control over the internet. The international audience is the best bet when it comes to fact-checking the internet. This is where TruStory has the most innovative business model for fact-checking.
Some of the key features of TruStory
Crowdsourced fact-checking: TruStory picked up the ideal model for Fact-checking; by promoting the network effect of the crowd to arrive at the truth of an internet claim. I think this is far better than any closed fact-checking entity deciding on the validity of an internet claim by their private means.
Blockchain consensus protocol: TruStory uses a blockchain consensus mechanism to arrive at a consensus on decision making on the distributed network. Some form of consensus mechanism between the network participants is required to arrive at the truth of a story. TruStory runs on the Cosmos blockchain network, which can be called a third-generation blockchain or interoperability blockchain. A tweet rundown from TruStory explains why Cosmos can be better than second-generation blockchain networks like Ethereum. Here is the TruStory tweet:
Cosmos uses Tendermint as the consensus engine, which uses a form of Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm based on the Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerant (PBFT) algorithm.
Tokenized incentive and disincentive system: TruStory uses a robust form of token economics to incentivize and disincentivize the staked tokens of network participants used to challenge or back the internet claims created on TruStory. Any participant in the TruStory network can create a claim and back or challenge the claim by staking their tokens and providing their arguments and evidence. The TruStory protocol defines the rules for what happens when you lock your stake by challenging/backing it. A voting game is played if a story reaches a challenging threshold, and the outcome is determined by the weighted vote of the participants. If you’re right, you get back your stake and earn a reputation. If you’re wrong, you lose your stake and don’t earn the reputation
There is more to this. I just outlined the bare-bones now. TruStory is still in development. So once the app is available, I would post more details on how it all works in TruStory.
Why TruStory uses blockchain?
The blockchain and crypto hype is over!. Nobody plans to use the blockchain tech for pizza delivery now, and ICO’s are being relooked upon for all the flaws it had. The blockchain tech itself is stepping into the third generation with a focus on more user adoption. For me, I feel TruStory is an apt use case for blockchain tech. The truth of objective data can be narrowed down to a smaller subset, which is either true or false, based on pieces of evidence, and TruStory intends to falsify only objective data and not opinions and subjective data. Since the data can only be aligned to be either true or false, it becomes a perfect use case to crowdsource and put the network effect into play to reach a consensus on it. Unlike in the Steemit blog site, where there is no deterministic way to identify the value of a blog other than personal preference, and hence allowing the crowd to decide the value may sometimes lead to attempts to influence the system using vote bots, etc. In the case of TruStory, the public can see all the evidence and arguments presented for a fact and hence can align to the right side, which is very obvious. Of course, the consensus mechanism needs to be robust, which in TruStory’s case is valid with Tendermint. So with the immutability aspect of a blockchain, which preserves fact-checked data of the internet and the robust consensus mechanism using token economics inherent to a blockchain network TruStory makes one of the best use cases for blockchain tech adoption.
Get on to the TruStory boat now, and it is free!
You can get a feel of what TruStory is making and become part of the TruStory community for free! Just click on the link here and submit your details.
TruStory is a bit nerdy and deals only with all kinds of information related to crypto space. But you don’t need to be a crypto nerd or crypto investor or blockchain developer to be part of TruStory. Anyone who is fed up with the tons of fake media news, information, biased data on the internet, and interested in contributing to a much better fact-checked internet and at the same time do not hate to know more about the crypto space are welcome to join here. I have been part of this community for some time. I will have to admit that this is one place you would like to get hooked up in knowing all the latest news in the crypto world. And as well get a chance to talk to industry experts on AMA sessions and tons of learning on weekly study sessions, all for free! Please check out the TruStory discourse forum and word from the CEO Preethi Kasireddy here.
Consider this as ocean cleaning! You need to show your willingness to volunteer ocean cleaning for a better ocean with a more robust life and a better planet. In TruStory, you do this cleaning for our own one dear internet.
Credits: Preethi Kasireddy for her valuable inputs.
Latest news: https://medium.com/trustory-app/why-trustory-is-shutting-down-6d50175628eb
