Quality Content Signalling

What can be accomplished when we abandon the virtue signalling and take steps towards correcting particular issues

It is said that, with occasional exceptions, one of the best ways to check whether information online is trustworthy is to see if the information is also present in at least one other reputable media; a major newspaper or news agency. If this is true, the idea of relying on a network of long-established and trusted channels could prove to be the first step in defending ourselves against misinformation.

The Breaking News

So how does one go about determining the reputability of a news source on the internet? Jason Kint, CEO of Digital Content Next (DCN) — a non-profit international trade association for the digital content industry — certainly thinks he’s found the answer in the Trust.txt framework. Developed by JournalList, an NPO founded by former journalist Scott Yates, trust.txt was created to ‘systematically and transparently disclose connections between journalists, publishers and associations.’ (rtCamp, n.d.). The purpose of trust.txt is to identify and separate the legitimate news organisations from the not-so-legitimate ones in an automated process.

Trust.txt is a file that’s visible to platforms like google and Facebook that displays the relationship between the news site containing the trust.txt file and any other news publishers or organisation associated with them. This acts as a signpost for those seeking to transact with or share content only from trusted publishers (Kint, 2021). A news site with a trust.txt file will list any big corporations associated with said publisher, any other URLs owned by the publisher and any social channels it controls. Imagine it as a giant, waving flag that says, ‘These guys are part of the Associated Press and they control the following legitimate websites, you can more-than-likely trust the information they are sharing.’ These relationships, which have always been invisible up until now, act as a signal of trust to not only the big platforms, but subsequently, the readers as well.

The Newsflash

The issue though is DCN is calling Trust.tx a form of ‘quality content signalling’ yet nothing is stopping those acting in bad faith from installing the trust.txt files to their websites to try to persuade the general public that their content and their own network is legit. There is no authority overseeing that the plugin is only used by the so-called good guys.

Yates believes that ‘the fact that [a news publisher] belongs to an association is [itself] a symbol of trust’ (Willens, 2021). He is confident that people will see the affiliations between recognisable and ‘trusted’ groups and be convinced of the publisher’s credibility, based on this proximity.

The Forecast

It’s a undoubtedly a step in the right direction, but can we trust software to accurately mitigate misinformation when we live in an age where it’s difficult to trust the humans who develop said software? We likely won’t have much of a choice if we want to level the playing field. The growth and development of these signals that can be plugged into algorithms could mean giant platforms will no longer have excuses for their repeated failures to only feature and promote trusted digital publishers. And while one may be tempted to start questioning who exactly has authority to bestow the often-times subjective ‘trusted’ and ‘reputable’ labels, for now we should rather celebrate the fact that not only the publishers, but the consumers, could soon have a way to hold platforms accountable for pushing out misinformation.

Bibliography

Digital Content Next (DCN) (n.d.) Digital Content Next. Available at: https://digitalcontentnext.org/ (Accessed: 21 February 2021).

How to use the trust.txt plugin — JournalList (n.d.). Available at: https://journallist.net/how-to-use-the-trust-txt-plugin (Accessed: 21 February 2021).

Kint, J. (2021) ‘DCN leads new era of quality content signaling with trust.txt’, Digital Content Next, 17 February. Available at: https://digitalcontentnext.org/blog/2021/02/17/dcn-leads-new-era-of-quality-content-signaling-with-trust-txt/ (Accessed: 21 February 2021).

rtCamp (n.d.) Trust.txt Manager, WordPress.org. Available at: https://wordpress.org/plugins/trust-txt/ (Accessed: 21 February 2021).

Willens, M. (2021) ‘What is trust.txt?’, Digiday, 19 February. Available at: http://digiday.com/media/trust-txt/ (Accessed: 21 February 2021).