Civil: A Bold Rebuke to the Status Quo

Note: I first delivered the following words at the TokenSky blockchain conference in Tokyo’s Chūō-ku (“Central Ward”) as part of a trip through Asia (Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Delhi, Mumbai) to introduce people to Civil and its mission to power independent, sustainable journalism throughout the world. Our goal is to rapidly become a globally cooperative, publicly owned domain for journalism, and that means a fierce commitment to openness and inclusion. My job is in part to talk about Civil, but more importantly, it’s to listen — to leaders, executives and everyday people throughout the region to better understand the climate for journalism (and blockchain) on the ground from those who know. Please get in touch with tips, feedback, or if you just want to chat about how to join the movement. Thanks!

“Journalism needs a radically new operating paradigm.”

When we published our introduction to Civil almost one year ago, this was the first sentence. (We’ve since updated our definition.)

We went on to describe the rapidly eroding state of journalism (at least, from our American perspective) as well as how blockchain, cryptoeconomics, and most importantly, a global movement among journalists and citizens could be just the radical answer we needed to get back on track.

Initially, we were humbled by some friendly press and local outreach to learn more and offer support.

But then we started hearing from people all over the world.

• A Ph.D. in machine learning from Mexico asked if he could help because the corruption and violence against journalists in his home country had made him fear for its future security and prosperity.
• A journalist in Egypt asked whether Civil could help her news organization thwart the government’s persistent efforts to block the public’s access to their website and social media.
• An entrepreneur in India asked if he could start a news company on Civil to “help the democracy survive” because “most media here is sold to politicians and corporations”.

All told over the past year, we have had nearly 600 organizations apply to start newsrooms on Civil, and 40% come from outside the United States.

Our stated mission to power independent, sustainable journalism around the world clearly struck a nerve, and it’s because journalism is more than a craft, a business or even an industry. Journalism is how people stay informed, experience different perspectives, engage their communities, and make decisions in civil society.

So what’s wrong with journalism today? And what does blockchain have to do with the potential solution?

To understand where we’re going, first we must understand how we got here.

In many ways, the things that challenge journalism are the same as they’ve always been: governments, corporations and powerful individuals lack transparency and accountability, and in certain cases, censor, threaten and even kill journalists so that their work might not get out. This standing up to the powerful on behalf of the people is what makes journalism so vital, and unfortunately at times, is the cost of doing business.

But if the fight from above has always been there, it’s the rapid erosion from below that’s creating a crisis in journalism not like anything we’ve ever seen before. By that I mean, the business model for journalism has all but fallen out from under it.

After all, there’s really only a handful of ways to pay for the news, and they all have their tradeoffs:

• Government funded — Lacks independence, lacks trust.
• Non-profit, philanthropy — Potentially independent, unpredictable long-term sustainability.
• Advertising — Prioritizes scale, virality, cheap and shocking content, and best if harvests vast amounts of personal data.
• Membership — Most independent, but challenging value proposition and simply too expensive for many. (More on this later.)

As we shifted to the digital age, many news organizations forfeited their direct relationship with readers to the Big Platforms: Google and Facebook. Now their distribution, their very livelihood, depended on playing by these platforms’ rules, even growth-hacking them to generate better results, whether SEO keyword stuffing or socially engineered clickbait. All the while, advertising became the predominant funding source for online media, yet the vast majority is scooped up by Google and Facebook.

So the Internet — once inspiring utopian visions of a free and open information and communication network — has become known instead for its noise, nastiness, misinformation and perverse incentives when it comes to journalism. Meanwhile, journalists have faced mass layoffs and many news organizations have gone under completely.

Nowadays, people can’t trust their news, the powerful operate with less accountability, user privacy is a sham, communities are polarizing, and even well-intentioned journalists can’t manage to finance their work through independent, sustainable means.

And it’s not getting any better any time soon. In fact, it’s getting worse, and fast.

Civil is a bold rebuke of all of this. With openness, decentralization, self-governance, immutable records, and mission-aligned incentives (and disincentives), we will make a sharp departure from the current media paradigm toward one in service of trust, freedom and justice.

We believe blockchain technology will unlock an array of for-profit and non-profit opportunities to improve journalism, and we believe cryptoeconomics will bind the ecosystem’s participants together in service of a common purpose and shared set of values.

Ultimately, we see Civil as a globally cooperative, publicly owned domain for independent journalism:

• Owned and operated by journalists and citizens, beyond the control of powerful governments, corporations or billionaires.
• Committed to ethical journalism, self-sovereign identity, intellectual property rights, censorship resistance, and civil discourse.
• Business model innovations across licensing and syndication; reputation and talent; membership and advocacy; curation and discovery; verification and fact-checking; polling and social; analytics and archiving; and even advertising and sponsorship.

Civil is much more than technology, it’s a movement. We need a global community committed to these ideals to work together. Anything less just won’t do. So here’s how we’re going to do it.

Civil will work with the community to build the new ‘journalism stack’ from the ground up.

• Governance — Civil is self-governed thanks to a cryptoeconomically incentivized global community and expert arbitration council. The community uses a cryptocurrency, or token, called CVL to power a token-curated registry, and the council, which can review appeals and overturn malicious attacks or mob rule, is led by luminary journalists, academics and free press leaders from around the world. The purpose, values and working standards of the Civil ecosystem are captured in a living document called the Civil Constitution. Every CVL token holder is motivated to see the Civil ecosystem flourish, and every actor within the ecosystem is held accountable by this system of governance. When you possess a CVL token, you possess real voting power. Everything else in the Civil ecosystem is built “on top” of this notion of mutually aligned self-governance.
• Publishing — Anyone may contribute journalism on Civil, but first must pledge to abide by the Civil Constitution. Violating the Constitution incurs economic loss (forfeited CVL tokens) and potentially permanent exile from the ecosystem overall. Only Newsrooms on the Civil Registry and their associated journalists may publish using Civil’s technology, which unlocks much of the ecosystem’s higher-order opportunities. Civil uses blockchain technology to “fingerprint” the source of content — who authored it, through which newsroom, where and when — in a fully verifiable and un-hackable manner. Citizens who encounter a Newsroom running on Civil can rest assured that the journalists are authentic and their work is held accountable by a self-governance system incentivized to expose unethical behavior.

Note: The Civil Media Company will launch the full product suite needed to power these components (including the CVL token itself) later this summer.

• Licensing — Blockchain technology enables superior management of digital intellectual property compared to the current status quo. Beyond merely “fingerprinting” content for verification purposes, Newsrooms can more effectively and efficiently track, control and monetize their content to third-party licensees. Expired licenses can automatically revoke access to the content, infringing publishers can be penalized, and content creators can better capture the full value of their work through new cryptoeconomic models such as bonding curves.
• Memberships — Cryptoeconomics enables more direct and fulfilling forms of membership support between journalists and citizens. Citizens who contribute to Newsrooms with cryptocurrency will know that — minus a small, decentralized transaction fee — 100% of their funds will reach their intended target. (So as not to limit access while this technology matures, citizens will always be able to support newsrooms using fiat currency as well.) But more than just eliminating middlemen, cryptoeconomics can power engagement and advocacy by way of dynamic reward systems that vests members in the long-term sustainability of the Newsroom.
• Curation — Blockchain and cryptoeconomics can combine in this system to usher in new and improved forms of curation and discovery. Influencers who help spread high-quality content can be economically rewarded, citizens can trust the recommended content as ethically derived, and content creators can capture new forms of revenue through cascading syndication contracts that re-balance the relationship between author and aggregator. Newsrooms can share traffic more effectively (“Outbrain for good”), citizens can control their personal data to more ethically power recommendation algorithms, and fact-checkers can be properly incentivized to vet evolving stories in detail.
• Identity — Blockchain enables self-sovereign identity, a new paradigm for user privacy and control online. Journalists can verify their identity, but also mask it when appropriate such as when publishing within a dangerous region. Citizens can opt-in to share bits of personal information with individual newsrooms, apps and services in exchange for enhanced experiences and even economic rewards, while knowing the data can’t be hacked or inappropriately shared without their consent. Newsrooms and journalists can accrue community-powered reputation scores for trust and quality, enabling more robust talent networks, improved discovery, and greater ethical adherence.
• Discourse — Cryptoeconomics enables and rewards higher-quality forms of social discourse online, as well as economic and reputation penalties for trollish, hateful behavior. Journalists can tip citizens for particularly insightful comments, citizens can gain status transferable across newsrooms to unlock features or promotions, and bad actors can face increasingly expensive fines or even outright banishment. Social media — currently a mess of bots, misinformation and hate — can flourish in this new environment built on trust, accountability and community health above all else.
• Storage — Blockchain enables censorship resistance through permanent archiving and decentralized storage. By definition, no single actor may unilaterally change the immutable ledger, thus placing “the first draft of history” beyond the reach of censorship or even insolvency. We are developing partnerships with universities and libraries throughout the U.S. and around the world to support a decentralized storage solution for journalism, the modern-day equivalent of microfiche records.
• Data — Blockchain and cryptoeconomics unleashed in an ecosystem like this will enable entirely new models for indexing, ranking, and tracking content because value is literally part and parcel to each ‘link’. The self-sovereign paradigm invites opt-in data markets for trusting clusters of newsrooms to share business intelligence with each other, and citizens may more confidently participate in online polls without divulging sensitive personal information.
• Advertising — Journalism has long subsidized operations with third-party advertising, but recent years have unleashed a new paradigm known for harvesting personal data, malicious social hacking and misinformation, and vast consolidation of revenue to the Big Platforms instead of news organizations. At Civil, we believe journalism must be independent, but it must also be sustainable, so we recognize that a completely ad-free approach is both irresponsible and unimaginative. Blockchain and cryptoeconomics can introduce advertising/sponsorships into this purpose-built, self-governing ecosystem in a way that ensures adherence to its purpose, values and ethics. Journalists could control who advertises in their newsroom, citizens could be rewarded for their attention, and low-quality/low-relevance advertisers could be penalized and even removed altogether in a completely decentralized manner.

We already have partnerships lined up with some of the most recognized institutions around the world to make this all possible, and that list is growing. In fact, that’s why I’m here. I’m visiting Tokyo, Hong Kong, Singapore, Delhi and Mumbai over the next two weeks to meet with leaders and executives in media, technology, venture capital and civic philanthropy in order to broker as many mission-aligned partnerships as possible throughout the region, in our rapid quest to become a globally inclusive ecosystem for independent, sustainable journalism. Want to meet? Get in touch.

All this kicks off in earnest when we launch our CVL token later this summer. Tokens will be distributed to participating journalists and citizens, and our Governance and Publishing layers will go live. Based on pent-up demand and planned recruiting efforts, we expect to onboard 1,000 newsrooms before the end of the year.

I want to leave you with one more thought.

It’s still just the beginning for blockchain technology and cryptoeconomics. We do not yet know all of its full potential or hidden pitfalls.

People often ask me: “But are you too early?” To which I say, “It’s almost too late!”

There are countless brave and brilliant people working tirelessly around the world to address pieces of the journalism problem. Only pieces, because the problem is so vast. Local news, investigative news, international news. Fact-checking, distribution, business models. Access, censorship, security. All of these areas are in trouble right now, and there’s no silver bullet to address them all.

Blockchain isn’t going to solve all our problems, but it can get people to work better together for a common cause. We can build a better Internet for journalism. One that benefits us all, and that we alone control. We call it Civil, and we need your help to make this vision a reality. Join the movement today. Thank you.

Note: If you’re interested in getting involved at any level, visit us at civil.co, find us on Twitter, or email us at hello@civil.co.