How a news aggregation platform can help fix media
Mainstream media is facing one of its darkest periods at the moment. A noisy and overwhelming landscape, historical lows in trust, and broken business models have been devastating to investigative journalism and the media’s duty to serve the public.
As a consequence, readers’ options for fact-checked and transparent news consumption have become limited and difficult to find.
Focused on solving this problem, last week we introduced Media Sifter, a news aggregator that utilises the wisdom of the crowd to validate content through blockchain-powered user-consensus. The following is a peek at how the platform will look.
Media Sifter consists of two parts: the news aggregator and the SIFT Protocol.
The aggregator scrapes articles from various publishers and presents them in line with other related articles. Users can browse Media Sifter by topic and view several articles on a specific event before interacting with the content.
Besides reading, users can highlight claims, offer investigation bounties or add information to validate or refute the content of the articles presented in the aggregator. Information added by users goes through a community-review process, which determines its quality and validity. We call this validation process the SIFT Protocol.
The SIFT protocol will be implemented on the Ethereum Blockchain and is designed as a platform for information sourcing and qualification. It is open-source and can be used to power other applications and services. We will publish details of the protocol and the review process in the coming weeks.
Media Sifters: 3 Core Aspects
#1 — The Overview Effect
To overcome the noise and bias of the digital media landscape, Media Sifter gives you multiple vantage points to a story. You will have access to tools that allow you to sift through the ‘noise’ and find what’s most relevant to you.
You can find articles from different sources covering the same issue or event and consume journalism by topic, easily navigating through various perspectives on any given story, empowering you to better critically consume news.
#2 — Crowd-Sourced Validation
To increase trust in the information provided and mitigate manipulation, Media Sifter enables users to leverage the wisdom of the crowd to get extra information on articles presented in the aggregator.
Users highlight claims in the articles and request information from the community. Platform participants who are knowledgeable about the issue in question deliver information to validate or refute the claims presented. To ensure validity and relevance, the added information goes through an anonymous review process.
This process is at the heart of the SIFT Protocol and increases accountability for the original content producer.
Since the platform is built on a decentralised ledger and validation can only be achieved through user consensus, it is also censorship resilient, trustless and eliminates the potential abuse of one entity.
#3 — Evidence Economy
One of the main points of criticism of mainstream media is that it currently operates under an attention economy business model. This means that clicks and views get rewarded rather than quality content or investigative journalism.
It is not the publishing outlets that are most affected by this model, but their readers. Media Sifter reverts this by introducing the evidence economy. The platform creates an incentive system that offers rewards to users who engage in research and investigation, and who bring evidence to back up claims on the platform.
Under this model users will not only be receiving more trustworthy information, they will also be rewarded for contributing to it.
Rather than being controlled by us or a central party, the network value is owned by its users who take part in this validation and review process. The network value is distributed to the contributors whose interests and long-term incentives are aligned with those of the platform.
Media Sifter had been in development for almost two years before we decided to introduce a decentralised approach to news-validation. We were looking for a technology with collective interests and democratisation at its core and decided to put the platform on the blockchain.
— Decentralising a system
Since the first implementation of blockchain, with the introduction of Bitcoin in 2008, the concept has expanded and attracted great public attention. The technology keeps untapping plenty of new opportunities, many of which are yet to be discovered.
One of the key benefits of the blockchain is that it makes transactions trustless, that is, without the need to rely on a trusted centralised third party for validation. Bitcoin and countless other cryptocurrencies have proven the applicability for the exchange of value, but blockchain shows great potential for other applications that will transform societies as we know them.
Initially, Media Sifter will be using the Ethereum Blockchain for the validation, review and incentivisation system.
Some of the benefits for using a blockchain to source and qualify information are:
— Decentralised Network
Smart contracts, that lay the foundation for the SIFT Protocol, are embedded in digital code and stored in shared, transparent databases, where they are protected from tampering, deletion and changes. This makes the platform hack- and censorship-resilient, while also trustless and transparent.
— Self-Governance
A blockchain-powered user-consensus guarantees the autonomy of the network by removing control from any central entity and giving it to its users.
The review process is designed so that users have to agree on the quality and claims of the information provided and no single entity is able to push their own agenda. Hence it is only the consent of the community that can govern the platform’s content.
— SFT Token
To provide a user-consensus platform and allow the self-governance of the network, the Ethereum Blockchain allows us to distribute Tokens for the SIFT Protocol (short “SFT”). These will grant users access to all features of the Media Sifter platform, including potential financial rewards through contribution and participation.
In addition, this will allow us to fund the project through its users and redistribute according to contribution. Since the network is owned by its users, interests and incentives are aligned. It will allow us to stay independent and avoid conflict of interests through ad sales and agenda-driven shareholders.
To preserve the best functionality for the application, we have opted not to build Media Sifter as a fully decentralised app, but rather keep the critical parts of the system on a decentralised ledger. Blockchain technologies (and particularly Ethereum) are still in its early years and would currently pose a challenge to efficiently run Media Sifter.
However, we are confident that the community will continue to innovate at a rapid pace and will allow for efficient, stable and scalable on-chain transactions in the near future. With continuing improvement of the underlying blockchain technology, we envision the SIFT Protocol being more than the validation engine for Media Sifter.
We are determined to build the platform as an open protocol to source and qualify information from a global crowd, facilitating applications by external parties.
SFT Token Presale
The SFT Token is a critical part of this project as it enables us to design an incentivisation system to align interests of users and goals of the platform. Moreover, this also provides a means of payment and income specific to this cause as well as a way to fund the project through its users.
Such Token Launch events are generally referred to as “ICOs” (initial coin offerings) and have seen skyrocketing attention and inflow of capital in the past year.
To mitigate some of the uncertainties for contributors before distributing the Tokens, we’ve decided to first deliver a representative MVP, build a committed community as well as finalise the Whitepaper.
As Civic’s Vinny Lingham wrote prior to their ICO, the amount of funding raised is secondary to a vast distribution of tokens to its future user base. This is critical in our case, as the SFT Tokens will be the means to participate in and contribute to the Media Sifter platform.
We will share more details regarding the launch event after delivering the MVP in Q4.
In the meantime, we are hosting a limited SFT Token Presale for handpicked investors in September. If you support our cause and are interested in investing at favourable terms, please send an email to rytis@mediasifter.co.
Edit: The early pre-sale through direct reach out to investors was not as successful as we expected. We are currently working our way through non-crypto-financing until we launch our main funding event (ICO). Stay tuned for updates.
Community
- Get on our Slack or Telegram channel
- Read weekly articles on the Media Sifter blog
- Follow Media Sifter on Reddit and Twitter
- Subscribe to our newsletter
- For 0pen positions, see https://angel.co/media-sifter
For more information, visit www.mediasifter.co
