Communities of trust, civic engagement & decentralised storytelling

This interview with Nguyet Vuong, co-founder and lead designer at Civil was conducted by Jim Kosem back in January 2020. Much has happened since then, including Civil — the much lauded attempt to decentralise and improve the process of news making — has coming to a close. Much thanks and apologies to the delay to Nguyet. We feel the conversation covers important issues that remain relevant now and in the future.

The interview is edited for clarity and readability

Jim: Hi Nguyet, can you tell me a bit about what you do and for whom?

Nguyet: Yes. I am a designer. I work at Civil, which is a startup in the blockchain space. We’re trying to make the web a safer, trusted place for civic engagement is the long road, but for now we are focusing on independent journalism and try to make it a safe space.

We’re working for the journalism industry as well as helping journalists and authors make money within this space without exploiting each other in the worst way possible. By space I mean on the web itself, not necessarily on blockchain. Blockchain is just a technology and a means to get us there.

Jim: So you mentioned, a safe space and civic engagement. But you also mentioned helping authors make money. To the Storytellers United community, that is probably one of the more interesting bits. I guess we’ll get to that later cause I wanted to ask you something first. How did you get started in this?

Nguyet: Good question. I went to school in the art space. So I started out studying art, but I got interested in design and so graduating with an art degree during the first Dotcom boom it was the best way to make money.

So I took a few design courses and decided to become a designer, but it was such a new world for me that I got really excited about the possibilities of the Internet and a way to share, to connect and make a living on the Internet. And so I became a designer, but my first job out of college was working at a scientific publication, a nonprofit.

First thing I learned was just data and making graphics with data and facts. I then what I got more into like design for the internet space, making products for other companies. And I eventually ended up at the Atlantic.

The Atlantic was probably the biggest, legit, media company that I worked at. But at that time it was interesting because they are the longest running publication in American history. They started out in print, the first magazine I think was published 160 years ago.

They were one of the first successful publications that transformed from a print publication into the web. And that transformation was a really great business case for other businesses in the media space. So when I came to work at the Atlantic they started a startup within the Atlantic to offer sort of the same insights and strategies for other media companies in the space.

And so then, so within the Atlantic, I get to learn about all of the strategies. With that comes with working in a successful media company, a publication, and then I also get to work with other media companies in this space and including brands and nonprofits too, and how to translate that strategy into a successful business for them.

And so working with these clients, I get this view into what the problems are within the media space. And that was probably around the time when Facebook and Google and all of these big media tech giants were probably at their highest height of success. But what I saw within the space working at the Atlantic was how we all had to change our strategies just to keep up with their policies in order to make money.

I got a view into this deep problem with business models with the current and media industry. And I think that got me started into looking for other possible ways and like really curious about this problem and how do people make money before, and how do they make money now?

One of my best friends in the design space started at IBM and she started working on blockchain there and that was the first time I heard about blockchain.

Then I read a little bit more about it and so when she went over to Consensys to head up the design team there I got to learn so much more about it. I was realised this is super interesting, and this could this be a means to some of the problems that we’re trying to solve.

I don’t even know what exactly the problem is because I never have a chance to really sit down and think about it and uncover it and do research. So I thought it may be a good space to get into and give myself the space to learn about it.

When I joined Consensys, I joined to learn more about blockchain and Matthew started Civil. It was just basically at first blog posts and a call for action for anyone within the space who would like to join. What I read when I read what the problem he was trying to solve was, I absolutely got enamoured with the space and the problem that he was trying to solve. And that was how I got involved with Civil.

I met with the team and I was like, please take me. This is what I’ve been looking for all along and helping and trying to help solve this space, solve some of these problems or even uncover what the problem really is. It’s an interesting problem and an interesting space to be information. So that’s how I got started.

Jim: You said before, that you’ve never really had a chance to uncover it. And so is that what you’re still trying to do now? I would like to pick that apart.

Nguyet: No. What I learned is that it is this ball of fuzz that you don’t really know where it starts and where it ends, because there’s so many threads of it and it’s really hard to unravel. The way to look to the future is to look to the past. So we started looking at how the Internet was when it first came online, and why everybody was so excited about it and what made it a trusted space back then versus the toxic space that it is now.

So to start I think the way for us to uncover it is to look at that space and see and understand what was working well about it and compare it to now. I think that was how we started with the idea of the Civil registry and what it means to have a trusted space for conversations, dialogue, sharing information without exploitation.

That was one way that we thought we could try and uncover that problem, to see if that is even a place. So we started there by looking at the past.

Jim: That’s a fantastic segue into the next question. Can you explain how civil works, let’s say to a non blockchain person, or a writer for instance.

Nguyet: One of the interesting thing that we thought we could use it as a tool for creating this trust phase by creating a registry, which is like a ledger. All of the people or entities or newsrooms that would follow a set of standards and to follow a set of standards.

The way that you would be serious about it is by having a set of tokens and say, okay, this is my way of saying I am serious about following these rules and ethics of credible journalism. What credible or independent journalism should follow and they’re just basically a set of ethics and rules that have always been around in defining what credible journalism is.

It’s just the internet has not been following it. And so it’s hard to say who is doing what. What’s right or not. And so we created this registry and the way that people can get onto it is by saying, I will follow these set of ethics and the way that I’m going to follow it is by staking these amount of tokens and these set of tokens are being set aside so that as long as I’m on the registry, this is my security deposit and saying how I will follow.

The part of this process or system we created a nonprofit, a foundation, that is a third party separate from the Civil media company. The foundation are the people who hold all of our tokens. The foundation is also the people that work on programs to help journalism and newsrooms. One of the ways that newsrooms can be on the register without having to buy tokens is by applying for a grant with a foundation.

And so the foundation, have their own set of rules and guidelines and how and who would get approved for these grants. That is one of the ways to get onto the registry, by applying for the grants.

Jim: It’s interesting because you list the unapproved newsrooms. How did you come to that? That’s quite a brave decision really to show people who didn’t make the cut or who people thought weren’t newsworthy.

Nguyet: Yeah, I think right now it’s all about transparency. There should be a record as to why people were not approved right there. It doesn’t mean that they couldn’t come back onto the registry or reapply. Absolutely not. They absolutely can. As long as they comply to the issues that were raised by the community. So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t display the unapproved as the reasons why the community voted.

It’s just for transparency and it’s not necessarily set in stone. If the community feel that that is unfair or not right that everything on the registry is open source and run by the community. So the community have a chance to also change those rules.

Jim Right. So this kind of relates to how you could say journalism potentially should or might work. Do you have a priority in terms of what sort of journalism you want to have, or is there any sort of kind of idea of what sort of storytelling you’re after?

Nguyet: No. Not at all. Everybody’s welcome as long as they adhere to the ethical standards that are set in the Civil constitution.

Jim That’s the set of rules that you’re talking about, right? So it’s just, you follow the rules. It doesn’t matter what you cover or how well or how bad am I right? And understanding that, you could do kind of poorly and you could still make it in as long as you follow the rules.

Nguyet: That is for the community to decide. There is a set of standards that the community have to abide by and whether you’re, I mean, the quality. That’s basically based on taste, right? But as long as it’s followed by facts and transparency there, I don’t see why not. But it’s also up to the community to raise those concerns.

Jim So how does Civil guarantee that something is followed by facts or is there some sort of mechanism in Civil to help that?

Nguyet: Right now, is it just the community. It’s just community work. But if there are challenges and there are debates and the votes go a certain way or not, people can appeal those votes to the Civil council. And the Civil council will have a chance to look at all the facts that are being laid out.

There are also the people who wrote the Civil constitution and get it approved by the community. And so they are the people who know the constitution. They also have a say in what should or shouldn’t be on the registry, but the community can also have a chance to appeal the cause the council’s vote too. So it’s a roundabout. It’s kind of a system, but we’re trying to make it as fair as possible so that people have a chance to just appeal to one another. The balance of power is in either the community or the Civil council. There’s a mix of both.

So the system is set up that way. It doesn’t mean that it is set in stone because the community can also decide on how this works too.

Jim: You talked about tokens before.

Nguyet: The Civil community own the tokens. Civil members are people who own tokens.

Jim: There’s money or value involved with all of this. And I guess that’s the big shift with Civil and in contrast to the rest of the Internet, which is just this model of free, and then let ads or whoever sort out the rest of it. How do you see value embedded in stories? Do you see any kind of effect that maybe the tokens or that the way that Civil was put together or that the way an author would be using civil kind of a structures the value differently?

Nguyet: I would say the value is based on what the author or the journalist said it to be like. I would like to think of Civil as a conduit or an environment to make those values happen. And you know our goals is to build tools to help make those values real and measurable and trackable for journalists and content creators, but the values should be set by them, if that makes sense.

Jim: Yeah. So they decide how much it’s worth. Exactly.

Nguyet: Because it’s their time and content. The only thing we can do is make tools to help them see their true values better. Because there isn’t any, right now. That really does a really great job.

Jim: Right. Have you seen anything interesting kind of commodity that like something you might not have expected? For instance Delaware is really popular or people are really interested in corn or anything that’s just weird and random that might have come up through that because you are talking about a different kind of way of writing and selling you the writing?

Nguyet: Honestly, I’m not sure. I think right now, it depends on the regions that you’re in, because like the newsrooms on Civil are all over the world, and so different regions have different issues and topics that are specific to those regions.

Most of our news rooms right now on the registry are local, small newsrooms. So topics can get really localised specific to those regions. There’s a trend now for climate change stories. There is such a huge topic right now and everybody wants to talk about it and how it affects their specific neighborhood or country or region that they’re in.

I think as that it becomes a more global issues, I think more people will want to talk about it and how it affects them personally in their everyday lives. I think there is a bit of a trend for that. There’s also a lot of civil unrest happening around the world in, in some ways and how it affects those local neighbourhoods as well. I see a trend in a lot of those stories too.

Jim: I’m trying to get a sense of what’s the push and pull in the storytelling or with the authors. Have you spoken with many authors? I imagine you have.

Nguyet: Not as many as I would like. Usually when we talk to them, it’s about researching for new products or learning about their pain points and learning about what tools we can make to help make their lives a little bit easier. It was always in those contexts. Otherwise, we all read their stories and all get to learn about how they approach their work. But because of our limited time, we can’t talk to a hundred users at a time. Up to like a small number of those. It’s not as many as I’d love to.

Jim: Yeah that’s understandable. You mentioned civil unrest and climate change, big, massive things, but they are, for lack of a better word, trends. I mean, they are like happening in volume I guess you could say. Do you think that there’s any of these sort of new models are not just exclusive to Civil for instance? There’s lots of other experiments and people trying to figure out how do we make money either producing journalism or producing storytelling. How do we keep literature alive, for instance. No big deal, right? How do you think of these new models of publishing, Civil included, affect story? Do you think that there is an effect like the whole kind of the attention economy going to just producing clickbait and listicles and we have SEO deciding like how stuff is written? Do you see these new models having maybe parallel, not necessarily the same in terms of bad, but just different effects?

Nguyet: I feel like it’s still a little early to tell, but there is always a trade off somewhere. They’re all design decisions that we have to make. I feel like that’s why it’s so important to include the people that are writing into our process, especially with new models coming out.

It’s one thing to make money for your own company, right? Especially if you’re a tech company. But it’s important to include the people that you’re solving problems for in the process because there’s no way for us to all know everything and to understand the consequences of our actions until we include those people.

Sometimes even when we did include them, we don’t really know until maybe a couple of years from now and see the effects of our decisions. But to include them as early as possible is a chance to uncover things that we may not have thought of and to be able to have enough information where we could do a trade off, right?

Like what we can have? Well, we have enough information where we understand that if there are any decisions we make as a trade-off of something. And so what is that trade-off mean? And so the more information we have, the better. Yes, anything that we make is going to affect the industry in some way.

It either can reinforce some of the things that are happening right now, like the way that the business models right now is reinforcing clickbait. The more clickbait you have, the more “engagements” you have, the more “money” you will make, so that perpetuates what people write and how they write them.

So to break that cycle, we need to take a step back and think about the problem from a different perspective and really try to include the people that are both consuming as well as creating in the process. I think that’s one of the things we’re trying to do here is create a system that is a win-win for both parties as well as being aware of the potential consequences that that may have and being open to making those changes as soon as we get new information.

A lot of it is guesswork right now for sure. We have some data, but if I were a real scientist, I’m not really sure the data’s are right. It still needs to be experimented on and I think of this as an experiment and be willing to change if our hypothesis is proven wrong or right, and, and use that as information and data to move forward.

We’ll have consequences. There’s nothing we don’t do that don’t have

Jim: Do you think, just widening that picture out a bit, about other forms of storytelling? So not just more journalistic, but people trying out new models of value exchange and how they work? So what are your thoughts in general, not just about Civil, but in terms of for instance, documentaries or maybe gaming, do you, do you see any other sorts of things evolving potentially? Or what would you like to see coming or appearing out of nowhere?

Nguyet: I think there’s a lot that we can learn from and take from other industries because some industries are doing much better with this value exchange in terms of storytelling, especially, as you mentioned, the game industry or film, television, or all of those different media or types of storytelling.

There’s so much that we can learn from, especially the game industry actually. There’s something there that we can also maybe borrow and try in this space and see what happens. People are consuming content in the same way. Basically, it’s just a different format.

But if certain models work for those types of media work for here like for visual storytelling or like storytelling with words I do think it’s worth a try.

Jim: Is there maybe something that you would like to see also try to out these new sort of models, for instance, poetry or something else? Something that you maybe think is being left behind or not really looked at as much as it could in terms of writing or storytelling?

Nguyet: I’m not sure actually. There are some poets or poetry that I follow on Instagram accounts. There’s still platforms that put out these types of writing. It is just where the audiences are the biggest, and that’s where they congregate. People still post their poems there. I guess the difference is that there isn’t a direct way for them to make money when they distribute their content in that way.

They still rely on the old model of ads and advertising. But, it’s just, they’re just limited tools for people to distribute their own work. I think that it’s one of the things that we can get better at is creating tools and different ways to distribute and measure and track how content is traveling across the Internet or certain platforms.

But wherever they are, if there is a way for the author, the creator, to be able to track their own content is it’s important. So it doesn’t matter what kind of content it is, but as long as they’re able to track it and monetise it, that is the real question there, which is interesting to solve for.

Jim: Just a last question just to wrap things up. Where do you see things going in terms of decentralisation and content? These two things that we’ve touched on a lot, do you see any broad trends or directions where things are going in terms of decentralisation/blockchain and in content?

Nguyet: I think there’s certainly a trend for decentralising power, especially on the Internet. We have a couple of big tech companies right now that are controlling all of information and what we’re seeing right? So I think there is a big trend for decentralising and it may be healthier for people to be able to control their own content, their own data, and certainly a way to even govern their own communities. What are values that people hold that can dictate certain communities and so decentralisation allows people to have their own sets of common values to rally around and to work towards and socialise around. I think it’s good. I think it’s healthy.

Personally, I also see people are more, you know, all of a sudden concerned about privacy, whereas maybe a couple years ago nobody was worried about tracking cause nobody knew about it. So maybe this will hopefully, knock on wood, continue. Then people will begin to start using Civil enforce and other things to start paying off.

Jim: Any closing thoughts?

Join civil or join other platforms. Be a part of something that you really believe in and value and can see how it contributes to the health of the Internet and the tools that we’re using every day. Be aware of how their business models are shaped up to either exploit or help people. And make those value judgements around your values so that you can contribute to these systems because we just need new and better systems than what we have now. Whether you join Civil or not, just take a look at what it is that you really value and how you contribute to those systems on the Internet every day.