indebuurt heads to the blockchain with WordProof Timestamp

The Dutch news website indebuurt will secure her articles on the blockchain. The subsidiary of Persgroup Nederland, publisher of some of the biggest newspapers in The Netherlands, wants to emphasise which articles were written by her own editors in order to better protect the copyright of those articles.

To secure articles of indebuurt in the blockchain, indebuurt uses the services of Dutch blockchain startup WordProof.

“Unfortunately, we sometimes see our articles copied to other platforms. WordProof allows us to easier proof ownership and might help us in the future battling fake news”, says Jurgen Smit, Product Owner at indebuurt.

Sebastiaan van der Lans, founder of WordProof, expects the technology to have other applications in the future as well. For social media platforms like Facebook, such “timestamps” could be utilised to differentiate legitimate posts from fake news. Search engines like Google may place authentic content higher than plagiarised content, similar to the way it rewards websites with a secure connection (SSL).

Research from the IPSOS earlier this year has shown that eight out of ten Europeans sometimes thinks fake news is real. By securing authentic articles in the blockchain before publication, consumers can easier distinguish between news with a clear origin and news whose source is not clear and therefore possibly false.