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blockchain-based anti/news-tampering site to prevent/combat 1984-style "journalism".

Project Type
Project idea
Summary

blockchain-based anti/news-tampering site to prevent/combat 1984-style "journalism".

Description
1.if I understand correctly, this is something a blockchain should be good at. 2. I believe a service/functionality like this will sooner or later become necessary. 3. I have an initial marketing plan of attack to explain the purpose and gain initial momentum/public demand for a service like this. 4. I have a reasonable monetization plan that can be implemented right after the traction is gained. 5. I will explain in more detail in comment a bit later, for now i at least want to see if anyone maybe had a similar idea, or something like this already exists (i think it doesn't, but i don't follow blockchain ecosystem that much), what are your initial thoughts, etc.
Tech Stack
not yet decided/Mono?
Current Team Size
1
Comments
  • 4
    just curious, what is "1984-style journalism" and why is it relevant in 2018?
  • 1
  • 4
    @3picName

    1984-style "journalism" is is rewriting and (possibly shadily) re-editing past articles, in the extreme to the point that they seem they've always been saying the exact opposite of what they were actually originally saying.

    and my counter-question to you would be: how is this not relevant already, since the inception of a wholly-digital, wholly global information exchange and storage, which is the first media in the history of humanity which actually viably allows something like that to happen/be happening.

    many people already have in their day-to-day experience that they have to immediately screenshot/save every article they come across and want to talk about, otherwise they might find it edited based on the reactions in comments, or taken down completely, or etc etc...

    ...webarchive is not enough, this needs to be done into a service, into a prestige badge of transparency that the public is aware of.
  • 5
    I don't understand 1984 style journalism but if it in anyway seems to clear out the problem of fake news and ensures that the media is clean, I'm eager to spend 16hours a day for this project.

    I don't know anything. But I know I will work if it helps humanity as a whole. That's for sure.

    I don't trust people/news/events/happenings easily. And if this system brings that factor, I'm desperate to work. YES.
  • 3
    I think you should definitely look into perhaps looking into IPFS before you roll out a full blockchain solution. It's a p2p immutable file system that addresses a lot of issues that exists with HTTP. I've thought about doing something similar, and would love to collaborate.
  • 8
    GUUUUYYYZZZ, the "1984-style journalism" is a reference to George Orwell's book! =D
  • 4
    @N1teshsurana basically, yes, that's one of the main points. to facilitate a pressure on media to start taking writing articles seriously again, because their first shot at publishing will going to be the only one, no re-edits and additions, thus they will have to take more care about what they write in the first place. no ability to hide blunders later when it turns out people noticed the blunder/mistake, thus more motivation to avoid them right from the start.

    again, i will provide a full explanation a bit later, but i like your and @BranDev 's attitude :)
    hopefully it won' t require that much of a crunch, but it could be a nice, useful, side-project, until it maybe becomes pretty sustainable more than a side project :)

    thanks for the tip, BranDev, i will check it out :)
  • 1
    @Midnigh-shcode , just drop a link to your GitHub and then we can probably sketch out a mini project. And if it really makes a change out there, we'll tap on each other's shoulders virtually 😂😂😂
  • 5
    Hm it does sound like an interesting implementation of the blockchain mechanism but you could instead just open a news platform that locks the post after it's published. And make that your advertising trait. A bit like DuckDuckGo :)

    PS: lmao to the fact that nobody gets the 1984 ref
  • 5
    The disadvantage which many forget is that in a blockchain, the ledger grows continuously. In it's normal form you can only add, not delete. That means that you'll reach a point where people need to download GBs just to sync
  • 2
    Very interesting project to implement. But as always, someone is one step ahead:
    https://theworldnews.net
  • 1
    not sure if a joke or an actual project
  • 3
    Not only is this a legitimate project, the concept itself is incredibly important. I'm sure somebody's already done something similar but I'd be willing to contribute if possible.
  • 1
    Wayback Machine ?
  • 1
    @FilipeRamalho Unfortunately many web pages have safeguards against being archived. Also while you may have the page itself, a lot of time the media and the content is broken.
  • 1
    Recently got some idea of counting news similarity by counting similar words and then use sentiment analysis to see if they match. Aggregate news from portals and see if article is valid or bullshit. But then I realized it is to much work to code all of it.
  • 0
    Blockchain is only really useful in a scenario where nobody trusts anybody. While you could argue that this might be the case here, it comes with several drawbacks - institutionalized environmental damage and the possibility of a hostile takeover by controlling more than 50% of the network being two of them.
    Perhaps you could achieve the same (with your project being the trusted entity) with an "eternal log file"
  • 1
    @julkali the point is for the content to be unmodifiable on the lowest technical level, because anything else is just "we promise we won't tamper with the data", which is as good as the news sites' "we promise" which the system distrusts. so what would be the reason for people to trust "one promise down the chain"?

    no, it needs to be based on tech which just doesn't enable edits by its nature, so that trust doesn't have to play any role.
  • 0
    @okkimus nice.
    but it fails at marketing.
    tgey need to pull in the sites themselves, and provide the embeddable originality badges, and pull in readers and make them require the media sites to use those badges, create public pressure for the system to be used and visible
  • 0
    I dig it. Have any more details?
  • 0
    in the interest of this not just being silently left abandoned:

    if you follow Elon Musk, you might have noticed that he beat me/us to it, with his "pravda" idea. knowing how much money and hyperactivity he has, I expect it to launch in a few months.

    knowing how much media presence he has, I expect it to render any other similar attempts superfluous.

    therefore, thanks for interest, y'all, but i believe in this context it's a waste of everyone's time here to work on it or think about it.

    thanks, though :)
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