I'm a bit jealous because I had nearly the same idea back when I worked in public radio, but didn't have the time to implement it. Basically it was about having facts and quotes exist as embedded units within articles, all with their own individual records of verification and relationships to all the articles in which they were used. I'm really glad someone is taking a shot at this, even though I have my doubts as to whether journalists will take it seriously.
YazIAm: If you want any further inspiration, here's my old github issue where I wrote about this concept: https://github.com/SCPR/SCPRv4/issues/718
I don't know what all the criteria are, but you should consider applying for a Knight Foundation grant: https://knightfoundation.org/apply/
Remember Wikipedia is a centralized and under control of single entity, fact that they rely on donation doesn't change anything.
This makes it easy to say "Well if it's accurate 99% of the time then it must confirm what I thought!".
- OP made an open platform
- Someone said it could be a good idea because Wikipedia
- Someone else said that Wikipedia has flaws
Hence my comment.
Coding this wasn't actually that complicated, figuring out a design that enables readers to review the fact checking as easily as possible and enables fact checkers to collaborate easily took a lot of experimentation though. Although even that is still very much a work in progress.
That way if a story needs to be expanded upon at a later date, the next journalist can dig deeper easily picking up the trail where the previous journalist left off.
As one problem is solved, it starts hinting at solutions to subsequent problems. This is not a problem with a silver bullet. It's going to take a fundamental shift in how we understand and verify truth.
Still, it seems valuable to make it easy for readers to view the supporting or contradictory evidence. That might’ve stymied many notable media hit-pieces. Of course, many newsrooms wouldn’t want this (at least I can’t imagine The Guardian and it’s ilk would want to draw attention to their own impoverished fact:BS ratios), so it would have to be a browser plugin or similar.
One can easily imagine hovering over a given assertion (e.g., "Damore posted an anti-diversity screed") and see the fact-checks, perhaps ranked by fact-checker's credibility in order to suppress conspiracy theory crap as well as contribute to the debate.
Anyway, that there is lots of noise among the criticism doesn't mean that there isn't a lot of valid criticism. It's only been a few months since nearly the whole American newsmedia willfully mislead the nation, sending an angry mob after innocent kids, after all.
Or they simply can't afford to employ fact checkers anymore, now that people refuse to pay for news.
People (the audience, that is) have historically refused to pay a significant share of the cost for news, what has changed is that advertisers have stopped paying as much for news (because the share of people's attention debited to news, and therefore which news outlets have to sell access to, has dropped.)
Paid circulation used to often be important not so much because of direct revenue but because advertisers looked to it as an important measure of reach.
If you've ever been interviewed by a modern journo, you know you just get the same question reworded a dozen different ways. The reason is that they decide what story they want to write up front, and then just go shopping for facts to support it. That story is usually dictated by market pressures, which presently reward sensationalism to feed the addiction of a dwindling number of listeners in an echo chambers.
And current fact checkers are typically checking material put out by others, which is completely broken. They have all the same incentives as anyone writing a hit / puff piece, except they put a phony "truth number" at the top and other sites will tally those up as though it means something.
There is, of course, the social issue of convincing people that this is important, but the underlying issue is in part a technical one. I don't think it's fair to disqualify a solution based on the fact that involves technical work.
I am not trying to disqualify the solution, more like observing that the existence of provable facts has not yet been any sort of antidote for 'fake news' (whether that refers to the real deal, or the position many people take that any news they don't like is fake news).
Some sort of attestation toolchain might enable people who care about evidence to produce more strongly-attested cases, and to get a better handle on what is and isn't sourced from others. It seems likely that using good attestation toolchains could create feedback loops for researchers, journalists, archivists, authors, film-makers, educators, students, and other people involved in knowledge production.
These feedback loops might change how they research, where they start, how often they have to re-invent wheels, and raise standards by enabling these people to compete on metrics that might drive more social value than clicks, engagement, shares, or ad revenue.
These effects could be important, even if you never budge the kind of person inclined to consume the information equivalent of junk-food.