As a former director at Twitter and editor-in-chief of Wired’s on-line publication, Evan Hansen had a front-row seat to the data wars. He noticed that, whilst fact-checking organizations and instruments have proliferated, the general public’s confidence in media has plummeted, particularly because the U.S. nears one other contentious election. However Hansen believes that an rising expertise may assist fight the lack of belief: Blockchain.
Hansen is the cofounder of Factland, a crowdsourced platform that provides customers crypto tokens to settle on-line disputes. He envisions the service, which is constructed on Dfinity’s Web Pc blockchain, as a competitor to X’s Neighborhood Notes characteristic, which lets these on X add context to false or unreliable posts. Within the case of Factland, the service is designed to reside beneath posts and articles throughout totally different social media websites and publications, which might undertake it as a third-party verification instrument.
Whereas Factland remains to be in beta testing mode, Hansen instructed Fortune in an interview that he hopes to launch its native token subsequent yr and start engaged on partnerships to trial the expertise. “Our big bet has been that there’s a crowd-sourced opportunity where you can recruit internet open intel groups and get these people to combine forces to investigate,” he mentioned. “With blockchain, you can actually create more of a transparent path for people to see how those decisions get made.”
Truth-checking 2.0
Hansen held high-level positions at publications together with Wired and Medium earlier than becoming a member of Twitter as an editorial director, leaving just a few months after Elon Musk took over the corporate. He has labored on fact-checking initiatives up to now and says essentially the most persistent challenges come within the type of media shops’ prioritizing buzzy framing—in addition to readers’ skepticism about who’s conducting fact-checking, particularly if it’s concentrated in a small group of individuals.
Factland leverages two core components of crypto: the decentralized nature of blockchain to settle contracts with out human intervention, together with the flexibility to grant tokens based mostly on exercise. Right here’s the way it works: Anybody who indicators up for an account on Factland shall be granted a set quantity of tokens. They will stake them on both aspect of totally different claims that come up in a dispute—comparable to whether or not colleges and hospitals are “overwhelmed” due to “illegal immigrants,” or whether or not Doland Trump desires to chop social safety. In the meantime, customers can submit proof to again up their place.
As soon as a subject reaches a sure threshold of staked tokens, a “jury summons” goes out inviting a random pattern of members to vote. The staking pool is split among the many successful aspect, with jurors additionally incomes a reward. Matters can be re-opened for extra proof and additional debate. “That’s one of our fundamental principles,” Hansen mentioned. “This idea of the revisibility of the truth.”
Factland remains to be figuring out its so-called tokenomics system, and Hansen admits that sure components of the method could possibly be gamed. Exxon, for instance, may purchase tokens and vote on debates round sustainability that again up its positions. Much like the prediction platform Polymarket, nonetheless, it might then turn into worthwhile for customers to take the opposite aspect of the dispute, and Hansen mentioned that Factland is engaged on mechanics that will be sure that the jury pool represents a various pattern.
Factland’s important impediment is the regulatory uncertainty going through crypto within the U.S. The Securities and Change Fee’s marketing campaign of enforcement actions towards blockchain corporations has made a token launch dangerous, and Factland’s similarity to derivatives contracts would seemingly imply that it must register with the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee, which has tried to cease electoral betting. Hansen mentioned that Factland has struggled to draw enterprise funding, although it’s working with grant cash from Dfinity.
Nonetheless, Hansen believes that one of the best ways to deal with disinformation and waning confidence is an exterior system that’s separated from media shops and social media homeowners. “The problem with fact-checking in general is that everybody already has decided what the truth is, and the fact checks come in and they don’t care,” he instructed Fortune. “So to try to build it into the fabric of the way we consume information would be a big win.”
