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, at the same time as 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 know-how may assist fight the lack of belief: Blockchain.
Hansen is the cofounder of Factland, a crowdsourced platform that gives customers crypto tokens to settle on-line disputes. He envisions the service, which is constructed on Dfinity’s Web Laptop 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 stay underneath posts and articles throughout totally different social media websites and publications, which may undertake it as a third-party verification software.
Whereas Factland remains to be in beta testing mode, Hansen advised Fortune in an interview that he hopes to launch its native token subsequent yr and start engaged on partnerships to trial the know-how. “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 stated. “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 a couple of months after Elon Musk took over the corporate. He has labored on fact-checking initiatives up to now and says probably the most persistent challenges come within the type of media retailers’ 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 might be granted a set quantity of tokens. They’ll stake them on both facet of totally different claims that come up in a dispute—resembling whether or not faculties and hospitals are “overwhelmed” due to “illegal immigrants,” or whether or not Doland Trump desires to chop social safety. In the meantime, customers can put up 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 contributors to vote. The staking pool is split among the many profitable facet, with jurors additionally incomes a reward. Subjects may also be re-opened for extra proof and additional debate. “That’s one of our fundamental principles,” Hansen stated. “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 might be gamed. Exxon, for instance, may purchase tokens and vote on debates round sustainability that again up its positions. Just like the prediction platform Polymarket, nonetheless, it might then turn into worthwhile for customers to take the opposite facet of the dispute, and Hansen stated that Factland is engaged on mechanics that might be sure that the jury pool represents a various pattern.
Factland’s essential impediment is the regulatory uncertainty going through crypto within the U.S. The Securities and Alternate Fee’s marketing campaign of enforcement actions in opposition to blockchain firms has made a token launch dangerous, and Factland’s similarity to derivatives contracts would doubtless imply that it must register with the Commodity Futures Buying and selling Fee, which has tried to cease electoral betting. Hansen stated that Factland has struggled to draw enterprise funding, although it’s working with grant cash from Dfinity.
Nonetheless, Hansen believes that one of the simplest ways to deal with disinformation and waning confidence is an exterior system that’s separated from media retailers 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 advised Fortune. “So to try to build it into the fabric of the way we consume information would be a big win.”
