This startup wants to tackle fake news, misinformation with blockchain technology
The average consumer of news today counts social media as their primary source of information. A study of Reuters revealed that 63% percent of Indians count social media as a primary source of news.
In such a world, Mohit Agadi – a digital marketer, SEO specialist and blogger – developed a strict regimen of fact-checking almost everything. It started with making sure there was no misinformation in his articles. Now he constantly checks pictures, videos or news articles he sees online or those shared by his friends.
The problem eventually became so close to him that he created a company to fact-check information on a large scale.
Factual recordwhich he co-founded earlier this year together with Co-founder Damodar Kalyan, leverages blockchain technology to build a decentralized fact-checking system and verifiability layer.
“We want to be a Wikipedia for fact-checking, and get contributors from all over the world,” says Mohith The Decryption History.
The Fact Protocol allows any user to become a validator, provided they can perform fact-checking accurately. All that is required is to follow the guidelines to a tee or have experience in the domain.
Goes into fact checking
The process is quite simple. When someone shares a news article or piece of content, the fact checkers attempt to validate it. This process involves searching the web for reliable sources of information relevant to the content. After this, the fact checkers proceed to validate it. Once this is completed, the information is stored on the blockchain, creating a traceable record that anyone can verify.
The founders claim that the benefits of a decentralized network also extend to preventing concentration of power, keeping the validation process democratic, eliminating bias and ensuring full transparency.
“Timestamps and transaction hashes of the content are present on the chain and everything is resistant to censorship,” adds Mohith.
However, storing an overview of the content in the chain should not be confused with republishing content. “We don’t republish the content on our platform, but we do create a permanent chain record of it, as well as a record of the fact checks done and the validators for the same,” says Mohith.
He adds that this can help readers compare the original version with an updated version or a potentially tampered piece of information.
Fact Protocol is currently working on the final stages of this fact-check, with the platform due to launch in the coming weeks. As it scales, the core team will step back from screening fact-checkers, and will allow existing validators to review new applicants.
The fact-checking project is called 2FA newswhile the division working on the blockchain and Web3 elements is called Block Quest. Fact Protocol’s technology is built on the Ethereum scaling chain Polygonand the startup will encourage and reward its contributors with its original FACT token, which will be launched at a later date.
The FACT token will also act as a governance system to democratize the process of forming new rules and making certain decisions.
Archived content will be stored for retrieval at IPFS (InterPlanetary File System)a repository built on Ethereum.
Build a greater verifiability layer
Mohith says that Fact Protocol has also collaborated with IFCN (The International Fact-Checking Network) to aggregate fact-check results and include multiple validators under its standardized guidelines.
“IFCN has guidelines in place for fact-checking, but is not confident in building Web3 and blockchain capabilities by itself. So we will bring in some IFCN members and fact-checkers, and validate their work before putting them on the chain,” says Mohith.
While the focus is now on fact-checking textual content, the startup has also explored validating images and video. Mohith claims that the team has taken advantage Adobe’s open source image checking tool, and is trying to deploy it on Fact Protocol’s platform.
He also sees enormous potential in business use cases of fact-checking technology. He plans to introduce a suite of enterprise-class tools to validate the authenticity of content, and sees this as a leading source of revenue for Fact in the future.
The core blockchain technology being built for a fact-checking system can be extended to build a broader verifiability layer for Know Your Customer (KYC) and ID verification, document verification, authentication tools and more. Fact Protocol plans to build this eventually.
Developing such technology is certainly a challenge for a young and up-and-coming startup like Fact Protocol. Reports suggest that the complexity, cost, and necessary advances in blockchain technology required to build a global, decentralized fact-checking system are high.
However, Mohith is optimistic. “There are many platforms working to democratize content creation or increase citizen journalism, but we haven’t seen platforms that solve fact-checking with Web3 at the network level … while there are similar efforts in enterprises, the market is simply too big for just one project “, he concludes.