Crowd Facts is a collaborative project powered by the Hive blockchain that aims to empower and reward YOU as you participate in the checking, researching and sharing of claims/information that are published to the internet.
Are you knowledgeable in a topic and think that others are making false claims? Now you can take part in the first ever decentralized 'fact checking' project, help to educate others and be rewarded in cryptocurrency for your efforts!
Discern, Decentralize & Check Yo' Facts!
Any particular source of information or claim can be biased, yet the mainstream media and their corporate ‘fact checkers’ are being presented as somehow beyond bias and immune to creating their own misinformation. In place of open discussion and the ability to counter the claims made by these self proclaimed 'fact checkers' we are mostly only being offered 'appeals to authority'. We are being trained to accept something as true, without being able to directly question the author on it's truthfulness and to therefore 'believe' in the truth of a claim mainly based on the credentials of the claim's author.
In reality it is wise to accept that no-one is above error, mistakes, biases and even the potential for corruption and deliberate deception. Web 2.0 social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, are censoring many people on the basis that their ideas contradict the claims made by 'authorized fact checkers'. This is not healthy for society, for human morale, for free speech or even for human evolution itself.
Indeed, this is the opposite of how science operates since science is a continual conversation and debate. 'Trusting the science' is a dangerous objective, since science is, by definition, always subject to change. Trust the scientific method if you like, but religiously protecting certain ideas and even censoring those who disagree has nothing to do with real science.
One of the great commandments of science is, "Mistrust arguments from authority." ... Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else
:- Carl Sagan
In response to this egregious assault on human intelligence and free thinking, Crowd Facts has been created to empower people to unite to have their own say on the challenging matter of ‘checking facts’. While the corporate 'fact check' organizations rely on submissions from small numbers of 'authorized experts' (who may well be on a payroll and heavily biased), Crowd Facts accepts comments from anyone and relies on 'the wisdom of the crowd' combined with Hive's 'proof of brain' mechanism to help you to filter the facts from the fiction.
Statistically and scientifically, the more data that is collected, the greater the potential is for accurate answers to be reached once the information is analyzed and conclusions are drawn. So it follows that the larger the crowd that participates in discussing and researching alleged 'facts' or claims made by others online, the more chance there is of reaching a genuinely accurate assessment of each claim's accuracy.
As with every source of information in life, it is up to each of us as to how we interpret the reasoning and logic put forward by the Crowd Facts community. Strength through diversity is just as true with problem solving as it is with any other area of life. We all have our own puzzle pieces and sometimes we need to listen to the quietest and least heard voices in order to discover deeper truth.
Background
The further our internal map of reality deviates from actual reality, the more likely we are to cause harm to ourselves and others. What we call ‘truth’ and ‘facts' are clearly important, but we all have our own versions of reality – so who is really right on any given topic?
Debate over truth and fact is probably as old as humanity itself and in the internet age we have tasked ourselves with using technology to help to discover truth. This is a noble goal, but technology is not magic and it can be misused – both accidentally and deliberately.
'Fact checking' services have emerged online in recent years, often proclaiming themselves to be trustworthy oracles of wisdom. This idea is rightly met with skepticism by many people, since intelligent and experienced people are well aware that asserting oneself to be a higher authority than others is quite an arrogant thing to do. In a thinking society, the ever advancing access to information resources should mean that we all think for ourselves at an increasing capacity, so that we are less dependent on ‘voices of authority’, not more dependent!
Historically, a tribe might have had a wise elder or a sage who proved themselves over and over to be clearly more evolved in faculties such as logic, awareness & intuition. These were the people among us who, in whatever way, had acquired enough experience and internal abilities to be relied upon to make good decisions and clear observations that served the community. Today, however, it seems that those who seek personal power have gradually convinced us that we ourselves do not have or deserve any power – in fact, it is only the chosen ‘official’ organizations and their representatives that should be trusted. The slow ebbing away of our trust in ourselves has carefully been captured by those who engineer society with themselves at the top of the power pyramids of control.
Being declared a wise person is usually something that is achieved via a group consensus rather than being something you and your business partners force onto other people through censorship and business deals!
We know for certain that humanity’s strengths are spread out among all of us and often our own personal strengths have never even been allowed to surface because we are so convinced that we must rely on ‘voices of authority’ to think and decide on our behalf. What we do not use, we will lose – so it is essential that we learn to build greater self reliance and to end the constant drain of our own personal power that, for many of us, is taking place daily. Supporting our own quest for truth is key to a return to human greatness!
The Crowd Facts approach to ‘fact checking’ is more open and free than the constrained, corporate dominated approaches pushed by ‘Web 2.0’ websites, social networks and media outlets. Instead of paying specifically vetted ‘experts’ in certain fields (who are often just reporters and not actually experts at all) to push a certain narrative as if it is a fact – we empower YOU to participate in the process of DISCERNING FACT FROM FICTION.
An Overview of Crowd Facts
Crowd Facts is powered by the Hive Blockchain, which is a social networking system that has a cryptocurrency built in. Hive includes a 'Proof of Brain' system that seamlessly manages distribution of financial rewards to anyone who writes a post or comment and who then receives upvotes from other Hive users who are holders of Hive Tokens. The more 'Hive Power' a user has, the more they can upvote posts/comments and the more they are able to direct reward payouts as a result.
Crowd Facts operates a community space on Hive which acts as a home for the fact checks performed by Crowd Facts community members. Anyone with a Hive account can post claims or facts that they want the Crowd Facts community to research and comment on. Anyone can then write replies beneath the original post, in order to add commentary, citations, references and other forms of relevant information.
Each comment and post will be assessed by the project's curators and upvoted according to a quality score that is calculated based on the level of detail, substance, value and relevance of the post/comment's content. Note: Receiving the most upvotes is NOT proof of the accuracy of a piece of information, but it is a signal of the sentiment in the community.
Crowd Facts is being given a boost through the support of the @resonator curation account, which has substantial Hive Power available - which means that Crowd Facts contributors stand a chance of receiving a good level of rewards in Hive tokens for their work. As Crowd Facts grows, the wider Hive community may add it's support, meaning that Web 3.0 Fact Checking can start to grow to become an internet phenomenon and a great addition to Hive's eco-system of Decentralized Apps.
Over time, we imagine that a wide range of people will come to value the truth discovery process that Crowd Facts makes possible and through sharing Crowd Facts threads on existing Web 2.0 platforms, our 'fact checks' will become well known on the web as a reliable option to discover a wide range of views and perspectives on controversial and important topics.
Uncensored, financially rewarding, open source truth discovery and 'fact checking' - What's not to like?
Project Roadmap
To begin with, we are starting simple and using the default features of the Hive blockchain to get the community rolling and to experiment with the community rules and workflow.
If this project attracts enough interest then a customized, Hive powered dApp, browser plugins and other tools will be created that will enable anyone to easily access, participate in and trigger 'fact checks' via the Crowd Facts community.
A custom built Crowd Facts application will enable us to design purpose built user interfaces that can formalize the results of any ongoing 'fact checks' in ways that are easily approachable by outsiders, rather than them having to read through long threads of comments.
How It Works
Posts that are made to the Crowd Facts Community and that are tagged with #CrowdFactsRequest will be included in the list of topics officially considered for curation by the project. Anyone can start a thread to request a fact check by the community, plus, sometimes the CrowdFacts account will add it's own topics when appropriate.
Note: When starting a new Fact Check thread, the original post MUST NOT include attempts to actually check the alleged facts and claims being presented. All 'fact check' attempts and offerings of commentary and information sources must be provided as comments beneath the original post.
Submitting a Fact Check Request
Create a new post in the Crowd Facts Community and ensure the following points are completed:
- Provide a URL for the webpage that contains the information or media to be checked. Please ensure that the URL has first been added to Archive.is and that you provide the resulting URL from Archive.is as this ensures that your referenced page will be archived and it's contents cannot change or be lost over time.
- Provide text to define the specific claim being checked, including it’s location on the page you have provided in the Archive.is URL. For example, if you want a specific quote to be 'fact checked' that appears on a certain page, then you need to write out that quote in your post, so that we know to focus in on that specific part of the page that you have linked us to.
- Write a clear summary of the fact check in the post's title.
- Provide a relevant, Hi Res image at the top of the post to help the community to quickly understand your topic in a visual way and to help your post to stand out.
- Tag the post with #CrowdFactsRequest to alert the community to the post and also add other relevant tags such as #politics, #science or others that may be relevant to the topic being explored.
- Provide the best sources that you can for any claims being made. Add hyperlinks to your comments that refer back to other webpages and sources in order to help researchers to look into the details.
- If the topic being checked is based on the content of a social media post, the link to the post must be provided, along with a screenshot, plus the amount of engagement (likes/shares) received by the original post should be highlighted.
General Tips for Submission of Fact Check Information & Comments
Aim to be as detailed, neutral and helpful as you can with your comments/submissions. The aim is to shed light on the topic at hand with logical analysis, sources of information and transparent explanations.
Everyone has their own biases and methods of discerning fact from fiction, so some commenters/voters will value certain types of sources more highly than others. Ideally, all sources are treated as being equally likely to be true or false before being analyzed, so as to allow the information to stand on it's own merits rather than being rejected or praised based mostly on the identity of the information's author.
Please be constructive when commenting and aim to add new information and insights, rather than repeating what has already been said.
'Fair Use' laws allow the reproduction of copyrighted materials for educational uses and Crowd Facts does count as an educational use. Please ensure that your reproduction of copyrighted materials stands within Fair Use Doctrine, which - for example - means you are allowed to post sections of text from copyrighted sources, but are not allowed to reproduce the sources in their entirety.
Plagiarization from other Fact Checking sites or other Crowd Facts community members is not allowed and may result in you being heavily downvoted.
While some topics can trigger strong emotions in people and you may be tempted to attack other people, please refrain from this. The quest for truth does not require punishments or personal attacks/insults. Let's keep this friendly, honest and open minded!
Don't be afraid to have your say - sometimes what might seem insignificant or obvious to you, may hold the key to other people realizing important truths that they had been missing.
Conclusion
Crowd Facts is your opportunity to fight back against the monopolization of free thinking that Web 2.0 corporations have been attempting for some time. If you see a 'fact check' or claim made publicly that you think is wrong/biased then why not add it to our community and let the Proof of Brain algorithm incentivize alternative views of the situation.
Sharing our fact checks on other social networks is a powerful way to counter disinformation being pushed online and to also help to grow both the Crowd Facts community and also the Hive blockchain in general.
If you are new to Hive, please click here to start the process of creating a new account and then return to the Crowd Facts community on your favorite Hive powered website to get going with Crowd Facts.