Trustworthy News

[IMPACT]

Trustworthy News is a platform which identifies reliable digital news sources, digital contents by collective action of the platform users.

Digital content sources providing information that is considered to be trustworthy are rewarded on the platform fostering a healthier environment, helping to detect and flag disinformation.

Core services

Once citizens become community members, they will be able to:

1. submit content pieces they feel are reliable
2. ask the community for help to scrutinize suspicious information and
3. red-flag content with the proof that the referenced piece of information is misleading

A list of all suggested content pieces becomes available to everyone and then, individuals can up-vote the articles they found worthy. Users can individually green-flag content they endorse, yellow-flag content asking the community to help debunk potentially unreliable content, and red-flag content they know is misleading while also providing evidence to back their statement.

Content scope

The platform will start with the niche-oriented content (i.e. the interests of Cardano Catalyst members) and widen the scope later, following the decisions of the platform user community itself. 

Users will have at least four reasons to be willing to join:

1. Users will have a tool to discover new information sources already vetted by the community, and be sure about the reliability of their current sources
2. Users would have the whole community at their reach to double-check content and sources that may not look reliable using the power of the crowds
3. Users will be able to have a direct social impact tackling disinformation
4. Users will build a reputation for themselves as socially-reliable individuals both inside and outside the community

Users will have the incentive to promote a healthier environment

1. The up-votes of each article boost the reputation of the user who has posted it. 
2. If the up-voted content is found to be unreliable, the reputation of the whole user community (seen inside and outside of Trustworthy News by badges, bylines displayable in external platforms) could be tainted

SSI

The platform will rely on the SSI infrastructure provided by Atala PRISM helping to issue/revoke two credentials:

1. A membership confirmation
2. A reputation score / badge

The reputation scores/badges that could be used outside the platform to signal person’s interests/knowledge, trust and reputation

We see our proposal as a solution in the fourth - application layer defined by the Trust over IP Foundation - we strive to build healthy, vibrant digital trust ecosystems on top of the new decentralized digital trust infrastructure powered by Atala PRISM.

By joining Trustworthy News users will have probably a good comprehension of what a DID is capable in the digital content management. In the long-term, the platform will be the point of attraction to bring users in and then show non-technical users how versatile and useful DIDs can be in much broader context. We see parallels with the Chinese app, WeChat, initially just a messenger that developed features to serve many other complementary user needs.

The proposed Trustworthy News embraces the SSI infrastructure built on the Cardano blockchain. In addition, the proposed solution will create – project trust in the digital media space by Trustworthy News community members. In this way the proposed project will help to position Cardano as one of the leaders of the SSI applications in the digital media and beyond.

• The main challenge is to reach a critical mass of content great enough to allow users to realize they are having a better and more accurate media diet.
• The risks are also related to bad actors stress-testing any limits in order to game the system.

[FEASIBILITY]

An MVP will be ready between 90 to 120 days after the start

The Prototype version should be ready in 90 days and will provide most important features of the full web app.

Initially, the content pool admissible will be limited in a way that the audience members can interact with the same content pieces that others have ingested (without the limit, the engagement per content element can be too low to provide satisfactory outputs).

MVP modules to be implemented

• User management
• User login and sign up module
• User roles and access privileges (including content moderation by authorized users)
• Frontend and UX interfaces
• Searching and filtering
• Content management & dashboards: 
• Analysis module (scoreboard with content submitted by community) 
• Discovery module (module to find new, vetted sources)
• Evaluation module (for users to ask for community help to evaluate suspicious content)
• Quarantine module (where content has been deemed unreliable by the community, along the proof of such unreliability)
• Favorites
• Statistics

Delivery timeline

May 2022

• More detailed requirement specification
• Frontend and user experience design

June-July 2022

• Backend, databases and architecture design
• Initial development

August 2022

• Finalization and pilot launch of MVP
• MVP testing (Catalyst community members)

September/October 2022

• Public launch

Content & user community building will continue

After the MVP is done, relevant (in line with the user interests) digital publishers will be contacted to create special statuses in exchange of advantages for the community/audience.

Operations and maintenance

There will be a minimal operations/support team for the Trustworthy News platform whose role will be to keep an eye that everything runs smoothly. The goal is to make all the orations as automated as possible.

Future developments

Once the technology part is developed and deployed, we do not expect any changes within the current scope. Once the platform users decide to extend the Trustworthy News features Cardano Catalyst funding or crowdfunding will be considered.

We ask to fund mainly the tech development part - cost breakdown:

1. Development - experienced programmer's work – 50 USD per hour x 200 hours = 10'000 USD
2. Project management - 0 USD
3. Marketing, communication and community building work - 0 USD
4. Tech infrastructure costs, 1 year - 2'000 USD
5. Platform maintenance, 1 year - 0 USD

Total cost: 12'000 USD

1. Developers (one focusing on backend and the other in UX/Frontend),
2. Marketing, communication professional

We may look for an external blockchain/Cardano development expert to work on projects based on Atala PRISM, Plutus, etc

[AUDITABILITY]

The project development has two streams of work:

1. technology part
2. the content, user community building part

Regarding the technology part, the Atala PRISM Pioneers program advises to develop SSI applications using the private github account. We could open-source the main modules upon request when possible in order to make the technology development part more open and auditable.

The bigger challenge is probably not the technology but the user community, platform information content building part determining the overall success of the project. Naturally it will be open, visible and auditable. We could share the KPI (defined below) related numbers with the Cardano Catalyst community.

Therefore, the project progress at the beginning will be primarily measured by the Trustworthy News growth KPIs:

• User-base growth
• Daily active users
• Amount of content ingested
• Up-voting statistics
• Social media references

Success is to have a wide and diversified community in control of the digital blockchain/crypto-related content

After 90 days

• 200 users registered
• 20 Daily Active Users
• Minimum 400 article ingested into the system by users
• 100 sources with at least one content element ingested

After 6 months

• Become an attractive source for the news, content for Cardano Catalyst users
• References in social media

Longer term

• Generate traffic to reliable digital publishers and develop a reputation of a content-safe community
• Establish statistical patterns of non-reliable/reliable content
• Be quick in spotting and flagging unreliable information

Trustworthy News is an entirely new project

SDG Rating

SDG Goals

Goal 9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation