Thought piece: Using Blockchain to End Fake News

1) The concept

My concept is a blockchain built on a permissioned, public, shared system specifically for the Publishing Industry. The blockchain would be specifically focused on managing content created by publishers, newspapers, magazines, down to individual blog posts. This is to recognise that published content is different to User Generated Content, and ‘trusted’ third party content is often the cause of fast spreading disinformation and fake news. The content would be uploaded to the blockchain by permissioned parties and then shared through their digital channels – tracking engagement across multiple channels and platforms in near real-time and with exact allocation and distribution, increasing transparency around where and how the content is being consumed – which in turn could improve content creation and targeting, improving Social Media platform user experience.

In developing this concept, I have focused on 3 platforms; Facebook, Twitter and Google that share a large amount of text based and pre-recorded video content, rather than other platforms including TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram that predominantly focus on multimedia User Generated Content, and would require a different solution.

The Unprecedented Event will have created confusion, panic and fear within our society and global population. At this time, it is imperative that trustworthy, rational information and fact-checked news is published and shared. We have previous experience of the importance of secure information sharing, and the impact of spreading unverified information. ‘2016 was a defining moment for social media platforms. The ongoing shock relating to election interference, computational propaganda and the Cambridge Analytica scandal, combined with deeper concerns about the visibility of the business model for established news media, all conspired to undermine the confidence of citizens and of public authorities in social media platforms.’ (Taylor, E., Walsh, S. & Bradshaw, S.)

The concept discussed in this paper aims to address protecting the level of trust between citizens and public authorities towards social media platforms around sharing news and revolutionise the business model for established news media to create and share high quality content online by rewarding it through a value token scheme, where high value content is rewarded by higher visibility and is more valuable to advertisers – thereby improving the revenue generated through social media platforms by the established news media.

2) Why is it disruptive or transformational?

Combining Social Media platforms and Blockchain is not a new concept, there are a number of existing Decentralised Online Social Networks that run on a blockchain concept and take inspiration from the attention economy and the token economy (Guidi, B).

Researching my concept, I looked at three token based DOSNs; SteemIt, Social X and HyperSpace, and one value rewarded platform; Reddit. SteemIt already has 1 million users and uses their cryptocurrency to reward uses for their published and curated content and focuses on text-based content. I was particularly interested in their cryptocurrency based upvote and category weighted downvote system. SocialX had relevance due to their focus on video content, plus the opportunity for micro payments within the site to licence photos and images. This could be an interesting addition for established news outlets in purchasing licencing for User Generated Content in volatile and fast changing situations like terrorist attacks and protests, where UCG is regularly the first content to circulate. Finally, HyperSpace, which closed 31st October 2019, seemed to fail because users were unable to access or withdraw their tokens. The reward system with no wallet capability created initial interest before the backlash that led to closure. Barbara Guidi reflects in her paper When Blockchain meets Online Social Networks that ‘a rewarding system based on cryptocurrencies seems to change the way of how users interact with social media. Indeed, an approach based on reputation could be a good solution.’

This is seen in the ‘wisdom of the crowd’ value-based reward system seen in Reddit – arguably the most successful blockchain DOSN, with their community points processed through Ethereum and claiming more monthly users than Twitter (Perez, S). However, all of these existing DOSNs predominantly focus on user generated content and using the decentralised system to protect privacy, rather than authenticating factual content from established news sources.

As the established media industry already exists in a paid capacity, I think there is an opportunity to disrupt this offering by combining some of the learnings from SteemIt and SocialX with the value based rewards of Reddit to innovate how establish news sources are integrated through blockchain and shared within Facebook, Twitter and Google. It is transformational because it will be fully integrated with existing Social Media platforms that have 2.4 billion and 340 million active monthly users respectively (Kemp, S.) and Google the has 73% of search engine use (Chaffey, D.)

The concept within this paper would have a rating system, similar to SteemIt’s ‘Plancton–Whale’ ranking, based on the size of the publisher and the quality of their content. Existing publications like the New York Times or the Harvard Business Review would be rated differently to an individual’s blog, based on the amount of content published and the standard of fact checking. However, as content gains traction across the various platforms, its Publisher’s credit rating would have the opportunity to increase or decrease. Views, likes and shares would all have credit value, so regardless of the size of the publisher, good content is rewarded. Instead of money value tokens, high value content creates increase in credit rating and makes you a more valuable person to advertise against.

In order to gain access to the permissioned blockchain however, the Publisher would have to adhere to specific requirements including a minimum time publishing, named journalists and editors content was associated to. This is to prevent bots and spam accounts playing the system. It means that the blockchain would not be completely decentralised but could potentially use AI algorithms to ‘credit check’ applications and verify genuine publishers.

The concept blockchain therefore enables authentic publishers, companies advertising alongside content and the social media platforms to ‘win’ by creating a higher standard of content and building trust, whilst malicious and unverified organisations trying to spread false and harmful information through fake news outlets lose by preventing them from successfully misleading users.

3) The technology selection

I chose blockchain because of its ability to track every interaction, enabling transparent insight into who had written or created the content and where it was published from. The concept that I am putting forward uses Blockchain to prove the validity of the content being shared through chronologically update timestamping and the prevention of distortion, for example deep fake videos, by being cryptographically sealed.

86% of internet users have fallen for fake news at least once (CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey, 2019), with many citing Facebook as a key to this due to fake accounts and content, but 10% of those surveyed also admitted deleting their Twitter accounts due to the spreading of fake news. I theorised that news that was shared from my concept blockchain across Twitter, Facebook and Google would carry an approved stamp highlighting its validity, whilst news content that was not published through the content blockchain would be issued with a warning sign – similar to the fact checking warning issued on Twitter.

Using the World economic Forum decision tree in Blockchain Beyond the Hype, A Practical Framework for Business Leaders, the first question asks if we are trying to remove intermediaries or brokers. I believe this concept pre-empts the intermediaries that are being threatened by Governments and authoritative bodies to curb the spreading of fake news, and also reduce the need for manual content checking at a platform level. Following the decision tree through, the concept only got to question 4, highlighting that because the concept would need millisecond transaction speed (due to the level of user engagement) the solution for this is still in development.

However, with Facebook developing Libra, it looks like there is strong potential for blockchain to become part of many aspects of social media platforms, millisecond transaction speed will be developed to cope with the level of engagement and platforms may be open to engaging with decentralised network options.

4) Stakeholder engagement plan

I recognise that there will be 3 key Stakeholder groups; the social media platforms, the authority bodies, and the publishing bodies.

At first I would approach the Publishing bodies, predominantly large news publishers including Sky, Daily Mail, News Corporation etc, as they have the most to win with this concept, having seen a continuous decrease in newspaper sales and minimal interest in online subscriptions.

Once I received consensus and buy-in from this stakeholder group, I would move on to approaching the social media platforms. I believe it would be important to approach the platforms before any authoritative body to respect their position of self-governance and highlight it as an opportunity with the additional power of the established press behind the concept. The concept would be positioned as an opportunity for the platforms to take further steps to reduce the spread of disinformation and fake news without the platforms having to directly amend their terms, that currently state that they are not responsible for the content that is shared across their services. (Taylor, E., Walsh, S. & Bradshaw, S.)

Finally, I would position the concept as a solution to a number of concerns that Government bodies and authorities have attempted to address since 2016, providing an externally based solution that addresses concerns around tackling fake news and sharing of disinformation through social media. The leverage of having initial buy-in or consideration by the other stakeholders discussed above, I would look to position the concept blockchain to being in line with the EU Code of Practice on Disinformation

5) Unintended consequences

Improved revenue streams for high quality content; with the concept blockchain being able to report all on the transactions of engagement a piece of content has generated, and that a publisher has generated as a whole, Advertisers could bid to appear next to high rated content that targets their key demographics. Whilst this is similar to the type of digital marketing we see now, Advertisers being able to bid on what content they appear alongside (similar to PPC keyword bidding) based on their value rating would reduce the revenue stream for unverified content sources, preventing them from making money from attentionistic activity, extremist views or hate speech, an issue we experienced in 2017 when Google lost millions as advertisers pulled their budgets due to concerns their ads were appearing alongside such content (Guardian, 2017).

A negative unintended consequence however is the subject of censorship. With Publishers having to go through an application process to be included as a verified news source, there will undoubtable be situations where publishers or individuals feel that not being admitted or having their content downgraded is a form of censorship. Process and educational information will have to be widely shared to enable as wide an audience as possible understand the requirements for being a member of the concept blockchain, and why these requirements prevent fake news and the spread of disinformation.

6) Leadership techniques

Regarding this area, I’ve taken influence from Maurzio Piln’s lecture during the elective. Initially, I would start with adoption of the idea, networking comprehensively with all the stakeholders to create strong and trusted channels of communication. I would encourage my team to do the same and over communicate how the concept blockchain will integrate with their platforms, increase quality and trust without platform specific regulation and why they with benefit from it fiscally.

As the concept develops it would be key to set up a forum with stakeholders and senior team leaders to create a fast and agile feedback loop and retain interest and commitment to the concept. As the concepts evolves further, we will need to also facilitate a feedback loop between the publishers and advertisers, to make sure all touchpoints are integrated into the development.

Finally, I was also inspired by Louise Smith’s talk where she discussed the importance of effort matching and motivational influence. As a leader I would be very vocal about the huge opportunity there is to impact the Publishing Industry make sure through story telling we engage and empower the wider team and stakeholders to dare to do something ground-breaking, that builds trust within established new sources and financially stabilises the Publishing Industry for the generations to come.

References:

2019 CIGI-Ipsos Global Survey on Internet Security and Trust. Centre for International Governance Innovation. Available here: https://www.cigionline.org/internet-survey-2019?gclid=Cj0KCQjwoPL2BRDxARIsAEMm9y_pg4MuFhbRskaP2vpXVCMbhI_C6GNjry82S2uIPZBK6cholRL37GwaAnF6EALw_wcB [Accessed 5th June 2020]

Chaffey, D. (2020) Search engine marketing statistics 2020. Smart Insights. Available here: https://www.smartinsights.com/search-engine-marketing/search-engine-statistics/ [Accessed 5th June 2020]

Guidi, B. (2019) When Blockchain meets Online Social Networks.  University of Pisa, Department of Computer Science, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo, Pisa, Italy. Available here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1574119220300195 [Accessed 4th June 2020]

Kemp, S. (2020) DIGITAL 2020: 3.8 Billion People Use Social Media. We Are Social. Available here: https://wearesocial.com/blog/2020/01/digital-2020-3-8-billion-people-use-social-media [Accessed on 5th June 2020]

Mulligan, C., Zhu Scott, J., Warren, S. & Rangaswami, JP. (2018) Blockchain Beyond the Hype, A Practical Framework for Business Leader. World Economic Forum. Available here: https://www.weforum.org/whitepapers/blockchain-beyond-the-hype [Accessed 10th May 2020]

Perez, S. (2019) Reddit’s monthly active user base grew 30% to reach 430M in 2019. TechCrunch. Available here: https://techcrunch.com/2019/12/04/reddits-monthly-active-user-base-grew-30-to-reach-430m-in-2019/#:~:text=Last%20year%2C%20Reddit%20reported%20330,%25%20and%2054%25%2C%20respectively. [Accessed 6th June 2020]

Sallaba, M., Mogg, A. & Gramatke, M. (2017) Blockchain @ Media; A New Game Changer for the Media Industry? Monitor Deloitte. Available here: https://www2.deloitte.com/tr/en/pages/technology-media-and-telecommunications/articles/blockchain-at-media.html [Accessed 6th June 2020]

Solon, O (2017) Google's bad week: YouTube loses millions as advertising row reaches US. The Guardian. Available here: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/25/google-youtube-advertising-extremist-content-att-verizon [Accessed 6th June 2020]

Taylor, E., Walsh, S. & Bradshaw, S. (2018) Industry Responses to the Malicious Use of Social Media. Nato Stratcom. Available here: https://www.stratcomcoe.org/industry-responses-malicious-use-social-media [Accessed 10th May 2020]