R09 Journo
"Liberty, the refusal to be silent, the revelation of corruption and evil, the reinforcement of fairness - this is the lifeblood of journalism. And journalism is the lifeblood of freedom."
- Kate Adie, Chief News Correspondent, BBC News
Strategic Intent​
An App that supports journalists in collecting, receiving, collaborating on and verifying source media, verifiably logging the input of each contributor and having attribution (and possibly royalties) go to everyone in the chain that helped get the word out.
Tactical Intent​
Below the generic term of 'user' is used throughout. This refers to both journalists, those who submit information for the use by journalists, and private groups, there's no distinction. A group acts as a virtual user, and consists of multiple users and/or multiple groups.
The App would have the following characteristics:
- Allow users to submit posts for the attention of other users, allowing the submitter to control (if they wish) which user or group of users the post is submitted to. The submissions would be anonymous by default unless two users have made a connection and agreement prior to the post. Posts can be submitted to specific user or broadcast to all.
- Allow users to form groups ('trusted circles'). Groups are built from users with a connection, and in a similar manner to the above submit as a group. Again, anonymity is by default. E.g. a group may be "The Financial Times", "Climate Change Activists" etc, where the internal connections are assumed to be trusted and where it publishes and interacts with other users as a group.
- Allow a user to make a prior connection with another user, allowing an agreement to be attached to that connection and possibly a trust weighting.
- Allow users to browse the posts either directed at them or broadcast. Posts come with meta information.
- Provide a method of recording meta data on a post and interigating that meta data. Meta data is verifiable and indelible and could include: date/time, public key of user (and therefore their identity if that has been provided to the reader), current reputation of the user, independent verification of that post by others including cross referencing with out posts, assessment of the current reputation of the user, and the verifiers of the post and linking to posts as proposed by other users including reference to outside sources.
- Provide a method for the tracking of reputation which both aggregates a score for ease of use, and allows drilling down into previous posts and the previous use of those posts. For journalists, this requires a link out to the real world publications in which that post has been cited.
- Provide a method of anonymously proving identity. Similar to a Public Notary, this is likely to involve the use of a third party service that verifies the credentials of a user and provides a note to that effect without publishing the material used in the verification. The reputation of the Notary would be attached to the proof of identity, allowing users to consider whether or not to consider it as accurate.
- Similarly, provide a method of publicly proving identity through the Notary service, thereby proving credentials.
- Provide a method (anonymous if the user has not chosen to reveal their identity) of paying royalties for the use of the post contents, or of agreeing under which circumstances and license the material can be used.
- Provide a method for supporting users in advance of a post for work they are currently undertaking which they intend to publish. Such advance payments are likely to be help in escrow against publication and verification, but do not necessarily need to.
- Provide a method for Journalists to publish material which directly cites other material on the App, which allows a drill down to that primary material, and the reputation of the submitters/journalists that are being cited.
- Provide a method for Journalists to publish data, the release of which is delayed but the fact of the actual publication date and the contents are verifiable. Delay includes a timed delay (publish in two weeks time e.g.), a deadman delay (unless you here otherwise by this date, publish it) and a trigger delay. For a trigger delay, the post and supporting material is recorded indelibly but not published without a further step by the author releasing that material. A post may also be published, but the supporting material held back on any type of delay.
- Provide a method, controlled by the agreements between users, for the aggregation or imbedding of posts on a public website, with a link back to the App where a reader may, once a user, make use of the verification and reputation tools.
- Provide a method of editting a post after the fact and having those edits recording, alongside the original, for viewing. Editting may also come with contextual information (e.g. an explanatory piece, an apology for inaccurate information and so forth.)
- Provide a method for adding context to a post, where the context can also be time delayed, deadman delayed or triggered.
- Provide tools or links to tools for the coordination between users of the creation of posts. E.g. this may include text messages, uploading recorded conversations, uploading primary source material and so forth. Granularity should be such that each individual piece of information can be protected through permissions: anonymous, referenced through a Notary, public.
- Provide a system of NFT generation for each post, each contribution, and the aggregation of those contributions to larger works. NFTs are to be linked ultimated to users, and where linked to groups should include some governance around ownership as agreed by the group. Aggregation implies fractional ownership, and so some method is also required for fractional ownership and governance (right to sell e.g.) between those with a stake in that NFT.
- Provides a method for displaying NFTs as part of the reputation of a user for use in the system or outside. Fractional ownership and therefore fractional reputation needs to be handled (e.g. a junior member of a team should not be able to take credit to a piece that they had only a minor role in.) Similarly, a method for the fractional ownership of NFTs to be agreed in advance within a group needs to be in place.
- All of the above to be run on Interblock, inheritting its capabilities in terms of resilience and permanance.