How technology can level playing field defeat propaganda and increase transparency
By: Denis Sivichev
Tags: Propaganda, Journalism, Verdict Platform, Media Criticism

Our solution is an online platform that connects information consumers (readers) and mass media in its various forms. Our vision is to elevate readers above their current silent selves and turn them into conscious media consumers while providing media with additional sources of financing the quantity of which will be directly related to the quality of their work. All of this can be achieved without changing for people interact with media and consume information in their daily lives, we do not plan to introduce any artificial barriers between readers and their favorite media, our platform comes into play as a layer that helps media consumers make a difference.

Interesting fact: according to publicly available data, the Russian government’s spending on state-owned and pro-government media amounts to 85 bn roubles per year. Creating an alternative financing mechanism that is transparent and controlled by society in order to challenge the existing one is of utmost importance.

Let’s start outlining our platform’s capabilities from the most important function: readers will be able to monitor mass media for deletion and/or redaction of materials on media sites and other content-publishing platforms. It means that no investigation or news about corruption and crime will go missing without a trace. The editorial team will, naturally, still be able to edit their materials (which is part and parcel of journalists’ work, I can attest to that personally as an editor who knows just how many mistakes some authors can make), but published materials will still be monitored, and journalists will know that every word in their articles carries a certain weight and will be scrutinized by the public.

Our platform’s users will be able to issue consolidated warnings to media integrated on our platform. The users will have the capacity to both supervise and co-finance the media. For E.g. if a user involved with Vedomosti through financing notices that an article about a criminal investigation is deleted by the media, he can issue a publicly visible warning to the media in just a few simple clicks. Should the majority of his fellow co-owners involved with the media through our platform agree with the user, the media could become subject to penalizing measures. What kind of measures? There are a few possibilities, and while we have ideas on how to incentivize media to collateralize their responsibility towards users involved with them via the platform, we lean towards giving readers a degree of control over the remuneration of authors, journalists, and editors, and even allowing the public to determine whether they’ll continue working in a media or not. The exact list of penalizing measures applicable to individual media integrated with the platform will be determined on an individual basis and will represent, first of all, a public and transparent decision based on the degree of integration with our platform, and secondly — we’ll make a point of consulting the leading professionals of the media industry in order to determine what kinds of measures to focus on in order to make the whole industry healthier.

Another function that brings together readers and media on our platform to the benefit of both parties, is the consultative function. As mentioned above, the media is perfectly capable of ignoring certain pressing issues such as public protests or investigations of corruption, intentionally or not — the fact still stands. We intend to grant the readers who choose to co-finance media to create requests and proposals for their favorite media to cover important news and topics. Linguistic algorithms of our platform will process and consolidate such requests from individual users into “tickets” that can be voted on. Should the media ignore such requests without a valid reason, they could see their financing cut and reputation suffer.

To sum it all up, our platform users will be able to monitor (we will have parsing tech in place to assist them, as well as certain incentives for optional manual work) media publications, see if they are edited or deleted, as well as guide their favorite media in the direction that will help it serve the public’s best interests, co-finance media to allow journalists pursue important investigations and projects, and directly or indirectly judge their performance and integrity, decide whether to penalize a certain media or reward a certain person for outstanding work.

One of our platform’s key features is its flexibility. Any media or a blogger can get a tailored solution as far as depth of integration with the platform and its users are concerned. The advantages of our platform are fundamental, but the challenge is to help the general public to understand that reliable and well-presented information is as important as clean drinking water, something no one hesitates to pay for. Now it’s in everyone’s best interest to realize that it’s one’s civil duty to get involved with the mass media, financially (even $30–50 makes a difference) or otherwise, lest they want to surrender the whole media industry to large corporations and the government, and consume false and low-quality information from non-transparent media they have no influence over.

Ideologically our platform takes over the British model of the mass media market, improving upon it profoundly and carefully. We attempt to replicate it on the basis of modern technology, most notably — blockchain, and to provide our platform users with critically important rights and privileges.

Stance on the government

Our project is non-political, it does not have the goal of opposing legitimate, publicly-approved mechanisms of the mass media market regulation by the government, which existing laws embody. Our platform represents an overall improvement of the existing government regulation without conflicting with it or the national security interests of any state.

Our primary goal is to help society to regain control over the mass media and increase the industry’s transparency. This kind of control is vital for people in general, especially in today’s reality when information warfare can spill over to reality and lead to actual human casualties in the interest of small groups of people.