How Blockchain Can Combat Fake News and Ensure Truth

Basics

Blockchain is built on trust. This trust is programmed through smart contracts, which don’t account for emotional factors. They operate strictly within the set parameters set, and these parameters can be measured and controlled.

Secure and Unchangeable Data

To run a contract, all predefined conditions must be met. For associations that respect user trust, and for the users or clients who may own digital assets issued by those associations, having a voice is crucial. Blockchain enables this in reality. Owning an asset means access to services, dividends, decision-making influence, and more. Ownership on the blockchain cannot be disputed or arbitrarily revoked. Once an event is recorded, it stays there permanently. Its history remains intact.

Preserving Historical Data Matters

This is, by the way, a fundamental issue in global history — not even so much the interpretation of past events, but the preservation of records themselves. In the 20th century alone, around 25–30% of documents and archives that existed before WW I were permanently lost due to occupations, bombings, and migration.

Blockchain’s Potential for Official Records

Blockchain offers a solution. It can serve as a platform for recording events confirmed and verified by authorized bodies, forming a permanent, tamper-proof database that future generations can rely on. But this requires institutional will above all. We are already closer than ever to seeing global-level adoption of stablecoins, and using blockchain to secure historical facts could be the next step.

Speak only when you feel that your words are better than your silence.

People’s wisdom.

Anti-fake news agency

Blockchain opens up the possibility of public data storage with guaranteed integrity.

One of my favorite conceptual projects has always been an anti-fake news agency. At its core lies the idea of delivering unaltered facts and building consensus around the legitimacy of reported events, whether for the reader, the viewer, or the listener. To implement this, we would likely need a dedicated blockchain, an Application-focused Chain, or a specialized distributed ledger.

But there are main challenges:

1. Anti-fake news validators.
Who can be trusted enough by a wide community to verify and validate facts? Trust is tricky, it means very different things across cultures. What’s accepted as fact in one region may be questioned in another. However, this mostly applies to traditional communication models. Blockchain operates on a global, digital scale.
Asynchronous communication has existed since the invention of writing and expanded with postal systems. With email, it became ubiquitous. Now, in the era of social media, digital communication never stops, linking people worldwide in a constant, decentralized flow of interaction.

2. The volume of content.
Every second, people all over the world publish millions of pieces of content — videos, articles, blog posts, photos. It’s impossible to process everything, especially in a divided world where every individual has their own lens on events. Universalizing perspectives isn’t realistic, but standardizing trustworthy sources for users to reference is achievable.

The anti-fake news platform could be further strengthened by integrating a prediction market mechanism. And no, it doesn’t have to involve economic incentives. A well-designed reputation system would be enough. Over time, accounts with high reputation scores could gain access to new functions, such as validation, or their ratings could serve as public trust markers in the platform interface.

Role of the Media

News agencies, like any form of mass media, are powerful tools for influencing public consciousness. Through words, we build messages. And while the rise of mobile technology has made video content more popular than ever, even video carries a message.

Some researches say that a combination of blockchain, AI and crowdsourcing are good for fact-checking through validation of a community-based truth and data integrity. A hybrid storing of metadata on-chain and full content off-chain using cryptographic verifiable methods ensure scalable and traceable, tamper-proof requirements for an anti-fake news agency.

It’s important to remember, there is no good without bad. This means that fighting false or distorted information should be an integral part of the system. And for that to work, everyone’s interests should be aligned.

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