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Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

nytimes.com

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Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#81

Post by jwfxpr »

drb91 wrote: post #50
pudo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can buy an online subscription.

For instance, i like some journalists on the NYT, but i think i’m supporting poor journalism more than good journalism by funding them at all. The editorial independence is the source of the problem there.

Editorial independence refers to an outlet's freedom to cover topics of their choice with the coverage they judge best. So, is your concern the quality of the reporting, which is an problem of poor editorial practice, or the focus of the coverage, which is a problem of poor editorial independence? Or is it simply that you don't agree with a lot of the coverage?

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#82

Post by mirimir »

cagenut wrote: post #67
casefields wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about a coin for pedophiles? I know it’s extreme but it’s the only group in society that’s vilified even by health professionals so they’re really hidden.

that would be bitcoin

Maybe. But also a honeypot for clueless pedophiles.

Seriously, though, pedophiles make great canaries. Everyone hates them, even those who create and manage systems for security and privacy. And police love to brag about busting them. For example, we learned about Freenet vulnerabilities and CMU's Tor exploit through pedophile busts.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#83

Post by okay_nick »

lgregg wrote: post #80
okay_nick wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns. The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom follows well understood journalistic standards (more information about these standards can be found in our "constitution" - https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460... ). We use a system known as a Token Curated Registry ( https://medium.com/@il…

> TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. Can you give any examples you can share? You have state/non-state actors which have mass resources to use to their advantage directly or indirectly (e.g. troll farms). What prevents people from buying thes…

First, acquiring enough tokens to singlehandedly determine outcomes of votes is incredibly expensive. The simple act of buying tokens increases demand on the tokens (which have a fixed supply) thus increasing the market price. By the time a bad actor has acquired 51% (or close to it) of the tokens, they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Second, even if they are able to acquire some huge percentage of the tokens, the public nature of the blockchain means we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors (if not by name, at least by account). The community can then decide to "fork" the bad actors out of the system (Essentially the community can deploy a new token that is identical to the old token except the bad actors' account balances are zeroed out. If everyone decides to switch to using the new token, the bad actors' old tokens become worthless and they just spent millions of dollars to slightly inconvenience people).

Specific details of our initial token distribution (how many tokens does 1 ETH buy, etc) are forthcoming, but after that initial distribution, the price of the tokens is determined by the market forces. It's those market forces that (theoretically) make the TCR actually "work" as token holders are incentivized to make the registry as "good" as possible and increase demand for the token (because people want to be on the registry).

-- Nick Reynolds

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#84

Post by okay_nick »

wycs wrote: post #5

Like Steemit, this cannot incentivize production long term unless it has more efficient means of monetization, which it doesn’t. Steem subsidizes content through inflation of a token during a speculative mania. To put it mildly, this is not sustainable. Though the founders did astonishingly well on their exit. Putting a newspaper on a blockchain, to the extent the idea is even coherent, does not exempt it from the ec…

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

While our TCR will not solve the economics of journalism on its own, we believe it will help provide transparency into the inner workings of newsrooms and increase media literacy in ways that could encourage more people to fund journalism organizations. Furthermore, we think it can vastly improve discoverability especially for smaller (but still ethical and reliable) news organizations.

From there, it's about giving newsrooms tools to run and monetize their business how they want. For some this might look like traditional newspaper subscriptions, for others we might see more experimental monetization schemes that are only feasible on the blockchain (such as bounties).

-- Nick Reynolds

p.s. - Have you looked into TCRs generally? There's a fair amount of overlap with prediction markets, you might be interested in learning more about the incentive system.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#85

Post by okay_nick »

root_axis wrote: post #49

Like in most cases a blockchain is useless here. Why not just used a centralized system? Nothing is gained from decentralization since the organization has to be trusted to recognize the voting power of the tokens either way. Totally pointless.

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil.

I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Once the Registry contract is deployed on the blockchain, it will continue to function and provide utility no matter what happens to the "Civil Media Company". No involvement on our part is needed to "recognize the voting power" as any individual, entity, or website can use the information contained in the registry however they want. A social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to render a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization that is whitelisted.

Happy to help clarify if you still have questions.

-- Nick Reynolds

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#86

Post by creyes »

okay_nick wrote: post #83
lgregg wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. Can you give any examples you can share? You have state/non-state actors which have mass resources to use to their advantage directly or indirectly (e.g. troll farms). What prevents people from buying thes…

First, acquiring enough tokens to singlehandedly determine outcomes of votes is incredibly expensive. The simple act of buying tokens increases demand on the tokens (which have a fixed supply) thus increasing the market price. By the time a bad actor has acquired 51% (or close to it) of the tokens, they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. Second, even if they are able to acquire…

I'm not sure this guy has heard of the Koch brothers

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#87

Post by unclebucknasty »

TangoTrotFox wrote: post #31
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> who exactly do you think owns the current media companies in the US? Point being we can answer this question. If you put ownership on the blockchain, we can’t. It’s exactly what we have today, but worse.

This is shifting the goal posts. The point is we have a media that's already well under the thumb of 'rich people', to use the phrase of the person I originally responded to. And so comparing any idea to an ideal of an independent media free of this control is rather disingenuous. For your shift, is anonymizing control in exchange for a clear ledger of control a bad deal? I'm not sure. Seems like an interesting idea…

You have a good point, but that doesn't make this proposal any more viable.

>given the current state of our media I'm more than happy to see any idea trying to change the game.

Sounds like an intuitive statement until you really think about it for a second. Then, you realize that it's a reckless and possibly dangerous approach to problem-solving.

If you start down the solution path by asking the question "how could things get any worse?", then it's very likely that you'll find out.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#88

Post by unclebucknasty »

okay_nick wrote: post #77
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #4

> People who purchase the CVL token, a form of cryptocurrency, will have a say concerning the projects hosted by Civil — meaning that they can vote on whether one of its websites violates the company’s journalism standards, which are outlined in the Civil Constitution This features the worst elements of public ( e.g. the BBC ), private ( e.g. the Wall Street Journal ) and patronage ( e.g. the Washington Post ) media.…

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns. The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom follows well understood journalistic standards (more information about these standards can be found in our "constitution" - https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460... ). We use a system known as a Token Curated Registry ( https://medium.com/@il…

Nick, it sounds like you mean-well, but it is very difficult to imagine how linking what is essentially the right to make a moral judgment to one's ability to pay for that right will turn out well.

>We are also working very hard to ensure that our tokens are distributed to parties that are going to use them in good faith

If you have the ability to determine who would use them in good faith, then why do they need to pay for the privilege? Also, this implies that those who would explicitly use them in bad faith may still obtain influence. And, where does this leave the people who would use them in good faith but cannot afford to buy them?

In general and in spite of precautions you describe, it has the distinct feel of buying access, which is not something of which the world, and certainly journalism, is in short supply.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#89

Post by perl4ever »

apo wrote: post #43

Ridiculous story. When was the last time you heard of a newspaper going under because its stories weren't "written permanently into the secure digital ledger known as the blockchain"? Newspapers are dying because other kinds of companies ate their advertising revenue. We can add the Denver Post to a list of old-guard companies desperately grabbing for blockchain straws on their slide to oblivion (Long Island Iced Tea…

I believe I've seen claims that classified ads used to support newspapers, and the internet took that away.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#90

Post by root_axis »

okay_nick wrote: post #85
root_axis wrote: post #49

Like in most cases a blockchain is useless here. Why not just used a centralized system? Nothing is gained from decentralization since the organization has to be trusted to recognize the voting power of the tokens either way. Totally pointless.

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil. I'm not really sure what you mean by this. Once the Registry contract is deployed on the blockchain, it will continue to function and provide utility no matter what happens to the "Civil Media Company". No involvement on our part is needed to "recognize the voting power" as any individual, entity, or website can use the information contained in the registry however they want. A social…

> A social media site, for example, could query the registry and decide to render a "credibility badge" when displaying links from a news organization that is whitelisted.

Yes, the key word is "decide". To use your "credibility badge" example, an organization could ostensibly behave like they accurately respect the registry while also surreptitiously ignoring the registry in situations that suit them. You might say, "well those organizations will develop a reputation for dishonesty", which might be true if they get caught, but also isn't at all different from the status quo today where selective reporting and partisan bias are bemoaned loudly and often by every side regarding every issue.

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