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Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

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Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#91

Post by Vinnl »

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…

Hi Nick, thanks for answering questions in here.

Elsewhere you said

> We've further refined this idea by creating an independent non-profit body known as the Civil Council made up of well respected journalists and academics that can step in in situations where a vote was clearly motivated by political bias and not made in good faith.

Isn't this still centralisation? Either the Civil Council would not be necessary, in which case it's odd that you're setting it up, or it's still a centralised entity that has the final say and you might just as well skip the blockchain - or is my understanding incorrect/incomplete?

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#92

Post by kmonad »

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.…

How is the BBC of all "the worst" element of public media? Compared to what? I have not yet seen a better public media outlet (there are some good pan-European collaborative projects but nothing of the scope of the BBC).

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#93

Post by monadgonad »

kmonad wrote: post #92
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.…

How is the BBC of all "the worst" element of public media? Compared to what? I have not yet seen a better public media outlet (there are some good pan-European collaborative projects but nothing of the scope of the BBC).

I think it was just meant as an example of public media, not the worst of it.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#94

Post by okay_nick »

Vinnl wrote: post #91
okay_nick wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hi Nick, thanks for answering questions in here. Elsewhere you said > We've further refined this idea by creating an independent non-profit body known as the Civil Council made up of well respected journalists and academics that can step in in situations where a vote was clearly motivated by political bias and not made in good faith. Isn't this still centralisation? Either the Civil Council would not be necessary, in…

I think of the relationship between the voters and the Council to be like a 2-branch government with checks and balances. The voters are the legislative branch, but their decisions can be overturned by the judicial branch (the Council). Those judicial decisions can themselves be overturned by a supermajority of the legislative branch.

Decentralization is a spectrum, not a binary. While a centralized entity plays a part in the process, ultimate authority rests with the voters. The Council also has a plan to decentralize itself over time and voters will eventually be able to vote on removing or replacing the Council.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#95

Post by okay_nick »

root_axis wrote: post #90
okay_nick wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

Since the registry is public, it would be very easy to write tools like a browser extension that would handle validating against the registry, preventing the type of fraud you're talking about. More generally, there's an interesting project called MetaCert that is doing just that (fraud/phishing prevention) using their own cryptoeconomic incentive system.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#96

Post by freeone3000 »

prolikewhoa wrote: post #62
geofft wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obvious when the Washington Post writes articles about Amazon that there's a conflict of interest. They definitely write them, but I don't remember anyone sharing any stories from them about e.g. the HQ2 process. People know to look elsewhere. And conversely, the moment the Post publishes a news (not opinion) article about how every city should want to be HQ2, or worse, mentions it off-hand in an article about s…

How many people are actually informed that the Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos? How many people know that Jeff Bezos has contracts with the CIA[1] & sits on a pentagon board[2]? I doubt many. It's one of the few "left" wing newspapers I refuse to read for the reasons above. I'm not arguing for this blockchain solution, I think it makes things worse exactly as you said. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technolog…

Every time the Washington Post mentions Bezos, or a company he owns, even in the abstract (for instance, in this spaceflight article, which mentions blue origin: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/15/f... ), they say that Jeff Bezos owns the washington post, in those exact words.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#97

Post by shepardrtc »

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…

> they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars

To control a central hub of communication for society, that's pocket change.

> we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors

If you're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, gaming the process properly won't cost much more.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#98

Post by drb91 »

jwfxpr wrote: post #81
drb91 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The coverage itself is acceptable. It’s the way the headlines are written to subtly nudge tone in ways that alter perception of the front page (ie clickbait headlines) and the opinion section (most of those people I don’t give a damn about and I actively resent their continued employment.... anywhere. Get a damn blog.). In my understanding, both of these thing fall into the category of editorializing.

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#99

Post by lazerpants »

cabaalis wrote: post #46

I often click a bunch of links on here and receive a "Sorry, you've exceeded the free limit" message. Why can't I dump $5 into an account on NYT and then be able to click "I want to read this, use my tab." I'm not talking about a subscription. I'm talking about a "buy 10 reads" which I would absolutely use. I will not subscribe.

You could use Blendle.

blendle.com

Re: Goodbye, Denver Post. Hello, Blockchain

#100

Post by walkerfly »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #88
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…

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…

Hi, I'm also an engineer at Civil. I would describe it more as staking access, it's a way to ensure that all those who play have skin in the game. I don't believe that bias is something you either have or don't or that bad outcomes always come from bad intentions. Bias is endemic of the system itself and I don't believe through any effort you could remove it. We are working hard to ensure that those who initially own CVL have the best intentions, but intentions are not a perfect guard against bad outcomes. The purpose of using TCR and tieing votes to a token is to align the rules of the system to the behaviors we hope to promote. Token holders participate in an economically incentivized game where they are rewarded for predicting whether the rest of the community will find the listing to be inside the guidelines of the civil constitution. While these ideas are not entirely new, they have not been well tested in this application. I'm sure that there will be aspects of the system that will need refinement as we learn more, but my hope is that, despite the system's shortcomings, it will represent a dramatic improvement over the status quo. There can be no question that this is a difficult problem to solve, and likely one that has no perfect solution. I like our solution because it does not intentionally privilege the opinion of the "blue-chip" institutions over new or small operations as many other companies in the space are doing.

-- Walker Flynn

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