A recent bestseller “Confessions of a Media Manipulator” by Ryan Holiday sheds a light on the dark side of the internet and the way in which people consume news and interact with each other online — and its not pretty. One of the important points he describes is that websites are only interested in traffic (i.e. clicks) and the content proven to draw the most traffic is in fact content that makes people angry. This is unfortunate, because the anger driven stories that dominate the internet bring out the ugly side in us and we then go on to do things that we normally wouldn’t do, like destroy other people’s lives.

Another recent book “So You’ve Been Publicly Shamed” by Jon Ronson also goes into very specific detail about the way people’s lives have been severely damaged by the pitchforks mobs that mercilessly attack people online. Jon Ronson focused more on the way that the internet’s openness makes it so easy for people to be attacked, whereas Holiday focuses on the actual outlets (blogs) and the way that content is cycled and manipulated in a deliberate manner. Both writers bring attention to a very important problem in our modern world but neither one of the writers offers an immediately applicable antidote to this disease. And up until now, no one else has really attempted to address this issue either — Enter panacea.video.

Panacea.video just launched this summer, with the mission of “Making the World More Civilized. Transforming the way we interact.” The goal of this site is not only to encourage more civilized and constructive interaction on the internet but to help address many other problems that are not being solved. For example, Panacea.video hosts the worlds first ever platform which allows people, seen on video or being accused in the news for doing something wrong, a place to come and speak to the world from a location that’s most comfortable for them.

Ever since the invention of the printing press, media outlets have exploited news for their own advantage, often solely for profit, while people whose lives get destroyed have very few ways to defend themselves. Modern technology may have finally presented a solution to this centuries old dilemma in countering both inaccurate reporting as well as life-destroying coverage, such as this teenage girl who committed suicide after being publicly shamed online — if she had visited Panacea Live perhaps she’d still be alive today.

Panacea not only offers people an outlet to come and defend themselves to the world but to also provide new perspectives/evidence, to seek constructive solutions, to apologize, to speak directly to others in real-time or to bring in other parties to speak on their behalf.

On top of the Panacea Live feature, Panacea encourages people around the world to record videos of people committing wrongdoing — video footage is usually a much more evidence-based form of reporting news, versus the gossip and rumors and opinions that dominate most media outlets.

Of course videos don’t always tell the entire story which is why Panacea members and the audience to get involved and taking on a proactive role in each story in order to help find the truth and present constructive solutions. There are other features and objectives built into panacea.video but most importantly it aims to encourage a more civilized world and more civilized interaction and reporting online.

The advantages and opportunities that the internet has provided our world are too many to quantify however we should also stop and acknowledge some of the negative trends that have been developing, simultaneously. We should realize that many of the news outlets and news providers deliberately encourage very uncivilized behavior and they bring out the violent and vicious side of us — it’s a good thing that a site has finally emerged to encourage more civility online. Help it grow and maybe other sites across the internet will catch on and join in.