Many among us have traded in our daily staple of news content from high-quality editorialized sources such as the pillars of journalism e.g. The New York Times or Time Magazine, or CBS News, to online sources. Several online sources are reputable e.g. The Huffington Post, but a lot of our media consumption comes from citizen journalism.

Content itself is a word that needs to parsed more carefully. Content comes in many forms including but not limited to:

Articles : Short, Medium, and Long form expositions on a particular topic

: Short, Medium, and Long form expositions on a particular topic Images : Pictures of people, places and things

: Pictures of people, places and things Graphics : Graphs, charts, infographics that illustrate a concept or idea

: Graphs, charts, infographics that illustrate a concept or idea Videos : Motion picture either with live camera shots or animations

: Motion picture either with live camera shots or animations Tweets : Short blurbs of text expressing a thought or opinion on a topic that is broadcasted

: Short blurbs of text expressing a thought or opinion on a topic that is broadcasted Comments: These usually are captured in the form of threaded responses/opinions of the aforementioned media formats. There are also commentaries on people, places things through sites such as Yelp or Glassdoor.

Now, where the line begins to blur in citizen journalism is distinguishing opinion from fact. It is a grey area and a very fine line where one can bleed over to the other. This is the epicenter and breeding ground for what is now being called “Fake News.”

“Fake News” is insidious, and the media equivalent of a “con man.” Just take a moment to reflect on this. Each and every day, we make tens if not hundreds of decisions based on what we read from the media. Let’s examine some of these decisions:

Purchasing Decisions : The number of stars we see voted on a product at Amazon.com, may influence our selection of one product versus another.

: The number of stars we see voted on a product at Amazon.com, may influence our selection of one product versus another. Consumption Decisions : Our choice of what movie to watch is shaped by what critics vote on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB.

: Our choice of what movie to watch is shaped by what critics vote on Rotten Tomatoes or IMDB. Educational Decisions : Our choice on which college to attend is significantly influenced by rankings published by publications such as US News & World Report.

: Our choice on which college to attend is significantly influenced by rankings published by publications such as US News & World Report. Voting Decisions : Who we elect as leaders is heavily dependent on the sound bytes from the candidates, color commentary from political pundits, and news stories we read.

: Who we elect as leaders is heavily dependent on the sound bytes from the candidates, color commentary from political pundits, and news stories we read. Food Choices: What food is “good” for you, what is “bad” for you — very much a daily decision in every household.

And the list goes on and on. As you can see, we either passively or actively absorb data from media and then make decisions based on that data. And if for some reason that data is manipulated, then we may make decisions and choices that favor such manipulators.

Why do we as humanity fall for fake news?

At our very core, despite centuries of evolution, we are still animals. We are programmed to have a “herd mentality” and while others may characterize such group dynamics as “Wisdom of the Crowds.” Knowingly or unknowingly, we take the opinions of the crowd as “fact” even though we know at the very core it is simply another perspective. And history has not been kind to the lone factual voice in the crowd versus the misguided masses e.g. Copernicus. We as humans are a perfect target for “fake news.”

How do we prevent fake news?

There is no single silver bullet solution to eradicate this problem. However, there are some effective methods to stunt the spread of fake news. It comes back to the word REPUTATION. Why do we trust age old institutions such as the The Economist or Time Magazine? We trust them based on their reputation for high quality journalism which can be relied to be accurate, precise, well researched content. And when they do make mistakes, they publish an Errata to accept their fault and even in some cases publish a public apology. These publications also draw a clear line of demarcation between fact and opinion, by classifying the opinions of Editors as such. This way, the readers don’t have the cognitive overhead of separating fact from opinion.

Do content authors have a method of quantifying reputation online?

While some publishers provide readers with the ability to vote for an author to act as a measure of their reputation, the vote itself is not certified and calls into question the reputation of the metric. By and large, many publishers enable the posting of comments and articles without a second thought as to the reputation of such authors.

This cavalier attitude by publishers sometimes has devastating impacts on businesses and individuals. The reputations of many honest, legitimate enterprises have been tarnished by fake news posted on restaurant rating sites, or employer rating sites, or service provider rating sites.

This begs the question — is it time to have a better metric to qualify the content we consume based on the reputation of its author(s). Imagine a restaurant review by 2 people — one with solid reputation, and the other with a dubious reputation of a troll who goes around bad mouthing the competition to drive more traffic to his own establishment. Now, consumers of such commentary, can decide whose commentary carries more weight. Likewise, publishers can establish scoring system that provide a higher weight to more reputable authors, lower weight to authors who do not (yet) carry a high score.

Detractors of such systems often criticize that scoring authors tends to side with big business and puts an end to citizen journalism. Alas, there is a solution to that as well. What if devised a solution, where an author gets upvotes for good posts and downvotes for poor contributions, accumulating a score that reflects the consensus of the readers. This will democratize the scoring process in the sense that, irrespective of the institution an individual may work for, scoring is purely based on the perceived value of one’s contribution.

To date, execution of such a system as the one described above has been difficult. Why? As consumers of web content and also as citizen journalists, we visit hundreds of websites ranging from sports to finance, weather to social media — Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Forbes.com, ESPN.com, Weather.com, etc. As a result, there is no universal ability to track an author or person across these media silos as each site operates as a distinct website. In short, there is no overarching identity that transcends these website boundaries.

With the advent of decentralized computing, that conundrum can now be overcome. If we tokenize the reputation of an author and that reputation follows that author throughout the web, then that reputation can be leveraged by readers, and publishers alike. This also enables the author to develop a reputation across sites — the only people who wouldn’t want that are purveyors of fake news.

One startup, Sapien (token SPN), is an example of a startup that is attempting to combat the problem of fake news on the Internet following the prescription laid out above. Reputation-based tokenization is an effective countermeasure to the problem of fake news that plagues the Internet at large.

In this article, we have seen the deep impact media has in our daily lives, and its far reaching consequences at both an individual, family unit and even political stage. This problem can be addressed with Blockchain technology, and the use of decentralized networks and tokens (such as Sapien) offer new hope for this global issue.

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