Running head: HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 1

Erasmus Mundus Master’s Joint Degree

Journalism, Media and Globalisation

Joint degree

A Decentralized Future: How Blockchain Technology

Contributes to Media Accountability

Tanja Kunesch

Student ID: 12367818

Master’s Thesis

Graduate School of Communication

Master’s programme Communication Science

Supervisor: dr. Judith Möller

June 3rd, 2019

Word Count: 8931

Note: A word count of maximum 9000 was agreed upon with the supervisor to allow for a

more explorative and in-depth analysis of this new concept HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 2

Abstract

This study illuminates the implications of blockchain technology for online media accountability practices. After demonstrating how blockchains structurally comply with key factors for accountability, a qualitative content analysis of several whitepapers of blockchain based journalistic platforms as well as of semi-structured interviews with experts working with blockchain journalism explores the technology’s application for media accountability.

It was found that blockchains can overcome some of the challenges of online accountability practices while they serve as a tool for implementing these through decentralization and community empowerment, leading to a new concept of decentralized accountability.

Moreover, such a model changes the responsibilities of journalists and the public, and results in the need of further research and self-reflection of the profession itself. Even though there are still many obstacles to overcome for media accountability practices based on blockchain technology, discussions about new online models are imperative and sooner or later, journalism will need to embrace some kind of (blockchain) technology to survive in the digital era.

Keywords: blockchain technology, media accountability, online practices

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 3

A Decentralized Future: How Blockchain Contributes to Media Accountability

The rise of the Internet has undoubtedly challenged journalism in many ways. New mass media technologies have battled traditional media industries’ control over framing, agenda setting and reach (Hayes, Singer & Ceppos, 2007). Social media platforms are becoming a crucial source of information, while accuracy and fact-checking of stories seem to be less of a priority in a time when speed and quantity compete with quality for the sake of advertisement revenues and clickbait. While new practices have allowed the public to take an increasingly active part in the production of media content, this has also increased the number of stakeholders involved in media accountability processes (Lauk & Kuś, 2012). At the same time, media legitimacy is deteriorating due to eroding public trust and lack of effective accountability practices (Heikkilä et al., 2012). McQuail (1997) has already predicted that the challenge of regulating new electronic media could ignite a crisis of media accountability to society. A solution is needed and it might come in form of a technology itself: the blockchain.

Introduced by many as the technology changing the future, blockchain sparks interest in a growing number of diverse fields to improve their way of transaction and communication. So far, there are quite a few studies focusing on the revolutionary aspect of blockchain (Swan, 2015; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). While the explorations of its applications for media and journalism are quite scarce in academia, there are some structural intersections between blockchain and media accountability that imply the potential use of the technology for accountability practices and are imperative to explore. Blockchains promise the independence from outer pressures such as censorship or financial dependencies from ads and function without central authority while empowering its users through public access and complete transparency (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). These promises of a press free from outer pressures correspond to crucial elements of online media accountability practices and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 4 incentivize an exploration of blockchain’s structural potential to contribute to media accountability. Hence I propose the following research question:

RQ: How can blockchain technology contribute to media accountability?

To answer this, I will give a brief overview of the concepts of blockchain and media accountability and their intersections, after which I will present the methodology of my qualitative research. Subsequently, I will present the findings derived from a content analysis of whitepapers from blockchain-applied platforms as well as from semi-structured interviews with professionals having knowledge of blockchain journalism. Lastly, I will discuss these findings in the light of the current academic literature and point to their broader implications and relevance for future research.

Towards a Model of Media Accountability Practices Enforced Through Blockchain

Blockchain journalism has not gotten much attention yet in the academic field. Due to its new emergence, theories about blockchain journalism are quite scarce and appear to be very limited. Therefore, it is even more crucial to start exploring this concept right from the beginning and stimulate the development of new theories, which is the aim of this research.

While the concept itself is quite simple as it refers to nothing more but journalism based on blockchain technology, an exposition of its implementations proves to be more difficult. To gain a comprehensive understanding of how blockchains can contribute to media accountability in the digital era, it is crucial to first examine the essence of this technology as blockchains, due to their structure, already provide many key elements for media accountability.

Blockchain

The hitherto most famous application of blockchain technology has been the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, established by the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 (Tapscott

& Tapscott, 2016). Blockchain itself is nothing more than

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 5

a distributed ledger representing a network consensus of every transaction that

has ever occurred. Like the World Wide Web of information, it’s the World

Wide Ledger of value - a distributed ledger that everyone can download and

run on their personal computer. (Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016, p. 7)

It is basically a list of records, stored by blocks which are immutable and, once added to the chain, can neither be deleted nor rearranged due to the public time stamp of each block

(Casino, Dasaklis & Patsakis, 2019). Swan (2015) suggests thinking about the blockchain as another kind of thing like the Internet, i.e., “a comprehensive information technology” (ix).

She sees it as a new model to coordinate any kind of human transaction on a global scale.

Uploading and disseminating journalistic products is one example of such a transaction that makes these products not only permanent and immutable, but also verifiable for the audience who then can hold the media to account, if necessary.

Working process. The creation of a blockchain network starts with the original

(called genesis) block, serving as an anchor. People part of the blockchain network are connected through a peer-to-peer network. Miners are some of the network members who listen to requests by someone wanting to send a transaction and record these into the block. A block lists all of the transactions, grouped and recorded by the miners during a fixed amount of time (Funk, Ridel, Ankel & Cabrera, 2018). When the block is completed, the full nodes

(each computer connected to the network that verifies all the blockchain rules) are responsible to determine whether the transactions are valid, and should be uploaded to the chain by linking it to the previous block (Casino, Dasaklis & Patsakis, 2019). When the data in the block is approved and added to the chain, the miners inform all members of the change and all new data is available to every user of the network (Funk, Ridel, Ankel & Cabrera,

2018). Now this data cannot be edited nor deleted anymore, and each full node continuously downloads a copy of the whole blockchain (Swan, 2015). To record a transaction into blocks

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 6 as well as to add new blocks, the full nodes need to engage in a high-level mathematical competition (Funk, Ridel, Ankel & Cabrera, 2018; Ivancsics, 2019; Tapscott & Tapscott,

2016) of which an explanation would go far beyond the scope and intention of this research, and is most importantly not crucial to understand the overall concept of blockchain technology and its implications.

Application in the context of media accountability. While blockchain technology bares huge potential, academic research lacks a systematic review of its implementations which some studies are trying to fill (Casino, Dasaklis & Patsakis, 2019; Maxwell, Speed &

Pschetz 2017). Overall, blockchains should mainly store data, account for all transactions made and secure the data while it is transparent and agreed upon by its users (Herlihy &

Moir, 2016; Ivancsics, 2019). According to Tapscott and Tapscott (2016), such a global ledger of information can restore trust and integrity in business in the digital age through providing fair exchange, transparency and accountability. Key characteristic however, is that the blockchain’s architecture is entirely built on decentralized transactions, while getting its authority solely from users collaborating based on transparent records (Funk, Ridel, Ankel &

Cabrera, 2018; Swan, 2015; Zheng, Xie, Dai, Chen & Wang, 2017).

Accountability and transparency serve as incentives for publishers to employ blockchains (Hughes, 2017; Swan, 2015) and thus, create a valuable asset for networks such as news media and journalism whose survival is dependent on credibility, reputation, the audience’s trust, and the fight against fake news and rumours (Kim & Yoon, 2019; Zheng et al., 2017). In accordance with transparency, the most obvious contribution of blockchain for accountability seems to be its decentralized structure and financial independence, that frees journalism not only from its dependency on ads and corporations, but also from censorship, as governments cannot censor anything that has been uploaded and, moreover, lose its

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 7 potential influence on the media (Schlegel, Zavolokina & Schwabe, 2018; Tapscott &

Tapscott, 2016).

The hitherto most promising research on blockchain journalism has been done by Kim and Yoon (2019). By looking at the shared decentralized space that blockchain creates, they suggest a new model that provides completely personalized news. Their sketch already entails some key aspects of the intersection of journalistic accountability and blockchain technology. In light of the collapse of journalism, they argue for a new infrastructure, which aims to deliver high quality articles (by preventing fake news and producing more quality), to minimize the power of agenda setting and finally, to create an open public space for debate.

Blockchain thus functions as a mechanism for high quality and fact checking, as well as empowering the community through public discourse and emphasizing the independence of the media, to ensure a journalism that upholds its obligations—which describes the goal of media accountability (McQuail, 1997). The process of authenticating whether an article is of value is referred to as the process of proof of sharing, an essential component for blockchain journalism. According to Kim and Yoon (2019), journalists are empowered by assigning them responsibility for the platform, which they have been losing due to the current digital environment dominated by ads and big media companies. Responsibility itself is naturally intertwined with the concept of accountability (Plaisance, 2000) and thus, establishes another link to the contributions of a blockchain-based application for media accountability. After all, the word ‘accountability’ is historically and semantically closely related to accounting which means quite literally bookkeeping (Bovens, 2007).

However, to gain a comprehensive understanding of the overlap and common factors of both technology and accountability, one needs to get an overview of the concept of accountability itself and its practices in the online environment before further exploring the potential contributions of blockchains.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 8

Media accountability

Scholars have been struggling to agree on a universal definition for media accountability due to its elusive nature (Bovens, 2007; Pritchard, 2000). By most definitions of media scholars, accountability is seen as a process of measuring the performance of the media by which they are called to account for fulfilling their responsibility and obligations

(McQuail, 1997; Plaisance, 2000; Pritchard, 2000). McQuail (2013) defines it more precisely as “the process by which claims against the media are activated, with a view to the satisfaction of complaints, compensation, punishment or remedial action” (p. 153).

One of the most prominent theories of media accountability stems from Bertrand

(2003). He coined the term of Media Accountability Systems (MAS), which he defines as

“[a]ny means of improving media services to the public that function independently from the government” (p. 17). He further notes that media accountability involves press, profession and the public (Bertrand, 2005). Thus, MAS should go beyond freedom and regulation, and be a quality control to provide the information to be distributed so that democracy can operate (Bertrand, 2000; 2005). Bertrand provides several ways to categorize MAS, e.g., by nature (meaning documents, people or processes), by involvement (internal, external or cooperative) or by operating level (national, regional or local). Most journalists however, disapprove of MAS and see it as threats to their freedom, useless, expensive, time consuming and not sufficiently legitimated (Bertrand, 2003).

Being accountable also implies a respondent or claimant, but scholars disagree on who the claimant is or who to account to. According to Bertrand (2005), the claimant is the public, while Hodges (2004) extends this to the basic moral principle that one owes an accounting to those one affects, including oneself and the profession of journalism. For

Pritchard (2000), the process of accountability is best understood as a practice, consisting of the citizens, ethics and the law. To initiate the process, the three stages of naming, blaming

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 9 and claiming have to be met, starting with a citizen naming the problem. Thereby, the various forms of accountability mirror the characteristics of the different communities (Pritchard,

2000). As accountability is rooted in a by society agreed on code of morals and ethics, it must always be seen in the context of a specific society and media system, which at the same time proves the difficulty of holding online journalism accountable (McQuail, 2013). Therefore,

McQuail (2013) has developed three main frames of reference as further indicators for ensuring and measuring accountability: political/legal frame, public responsibility frame, and professional responsibility frame. Plaisance (2000) also advances the idea of a multi- dimensional media accountability, but he sees the real function of accountability as an issue of influence, reflected in the various dimensions among the different groups. Hence, he emphasizes the dynamic and fluid nature of the concept due to its continuous evolvement corresponding the equally non-static values of society.

Overall, there are basic demands, accountability should ensure. McQuail (1997) lists three criteria: (1) protection and promotion of media freedom, (2) preventing or limiting harm and (3) promoting positive benefits from media to society. Sawant (2003) refers to the overall purpose of ensuring free and responsible journalism as well as free flow of information to serve the public interests.

For this research, the following definition for media accountability has been developed based on McQuail (1997), Plaisance (2000) and Pritchard (2000): “the process of measuring the performance of the media. They are called to account for fulfilling their responsibility towards society such as ensuring press freedom, providing information for the public good and limiting harm”.

However the concepts differ, all these approaches show that accountability itself is naturally intertwined with the notion of responsibility towards the duties within a set of morals of society (Plaisance, 2000), but not to be confused with it. Especially in regards to

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 10 journalism, Hodges (2004) notes that the question of responsibility is inevitable for but also prior to the question of accountability. A study by de Haan and Bardoel (2011) further points to a shift from viewing media responsibility in theory as an overarching concept to a more applied definition with a focus on accountability and responsiveness. This goes in line with a definition by Bardoel and D’Haenens (2004): they attribute social responsibility of the media with both responsibility towards society and responsiveness in regards to the media considering the public’s concerns. This shift will play a crucial role in the practical implementations of media accountability, which are examined below, and mark an intersection with blockchain technology as will be analysed further on.

Practices of media accountability. Glasser and Ettema (2008) outline another approach based in Habermas’ theory of communicative ethics and emphasize a shift from a prescribed set of ethics written by professionals to the practice of validation through public discourse. Christians (1985) also emphasizes the public as a stakeholder, however, he believes that accountability cannot be produced by codes, but rather with letters to the editor, news councils, etc. For Keith (2004), the outlined MAS are not effective enough. He proposes an additional mechanism in form of an ethics conference and training to supplement the existing mixture of accountability instruments, that only in combination ensures quality journalism.

However, none of these seem to be fit for the needs of modern society due to their stiff structures and lack of tools for an audience seeking to participate. De Haan and Bardoel

(2011) confirm this when suggesting that the generally theory-driven and reactive notion of media accountability has shifted to a more active and practical model due to a declining trust in the media, mirroring the shift from a hierarchical control to a more horizontal regulation of networks in the information society. From this follows, that one needs to first examine the

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 11 challenges that blockchain is trying to address, to further explore its potential for media accountability. Therefore, I have developed the following sub-research question:

RQ1: What challenges of online media accountability is blockchain technology trying to address?

While research on the ethics of accountability in an online and changing news environment has been rather limited (Joseph, 2011), numerous studies have still shifted their main focus in regards to accountability practices to the power of the audience. Porlezza and

Splendore (2016) introduce the concept of participatory accountability of the community within a crowd funded journalism, whereas Joseph (2011) examines the role of the active consumers and how the practice of correcting errors in news content in the digital age may contribute to online accountability instruments. Da Silva and Paulino (2007) even attribute the correction mechanism as part of an internal marketing campaign designed around trust and credibility. Bichler, Karmasin and Kraus (2013) see media accountability instruments as means to advance audience participation, involvement and confidence and reject the concept of merely criticizing, monitoring and checking: they define accountability as “a pro-active transaction before and especially during the production process of news, creating transparency at all levels of production” (p. 6). Such a participatory turn in journalism becomes evident due to an increasing willingness and ability to join debates over journalism

(Eide, 2014). Eide (2014) suggests annual editorial reports as an instrument to legitimize and make journalism accountable to the readership through transparency. All these outlined approaches for accountability practices in the current online environment entail key elements that refer back to the characteristics of blockchain: transparency, accessibility, community empowerment, funding through the community, trust, credibility and audience participation.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 12

The following studies serve as an example on how to explore the impact of online and participatory media accountability practices as a real alternative for media self-regulation, and will be the guiding theory for discussing the findings of this research.

The EU funded research project “Media Accountability and Transparency in Europe”

(Executive Summary, n.d.) examined media practices within twelve European and two Arab countries (Eberwein & Porlezza, 2014). In this study, the focus lies on transparency, responsiveness and audience interactions as crucial aspects to hold the media to account which can easily be realized through application of digital technologies (Eberwein &

Porlezza, 2014; Executive Summary, n.d.). For their analysis, they refer to a modified hierarchy of influences model, originally by Shoemaker and Reese (Fengler et al., 2015, p.

251), as well as the modes of accountability by Bardoel and D’Haenens (2004), developed from Bardoel (2000; 2001): (1) political, (2) market, (3) public and (4) professional accountability.

Another central concept for media accountability practices examined in the MediaAct is derived from a study by Domingo and Heikkilä (2012). They focus on the time of publication as indicator and propose the following division: practices before act of publication such as linking journalist’s profiles and work (actor transparency), practices during the act of publication such as disclosure by the news site about their selection and work process (production transparency) and practices after the act of publication such as feedback, criticism and discussion with the audience (responsiveness).

This threefold division as well as the modes of accountability developed in the

MediaAct have proven to be an adequate and contemporary measurement of media accountability practices in the online environment. Since many of the key indicators such as transparency and responsiveness comply with structural elements of blockchain, these approaches seem suitable for exploring the implications of blockchain technology for media

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 13 accountability and will be used as theoretical framework. These indicators lead me to develop my second sub-research question, which aims to explore how exactly blockchain enforces accountability and what the process looks like.

RQ2: How is media accountability through blockchain technology enforced?

Overall, public reaction provides the ultimate accountability (Barron, 1985) and therefore, Fengler (2012) argues for the necessity in the digital age of further exploration of models in form of a decentralized network involving professionals and amateurs, which contribute not only through a different kind of expertise, but also with new sanction possibilities. While the majority of studies on media accountability however, focus on describing and comparing the measuring instruments, the Internet and especially the social web have altered these practices deeply by providing countless platforms for public discourses about journalistic performance, and thus make new approaches to accountability inevitable (Eberwein, Fengler, Lauk & Leppik-Bork, 2011). Higher audience engagement and spaces for collaborative discourse raise inevitably the question, whether a new approach based on blockchain technology would somehow change the responsibilities of the journalists which are naturally linked with the notion of accountability (Plaisance, 2000). Therefore, I will complete my research by asking the following and last sub-research question, which will in combination with the previous two lead me to an answer for my overall research question:

RQ3: How does accountability through blockchain technology influence the responsibilities of the journalist?

In the following, I will illuminate the methodology of this research, before I will present my findings with a subsequent discussion.

Methodology

My approach will be through qualitative research in form of semi-structured interviews and content analysis of whitepapers and one constitution. Qualitative research in

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 14 general is used to explore an issue, demonstrate a deeper understanding of a topic and focus on the meaning behind (Cresswell, 1998). Journalism based on blockchain technology is a still evolving and complex concept that has so far been studied very little due to its novelty and thus, offers no insights about the technology’s contributions to the processes of media accountability at the time this study was written. Therefore, a qualitative approach is best suited to explore this connection as it can provide a better understanding and evaluation of the potential of blockchain for accountability practices (Cresswell, 1998). Quantitative measures as well as statistical analysis would not suffice to scrutinize this with the open, explorative approach necessary to create a satisfactory first outcome at this time.

Since there is almost no academic literature about blockchain’s interconnection with media accountability practices, my method will also include parts of a grounded theory approach meaning the data collection, theory building and analysis keep referring back to each other (Corbin & Strauss, 1990). This approach allowed me to develop first overarching concepts about blockchain journalism and its contributions to accountability, based on the findings from the whitepapers, as well as guidelines for the subsequent interviews.

I have chosen a twofold approach due to the limited available data. The content analysis provides an explorative theoretical oversight of the concept, while the interviews clarify some of the emerging concepts and complement it with in-depth knowledge as well as personal assessments. The combination of an analysis of the whitepapers plus constitution first and the analysis of the interviews building on the results of these lead to a theoretical saturation (Morse, 1995 in Braun & Clarke, 2013) and correspond to the existing data in this field.

Content Analysis

Sampling. For my content analysis, I have chosen to analyse journalistic platforms based on blockchain technology that have already launched through a purposive approach

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 15

(Braun & Clarke, 2013). Three whitepapers and one constitution were chosen: the whitepapers being from the platform Civil.co, DNN.media and po.et, the constitution also being from Civil, but since it contains additional ethical guidelines crucial for the exploration of accountability it was also included. Due to its novelty, no other journalistic platforms could be found that apply blockchain journalism. So while this is still a quite small sample, it does represent the current landscape through maximum variation with the data, from where new knowledge and understanding are created.

Data gathering. First, I have analysed the whitepapers and the constitution inductively and developed a code report within three cycles of coding. The emerging themes and categories were connected back to the literature and based on this, I have developed a structure for my interview guidelines to ensure rich data gathering to compensate for the small scope.

Analysis. First, I conducted a qualitative content analysis of the whitepapers and constitution. This analysis was based on an inductive approach, including three steps of analysis: open, axial and selective coding. After getting familiar with the text through an initial reading, I have explored the text by each fragment with open coding. The second cycle of axial coding included strategically rearranging, merging and establishing relationships between the paraphrases and codes to eventually subsume them into overarching categories.

Thereby, I have eliminated the sections that are not relevant for my research question such as the technological background of the token software. With the established categories, I have recoded the text to check for their feasibility and accuracy. Eventually, I have coded selectively for themes and pattern in the third and last cycle of analysis. In doing so, I have interpreted and contextualized the emerged themes in regards to their relevance for my research questions, connected it back to the literature and developed a structure for the interview guidelines that complements and clarifies my findings.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 16

To exemplify, I have paraphrased the following text segment with ‘over time community governance wanted’: “Over time, the Civil Council will evolve through some form of community governance.” In my second round, I merged it with other paraphrases such as ‘community as sole overseers of accurate information’ to the code ‘empowerment of community’. During the third and final cycle, this code became part of the overall category

‘goals’.1 This particular code ‘empowerment of community’ as part of the goals pattern could be found partly in the literature (Fengler, 2012), as well as in relation to other categories and served as underlying structure for the questions 7 and 13 in the interview guide. Moreover, the code ‘empowerment of community’ was also found repeatedly in connection with the themes ‘decentralization’ and ‘contributions of blockchain’, and thus, serves as main indicator in the presentation of the results.

Interviews

Sampling. For my sample of interviewees, I also used generic purposive approach typical for qualitative research, where the focus lies on the strategic inclusion and exclusion of participants (Braun & Clarke, 2013), as well as snowball sampling where one potential interviewee referred me to a more suitable participant. I aimed for six to eight interviewees but due to the small pool of people working with blockchain journalism, the scope of potential interviewees was quite small and a low response rate lead to three interviews: one of the co-founders of the platform Civil, a joined interview with the founders of DNN and an investigative journalist having done a fellowship on blockchain journalism. While these interviewees come from very different backgrounds, they offer high variation but also do they limit the ability to develop a general theory as they cannot represent the opinion of each of their areas.

1 The code reports for each research question including the subgroups and paraphrases derived from the analysis can be found in Appendix A.

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Data gathering. For the interview data, I used interactive data collection method in form of semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions (Braun & Clarke, 2013). As mentioned, the questions derived from the prior findings. E.g., the concept of decentralized accountability was derived from the code report of the whitepapers, based on the frequent use and entanglement of the codes ‘empowerment of the community’ and ‘decentralization’ in regards to holding the newsroom or journalist accountable, and thus, led to the interview question 13: “Has blockchain also enforced the decentralization of accountability?”2

While specific questions were asked, I also left room for new impulses, especially since blockchain journalism is a topic that needs to be explored and defined. While I aimed for the “golden standard” (Novick, 2008 in Braun & Clarke, 2013, p. 79), meaning face to face, I had to conduct all interviews via Skype as all interviewees were in the U.S. at the time of research. The interviews itself were recorded by phone, a recorder and supported by handwritten notes, with permission of the participants. Subsequently, I have transcribed the audio and used the transcript for my second part of analysis.

Qualitative research with human interaction requires a highly ethical reflection to first and foremost not bring harm onto the participants. All of the participants agreed to an ethical consent form, as well as they were sufficiently informed about this research and their ability to drop out. Further, they gave permission to use their identity in this study.

Analysis. These interviews were coded in a similar fashion, albeit being informed by the findings of the content analysis. Primarily, the results of the content analysis served as foundational structure for the interview guide and script, ensuring that the data gathered was rich and contributed to the findings in a maximum way to balance the small scope of this research. Secondly, the findings of the prior analysis also influenced the analysis of the interview data. Instead of coding purely inductively, a combination of inductive and

2 The whole interview guide can be found in Appendix B.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 18 deductive coding was used. What this entailed was an open coding of the data with pre- defined topics in mind that were based on the outcomes of the prior findings. In practice, this means that I grouped all codes into emerged categories of the previous findings or established groups for the respective research question, adding thus a deductive part to my analysis. The last and final cycle of selective coding served to use the established patterns to find answers to my research questions, connect it back to the literature and draw an overall conclusion in combination with the findings of the content analysis.

E.g., the text segment “we're trying to emphasize, you know, independent journalism” was coded with ‘independence’ which was also a code of the content analysis. The code

‘independence’ and others such as ‘transparency’ were repeatedly found together in a context that could be described with the existing categories ‘contributions of blockchain’ and

‘accountability’, derived from the content analysis and thus, added to them. Eventually, they created with other factors the overall pattern of ‘blockchain as a tool for accountability’ as one factor to answer RQ2.

Results

This research set out to explore the contributions of blockchain technology for media accountability. Overall, the results point to blockchain technology serving as a tool for online media accountability practices. By including the audience in a way that is unprecedented in history, blockchain technology leads to a decentralized accountability that is primarily established through an incentivization model for all parties included. In the following, I will present more detailed results for each sub-research question, which altogether subsume to answer the overall research question conclusively.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 19

Challenges of Online Accountability That Blockchain Aims to Address

The findings point to two major challenges of media accountability influencing each other that blockchain technology tries to address: the current state of journalism and limited tools of accountability, see figure 1 below3.

Figure 1. Challenges of media accountability that blockchain technology aims to address.

Direct lines show which topics the overall theme in the bubble (e.g., current state of journalism) consists of, while the arrow shows a reciprocal influence.

3 The themes and codes used in the figures 1, 2 and 4 were solely derived from the findings of this research and make no claim to completeness, but merely serve as visual demonstration.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 20

According to the whitepapers, journalism itself is in a crisis. Both interviewees and whitepapers point to a shift in the people’s news consumption. Not only are print revenues declining, the public trust in the media has eroded drastically while the majority of consumers turns to social media for gaining information. This is problematic for holding the media to account as none of the channels like Facebook or Twitter “self-identify as media companies” as Civil puts it. DNN writes, Facebook algorithms have contributed to the rise of fake news and creation of filter bubbles, as they do not prioritize accuracy: “If it generates a lot of engagement, in the form of likes, shares, and such, it automatically gets moved to the top of the feed.”

This shift also points to another problem: journalism has been unable to find an independent, sustainable model of funding and is forced to rely on advertisements and clickbait, at the expense of fact-driven journalism and independent news. The DNN whitepaper states:

The state of big media today is analogous to the type of scenario we see within

the U.S. telecom and cable industries, little-to-no regulation or transparency, a

handful of massive corporations presiding over an oligopoly, a noticeable lack

of choices for consumer consumption, and an overall anti-consumer tilt that

favors profits over quality and satisfaction.

Another factor that increases the difficulty of online accountability draws on the lack of regulation possibilities in the Internet. The global reach of the readership has outworn the use of traditional accountability tools, while at the same time raising the question of who to account to when algorithms are in charge of deciding over journalistic content. The co- founder of Civil says,

the majority of the ways that people could ever really have an influence on

the… the day to day running of the paper was primarily through letters to the

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 21

editor or if they were upset they could withdraw their subscription. But beyond

that there were sort of very limited ways for people to influence daily coverage

in any kind of meaningful way.

Not only do the current market conditions lack of necessary independence and autonomy for journalism to properly fulfil their obligations. They further fall short of providing the public with sufficient tools to hold them accountable.

Accountability Through Blockchain

Structurally, blockchains themselves already correspond with many factors of accountability, see figure 2 below. In the following, the most important contributions of the technology as well as its intersections with accountability factors will be presented to illustrate how media accountability is enforced through blockchain.

Figure 2. Comparison of blockchain contributions and accountability factors.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 22

Blockchain as a tool for implementing accountability. First and foremost, blockchain provides the infrastructure for any action and thus, lays the foundation to being the tool for implementing accountability. The co-founder of Civil thinks, “it's a tool. I don't know if blockchain itself drives the accountability or whether blockchain is the, um, infrastructure through which you could exact that accountability.” But this does not only apply to Civil: any platform using blockchain technology provides certain features that are crucial for accountability practices.

Transparency. Civil’s co-founder points to one factor: “I think one thing that blockchain enables in terms of accountability is the record.” Due to its nature, everything is permanently and immutably archived on the blockchain. The founders of DNN introduce this as a new concept they call “radical transparency or extreme transparency”:

DNN is to lay out everything that you're doing transparently and then allow

whether that is the professionals or whether that is the public to then give you

that public reputation of saying like, you know, this is, this is accurate over

time based on, […] that's holding them to account because they're not

transparent.

Verifiability and trust. This kind of transparency also implies a constant verifiability by the public. Each journalist is responsible for uploading all materials and links for verification, only then an article is certified as in compliance with the guidelines of DNN. The platform Po.et has created an authentication badge showing an article’s certification and thus, proving to be a verifiable and trustworthy source.

Figure 3. Example of authentication badge from Po.et whitepaper.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 23

Community empowerment. By completely decentralizing the authority over editorial and business decisions as well as transferring the ownership of the decentralized marketplace to every member, blockchain empowers the community:

As CVL token4 holders, they will have the ability to vote on key decisions,

including whether newsrooms meet the criteria and ethics laid out in the Civil

Constitution. To unlock access to Civil’s marketplace, newsrooms will need to

gain community consensus that they will be a good actor on the platform—and

to be added to a whitelist of approved newsmakers.

Such an empowerment through a decentralization of accountability practice is unprecedented in history, as the co-founder of Civil states.

Independence and fulfilling mandate. Readers can focus again on news “free of corporate influence and more transparent because of the power and function of blockchain technology”, claims DNN. Being free from outer pressures and independent surely is a mission of Civil. Journalism can only fulfil its public purpose, if it is “exercised freely and without undue pressure from political, commercial or other special interests”. A self- sustainable business model based on the cryptocurrency Ethereum aims to ensure this through community governance and funding.

Incentives model and audience engagement. The cryptocurrency itself as the software based on the blockchain is key to the enforcement of accountability through a reward model “in which participants are economically incentivized to promote good behavior that helps the platform grow and thrive, while keeping bad actors off of it,” according to

Civil’s mission. The CVL tokens or DNN tokens are merely an instrument of community participation to uphold the standards of the respective platform and create interdependence

4 A CVL token is the cryptocurrency on the platform Civil, used for voting and participating as an active member.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 24 between the public and the professionals. To stimulate the readers to actively engage, DNN has established a system based on reputation and reward. The higher the quality and performance, the higher the reward for writer and reader:

Based on our research of blockchain-based networks, we believe everyone on

the platform will want to maximize their personal gain and act out of greed. In

this case that’s a good thing, because more reviewers will act in the best

interest of the system if the rewards are high enough and the penalties are

sufficiently harsh.

Meaningful consequences. Beyond its function as a tool, the incentives model demonstrates how blockchain can ensure the enforcement of meaningful consequences, which Civil’s co-founder identifies as crucial for accountability:

That to me is really meaningful because I think there are a lot of very good

suggestions that are made about the ways in which organizations can be

accountable to their readers. But if there isn't a mechanism through which to

actually perform on that, then it is very possible that things can become, um, lip

service more than a practical, um, exchange.

Responsiveness. The Civil constitution requires its newsroom to provide tools for feedback from the community as well as responses to call for more transparency: they “must be judged by their intent, responsiveness and body of work.” At DNN, writers should also respond publicly to comments or corrections to uphold their reputation and credibility.

Decentralized accountability. While a lot of factors seem to inherently comply with each other, the enforcement of accountability through blockchain suggests a new concept that incorporates the empowerment of the community as well as the decentralized structure: a decentralized accountability.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 25

And that does dovetail, I think very well with some of the principles of

journalism and the principles of accountability, which is if a community can

see what a newsroom said then and what they say now and what they say in the

future, um, then they're empowered to act on that information in whatever form

that takes, says the co-founder of Civil.

Changes of Responsibility

Overall, the results indicate that empowerment, through active engagement etc., lead to more responsibilities that consist of verifiability etc. At the same time, empowerment also increases the need for accountability, while the added responsibilities force journalists to professionalize, see figure 4 below.

Figure 4. Changed responsibilities through blockchain accountability. The direct lines show which topics the overall theme in the big circles (e.g., empowerment) consist of, whereas the arrows implicate a direct relation.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 26

Making the writer responsible to upload everything for verification, as DNN requires, has only been necessary when he has been challenged, says the investigative journalist. The founders of DNN believe that the incentives model stimulates journalists to actively engage with the community about the work they have done:

If the journalist wants to clarify anything that they had or they want to clarify

what they mean by anonymous source and why they can't reveal their identity,

then they can do so. If they don't, then it's out there in the public for everybody

to see that they don't care about what people are saying and they just rather

write.

This model emphasizes the journalist’s “own personal credibility rather than the credibility of the organization” while making him solely responsible and accountable for his identity and work. Additionally, a newsroom at Civil has to provide feedback tools for the public, corrections and respond to demands from the public, e.g., “in form of email; comments, social media, interaction with the public on the Civil Token Curated Registry; in-person responses at public events or via other methods.”

While all interviewees agree that the theoretical responsibility of journalists in terms of fulfilling their public mandate has not changed through blockchain’s implementation, the practice has. Not only is the transparency and audience interaction more time consuming, but also are journalistic values and definitions challenged on a daily basis when people are

“holding each other accountable and having, um, a little bit of a, a confrontational, ideally constructively critical, um, debate over what someone says versus what they do,” something that Civil’s co-founder believes to be unprecedented: “it's also a privilege to be able to take responsibility for something that had been in the hands of people who maybe didn't have journalism as their top priority.”

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 27

For the first time, journalists are solely responsible for the quality of their work and only answer to the public they serve. A platform like Civil, where everything is community owned and governed, empowers journalists and readers on the one hand, and on the other transfers more responsibilities. Overall, “responsibility goes both ways and self-responsibility should […] contribute as well”, say the founder of DNN. They do not believe that blockchain technology necessarily adds on to the existing responsibilities of journalists, but rather

“increase[s] the need for accountability on their end.” By trying to adhere to the editorial guidelines and fulfilling the demands blockchain creates with radical transparency and necessary audience participation, journalists are being held accountable constantly and must uphold their highest standard. For the investigative journalist, this could be one of blockchain’s major contributions: “I am hoping that accountability through technology can help force journalists to professionalize.”

Overall, blockchain technology seems to serve as an appropriate tool to tackle certain challenges of online media accountability. By doing so, it leads to the development of the new concept of decentralized accountability, whose implications need to be discussed in light of the existing theory.

Connecting Accountability Through Blockchain Back to Theory

Most of the common factors of accountability and blockchain’s contributions have been mentioned in the literature as part of the accountability process such as transparency, accuracy, credibility and verifiability (Hayes, Singer & Ceppos, 2007; Hodges, 2004;

Newton, 2004; Plaisance, 2000; Ruigrok, 2010; Sawant, 2003). Notably, the aspects of

(extreme) transparency, responsiveness and audience interaction deserve special attention.

Not only have Eberwein and Porlezza (2014) focused on these as crucial aspects to hold the media to account in an online environment, but also have they emphasized their realization through application of digital technologies. So the concept of ‘extreme transparency’ or

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 28 responsiveness being part of the Civil guidelines is an example of the practical implementation of Eberwein and Porlezza’s theory. The third factor of audience interaction can also be found for example on DNN, when journalists can chose to comment or respond to corrections publicly. However, while active engagement with the audience is an important part of the platforms run by blockchain technology, their focus lies more on the empowerment of the community itself and not solely strengthening the bond between the public and the professional. For example, on Civil, the community has the power to challenge a newsroom and must reach consensus to vote on key decisions with their tokens. The public takes active part in creating and governing the news platform. This is also reflected in the collaborative debates taking place about not only decisions, but news and journalism themselves:

they're disputing the boundary between a philanthropic organization that's

producing content that happens to be about […] who are journalists? Is the

news itself journalism? And like these are conceptual, um, debates that I have

not seen, says the co-founder of Civil.

Such conceptual transparency and collaborative debates evoke not only the public discourse envisioned by Glasser and Ettema (2008) based on Habermas’ theory of communicative ethics. They can also be aligned with the theory of Domingo and Heikkilä (2012), who highlight production stages as indicators for accountability such as actor transparency, production transparency and responsiveness. However, not all of these are completely fulfilled: the founders of DNN explicitly state that they have not established a direct line between writer and reader, and thus do not value complete production transparency in form of active engagement:

we don't have like a system for them to communicate back and forth as in like,

okay, you know, you should change this source or, you should change this.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 29

Because, and the reason for that is because the feedback that we got from

journalists is that like, well, you know, by me continuously changing the

article, it's no longer like mine, it's no longer my work. So we wanted to keep

that and then just kind of allow the public to annotate it for, you know, rather

than change it.

The investigative journalist is cautious as well when it comes to direct audience participation when he says,

I can't be held accountable in the sense that I need to talk to everybody about

everything because my job is, is knowing that no, chemtrails are not existing

and no, vaccine has proven to save millions. It is not,…et cetera, et cetera. So

that's my job. And therefore I can't be accountable to everybody every second.

But if you contact me in some way and say that the story is wrong, then I must

be accountable.

Journalists still seem to be shying away from direct confrontation and discussion with the audience out of fear of losing their professional autonomy when asked to explain sensitive decisions, which aligns with Eberwein and Porlezza’s (2014) predictions for online accountability processes.

A well-developed infrastructure is crucial for any actions in the Internet, and thus, making online media accountability practices dependent on its structure (Heikkilä et al.,

2012). By providing the structure for a sustainable, independent and decentralized network, blockchain lays not only the foundation for online accountability processes. Fengler (2012) has already argued for the necessity of a somehow decentralized network involving both professionals and lay people, which provides new sanction possibilities. With cryptocurrency as the software for audience engagement and the incentives model based on reward and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 30 sanctions depending on quality, blockchain has established such a mechanism for enforcing meaningful consequences.

In general, accountability through blockchain portrays the shift in academic literature from theoretical accountability mechanisms to more applied practices involving audience engagement and responsiveness (de Haan and Bardoel, 2011). Such a participatory turn raises new questions. When applying the modes of accountability of Bardoel and D’Haenens

(2004)—political, market, public and professional—only public and professional play a role here as the goal of a blockchain based model is to eliminate external influences such as dependence on the market in form of ads and big companies or political pressure due to ownership and censoring. With the concept of decentralized accountability, the public mode is strengthened while it leaves the professional strained. The more stakeholders are involved, the more difficult it gets to assign responsibilities, leading to the question whether this empowerment has to some extent also decentralized responsibility.

While the investigative journalist stresses the forced professionalization of journalist through technology, the founders of DNN expect accountability to increase as an inevitable consequence. If both assumptions come true, blockchain technology could contribute to achieving the ultimate media accountability, according to Domingo (2011): “The evolution of professionalism to embrace a more dialogical relationship with the audience would be the ultimate element to foster media accountability” (p. 15).

However, the results point to further characteristics of media accountability that receive none or only little attention from scholars. While most academics emphasize the necessity of higher audience engagement, the scope of community empowerment that blockchain technology enables exceeds all hitherto applications or studies. The public can actively participate, create, debate and challenge the content and writer, while the guidelines and definitions evolve from a somewhat static to a fluent and dynamic conceptualization.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 31

Furthermore, the decentralized structure of blockchain stresses the independence and sustainability of the platforms, while the concept of accountability itself undergoes the process of decentralization, leading to a redistribution of responsibilities for both the professional and the public yet to be studied.

Discussion

This research aimed to explore the implications blockchain technology can hold for online media accountability and take a first step towards future analyses in the field of blockchain journalism. It was demonstrated that blockchain can contribute to accountability in many ways and a new concept was established: decentralized accountability. While a model based on this technology seems to correspond with many demands for future practices such as Eberwein and Porlezza’s (2014) recommendation of “Offering Assistance to Media

Systems in Transition to Create a System of Media Self- Regulation and Accountability” (p.

438), it suffers from several flaws that need to be addressed.

The most pressing challenge, despite its benefits, is the new and complicated nature of blockchain itself, or to put it plainly: nobody understands it. Schlegel, Zavolokina and

Schwabe (2018) anticipate a long period until the public will have overcome its scepticism and welcomed this technology as part of its daily life. This gradual acceptance however, could be fatal for its media accountability model: Not only does blockchain provide the necessary tools and elements of media accountability practices it also depends on them. One of the strongest aspects is the decentralized nature that enables an empowerment of the community, but this also requires an extremely active audience engagement, which is according to the investigative journalist not realistic:

they might well have the right to do it. I don't have any problem with my

mother owning part of the system being, having a vote of the system of

whether you and I should be allowed to be journalists or be allowed to be in the

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 32

Civil newsroom. I don't have a problem with that. That's fine. But I don't think

we should count on them to be active members. I think we, the professionals

have to be the ones who look out for Steve Bannon.

While the technological benefits of blockchain for media accountability practices have become evident, questions of human leadership and governance remain such as how to deal with the massive amount of energy needed to process billions of transactions a day or whether the incentives are good enough for people to engage and behave safely (Tapscott &

Tapscott, 2016).

Another important issue blockchain journalism raises relates to its scope. Blockchains are global by nature, practices for media accountability are not and do not merge easily with divergent journalistic cultures (Domingo & Heikkilä, 2012; Tapscott & Tapscott, 2016). Even if all journalistic cultures established a practice based on blockchain technology, the question remains on how to collaboratively reach a consensus on ethical guidelines which are rooted in society and shaped by the political and economic history and frame of each country

(Eberwein, Fengler, Lauk & Leppik-Bork, 2011; McQuail, 2013).

While the research of blockchain journalism is still at its beginning, its potential cannot be ignored. Even though, it might not be ‘saving journalism’ or the platforms part of this research might not prevail, one thing seems to be clear for everyone:

The, the media that are going to survive are the ones who can be transparent in

an economically efficient way. […] But if it's going to be the blockchain and

with which blockchain, I have no idea, you know, is it gonna be Civil or Po.et

or DNN or whatever. I don't know. Uh, but I think the technology definitely,

says the investigative journalist.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 33

Further Research

This study aims to make a first contribution to the field of online media accountability and blockchain technology. Future research could include a long-term study about the assessment and evaluation of blockchain technology in regards to its accountability practices.

Moreover, further research is needed on the theory of decentralized accountability about its feasibility, implementation and significance. The results additionally point to a necessary investigation of a shift of responsibilities, stimulated by the empowerment of the community and the forced professionalization of journalists.

Limitations

The most obvious limitation of this research relates to its scope. Due to the novelty and lack of academic literature about blockchain journalism or blockchain accountability, there were no existing theories to draw on and the scope of data to analyse is extremely small. Adding to this, the interviewees come from very different background and cannot lead to a general answer, as one person is not enough to represent their field in their answers. In line with this, no assessments are possible as the stage is too early to draw a meaningful conclusion about the feasibility of this model.

These problems lead to another shortcoming of this study. While I merely focused on the process of accountability through blockchain and its implications, I did not broaden my analysis to include an examination of the media system as a whole, which is a crucial factor to get the whole picture of accountability (Domingo & Heikkilä, 2012).

Conclusion

The aim of this research was to explore potential contributions of blockchain technology for online media accountability and give an impulse for further research to counter the existing lack of academic examination in this field. The results show that blockchain can be used as a suitable tool and infrastructure for holding the media to account

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 34 while addressing some challenges of online accountability. Furthermore, due to the structural elements of community empowerment and engagement, they point to an evolvement of the accountability concept towards a decentralized accountability.

While this study claims by no means to have found the ultimate answer for holding the media to account, it stimulates further research and gives new thought-provoking impulses, e.g., through the incentives model for high quality. However a future accountability practice might look like, technology will play a crucial part in it, and as Herian (2018) puts it,

“understanding a future with blockchain is imperative.”

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 35

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Appendix A

Code report for each research question

Code report A1

Research question 1

Some of the codes were subsumed into several themes or groups. Frequency of a code or amount of sub-codes is no imperative indicator for its relevance.

current state of journalism eroding trust public trust in media at all time low US majority thinks economy favours powerful interests unfairly Public also led to believe that media made up by few powerful trust in media at an all time low web of trust connected with asset of printing press cozy connection with power can be corrupting low trust level dependency from ads no sustainable funding free from ad driven models so far digital age makes sustainability hard reliance on ads advertisers as powerful influence ownership problem of ownership and intellectual property monopolization of media companies publishers define quality shift in news consumption clickbaits sensationalism is encouraged journalism in transition newsgathering now through social media platforms personalized SM leads to echo chambers FB algorithm based on

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 41

engagement, not accuracy FB as gatekeeper for news creation of filter bubbles FB algorithm turns feed into a tabloid FB a major source of information social media contribute to polit. polarization and low quality compromised values rising fake news problems of fake news and propaganda consequences of fake stories examples of fake stories news bias quality decline high quality journalism rare and endangered less access to quality journalism profit over quality and consumer satisfaction market conditions struggle and decline of print newspapers mass uncertainty, layoffs and market consolidation lack of choices for consumer low satisfaction rates crisis of journalism shrinking media literacy space question of refining technology current issue not technological institutional memory worldwide oppression of free censorship growing speech and censorship limited tools of limited feedback options audience engagement team at accountability DNA info boycotts and protest as sign of disapproval example of audience engagement editor influence only through letters to the editor limited way for audience

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 42

feedback no feedback on the process social media as sign of disapproval traditional media use comments old way of accountability old accountability accountability of media hard with short term advertisers as powerful

influence journalists were supposed to be held accountable by the editors (social) web of trust traditional editorial flow traditional media use comments transparency not enough in organization trust has shifted to publication lack of internet regulations FB algorithm based on

engagement, not accuracy FB as gatekeeper for news difficulty of regulations on the internet internet diminished barriers of publishing handling issues naiveness of tech people problems of facebook algorithms power and danger of everyone publishing question of responsibility FB algorithm based on

engagement, not accuracy FB as gatekeeper for news replacing publishers with google and facebook problems of facebook algorithms power and danger of everyone publishing

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 43

Code report A2

Research question 2

The coloured fields mark the second grade codes (middle column) that were found both in the overall theme of ‘contributions of blockchain’ and ‘factors for accountability’.

Some of the codes were subsumed into several themes or groups. Frequency of a code or amount of sub-codes is no imperative indicator for its relevance.

contributions of blockchain permanence permanence permanent recording of authorship and content (and soon, reputation) CVL provides permanent archiving for journalists BC enables permanent archiving of content permanence in form of the record immutability each article is immutable immutable record solves issues of authenticity/timing claims immutable portfolios decentralization DNN not bound by a bigger entity and its interests BC decentralizes authority to publish unlike traditional media proof of existence ensures decentralized data immutability decentralized, Ethereum based marketplace rise of BC for fair, decentralized standards and new revenues shared ledger to create an extensible platform decentralized news not a new concept decentralized marketplace for independent newsrooms

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 44

future of complete decentralization transparency and autonomy through decentralized approach blockchain has no centralized point of failure community ownership of shared platform decentralization is democratic decentralization of platform decentralized medium different means of decentralization no central authority or control no centralized institution no ownership whitepaper through community feedback whole process is decentralized incentives model DNN a compensation model built on incentives thru BC DNN token as primary instrument of value on platform readers use token for interaction creation of engaged stakeholder and publisher community tokens as a form of reputation CVL as motivation for ensuring highest quality cryptoeconomic model incentivizes good behaviour cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation DNN points as rewards acceptance-rejection ratio for reputation explanation of AR Ratio in practice pay out for writers based on

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 45

reputation selfishness as incentive for good reviews complete elimination of bad behaviour not the goal acting for personal gain and greed as foundation of system economically incentivized self-governance punishment for those not abiding the constitution economic incentives to ensure high quality credibility indicators to condition citizens to ask critical qs Economic incentives to encourage good behaviour self-governing system for high quality newsrooms infrastructure DNN uses Ethereum blockchain as infrastructure structure impossible to infiltrate or take down network run by tokens linked to the Ethereum network nearly impossible for outsiders to manipulate data on BC publishers use peer-to-peer protocol for communication payment channels licensing system token as native payment system for the network network-effects benefits for both newsmakers and citizens CVL as software bridging civil with Ethereum BC key decisions based on the token software tool for implementing DNN points as an instrument accountability of accounting tool for accountability in academia and legal industries

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 46

blockchain as tool transparency new kind of transparency for information sharing and consuming transparency for money and tokens use BC makes news more transparent internal discoverability improve internal discoverability of assets audience engagement cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation creation of engaged stakeholder and publisher community readers use token for interaction verifiability accuracy fact-based journalism BC records now admissible on court changes of legal admissibility on BC by state BC enables users to discover and verify content identity management system authentication badge for every digital asset verification of content authenticity admissible legal evidence timestamping verifiability on DNN verifiable attribution of ownership, licensing and creation blockchain creates credibility empowerment of community community as sole overseers of accurate information more direct and transparent relation betw. journalist & citizen over time community governance wanted compensation thru community, not ads

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 47

community feedback on po.et project possibility to participate public should be able to comment on work potential of influence whitepaper through community feedback independence BC frees news from corporate influence BC protects journalists against censorship CVL provides self- governance for journalists independent journalism ecosystem for sustainability full autonomy over editorial, business decisions free from commercial or political pressures decentralized marketplace for independent newsrooms responsiveness DNN as a two way street for journalists and readers importance of interaction with the audience no direct communication for reader and writer cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation meaningful consequences cryptoeconomic model incentivizes good behaviour acceptance-rejection ratio for reputation pay out for writers based on reputation complete elimination of bad behaviour not the goal punishment for those not abiding the constitution potential of influence trust BC core value rests on trust with BC po.et enables trust civil strengthens trust global vision for trustworthy journalism

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 48

blockchain brings trust factors for accountability tool for implementing discussion tab about accountability newsrooms how people show disapproval transparency real name of writers labelling opinions and commentaries as such respond to calls for transparency or access transparency the way to more democratic free thinking press transparent about collection, storage and use of user data clear and transparent about editorial activities readers can look through writers source material provide corrections accountability through transparency audience engagement collaborative debates about journalism itself consumers' involvement to hold media accountable discussion tab about newsrooms people want to hold news organizations accountable comment section not wanted active and timeconsuming engagement active readership wanted audience engagement team at DNA info audience participation in small scale community checks adherence of guidelines community participation part of publishing process everyone contributes example of audience engagement editor incentivizing readers discussion within the article

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users leave reviews verifiability everything must be verifiable by the audience writer is responsible to provide materials for verification real name of writers using sources empowerment of community guidelines community governed sole accountability to community possibility to participate public should be able to comment on work accountable to the community collaborative debates about journalism itself consumers' involvement to hold media accountable discussion tab about newsrooms solely accountable to the public collaborative debates about journalism itself community checks adherence of guidelines community participation part of publishing process example of public discussion about newsroom guidelines collaborative work when breaking the rule, majority can vote ppl out of civil community checks adherence of guidelines community decides over newsroom registry community responsible for their judgment new responsibility of the public community moderation community gets educated

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interconnection between the public and the professionals shared motivation of people community ownership of shared platform content is community owned independence free press free from outer pressures aims to support independent newsrooms creation of conditions free from outer pressures, interference independence from ads full autonomy over editorial, business decisions free from commercial or political pressures responsiveness responsive to critique from public judged by responsiveness importance of interaction with the audience interconnection between the public and the professionals meaningful consequences accountable when story is wrong when breaking the rule, majority can vote ppl out of civil trust professional training to claim trust with the audience trustworthy journalism fulfilling mandate to the provide citizens with info to public participate in society people have a right to truth and facts societal role mandate from the public upholding quality fact-checking ensuring diverse array of quality journalism make quality journalism accessible to as many ppl as possible morals and values responsible journalism

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faithfulness to the source no deception of public truthfulness adherence to guidelines no plagiarism no unsourced content list of reliable sources avoid editorial bias word count article format real name of writers guidelines community governed no deception of public fact-checking adoption of internal codes and ethics reward bound to compliance with the guidelines editorial guidelines and values should be public compliance with the civil constitution decentralized accountability contributions of blockchain to accountability decentralized accountability unprecedented in history decentralization factors of accountability community empowerment

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Code report A3

Research question 3

Some of the codes were subsumed into several themes or groups. Frequency of a code or amount of sub-codes is no imperative indicator for its relevance.

empowerment active engagement active and timeconsuming engagement active readership wanted empowerment is time consuming feedback of journalists polarizing general criticism passive readership as problem pessimistic view of active community problems with orginal review process should not count on active community no interest in talking to everyone cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation creation of engaged stakeholder and publisher community collaborative debates mutual accountability ideal mutual coaching ideal mutual expectations on both sides about accountability discussion within the article collaborative debates about journalism itself collaborative journalism collaborative news guidelines collaborative work shared motivation of people new responsibility of the public news literary aspect community gets educated

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 53

discussions as case study in media literacy education decentralization DNN not bound by a bigger entity and its interests BC decentralizes authority to publish unlike traditional media proof of existence ensures decentralized data immutability decentralized, Ethereum based marketplace rise of BC for fair, decentralized standards and new revenues shared ledger to create an extensible platform decentralized news not a new concept decentralized marketplace for independent newsrooms future of complete decentralization transparency and autonomy through decentralized approach blockchain has no centralized point of failure community ownership of shared platform decentralization is democratic decentralization of platform decentralized medium different means of decentralization no central authority or control no centralized institution no ownership whitepaper through community feedback whole process is decentralized provision of feedback responsiveness possibilities community checks adherence of guidelines

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community participation part of publishing process users leave reviews discussion within the article meaningful consequences potential of influence interconnection between the public and the professionals discussion tab about newsrooms cannot be accountable to everyone every second how people show disapproval accountability through professionals and public blockchain as a tool comment section not wanted no direct communication for reader and writer incentives model DNN a compensation model built on incentives thru BC DNN token as primary instrument of value on platform readers use token for interaction creation of engaged stakeholder and publisher community tokens as a form of reputation CVL as motivation for ensuring highest quality cryptoeconomic model incentivizes good behaviour cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation DNN points as rewards acceptance-rejection ratio for reputation explanation of AR Ratio in practice pay out for writers based on reputation selfishness as incentive for good reviews complete elimination of bad

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 55

behaviour not the goal acting for personal gain and greed as foundation of system economically incentivized self-governance punishment for those not abiding the constitution economic incentives to ensure high quality credibility indicators to condition citizens to ask critical questions Economic incentives to encourage good behaviour self-governing system for high quality newsrooms more responsibilities decentralization DNN not bound by a bigger entity and its interests BC decentralizes authority to publish unlike traditional media proof of existence ensures decentralized data immutability decentralized, Ethereum based marketplace rise of BC for fair, decentralized standards and new revenues shared ledger to create an extensible platform decentralized news not a new concept decentralized marketplace for independent newsrooms future of complete decentralization transparency and autonomy through decentralized approach blockchain has no centralized point of failure community ownership of shared platform decentralization is

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 56

democratic decentralization of platform decentralized medium different means of decentralization no central authority or control no centralized institution no ownership whitepaper through community feedback whole process is decentralized provision of feedback responsiveness possibilities community checks adherence of guidelines community participation part of publishing process users leave reviews discussion within the article meaningful consequences potential of influence interconnection between the public and the professionals discussion tab about newsrooms cannot be accountable to everyone every second how people show disapproval accountability through professionals and public blockchain as a tool comment section not wanted no direct communication for reader and writer individual responsibility respect and consideration of impact weighing the consequences of publishing avoid pandering to lurid curiosity if harmful fact-checking research contributes to accuracy responsible journalism ethical journalism

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faithfulness to source accuracy no change of existing responsibilities added responsibilities of the journalist both journalist and reader as audience empowerment is time consuming empowerment of journalist responsibility for reader and writer responsibility of newsrooms interconnection between the public and the professionals importance of interaction with the audience individual credibility writer is responsible to provide materials for verification real name of writers journalist responsible for own credibility identity of journalist reputation of journalist important transparency new kind of transparency for information sharing and consuming transparency for money and tokens use internal discoverability real name of writers labelling opinions and commentaries as such respond to calls for transparency or access transparency the way to more democratic free thinking press transparent about collection, storage and use of user data clear and transparent about editorial activities readers can look through writers source material

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provide corrections accountability through transparency verifiability accuracy fact-based journalism BC records now admissible on court BC enables users to discover and verify content identity management system authentication badge for every digital asset verification of content authenticity timestamping verifiability on DNN verifiable attribution of ownership, licensing and creation blockchain creates credibility everything must be verifiable by the audience writer is responsible to provide materials for verification real name of writers using sources privilege of responsibility privilege or responsibility empowerment of journalist forced professionalization accountability through technology forces journalistic professionalization highest quality quality journalism engaging and meaningful content CVL as motivation for ensuring highest quality economic incentives to ensure high quality self-governing system for high quality newsrooms upholding quality increases need for empowerment of community accountability provision of feedback

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possibilities decentralization active engagement contributions of blockchain

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Appendix B

Interview Guide

ASK ABOUT ANONYMITY AND GET CONSENT TO RECORD.

1. Introduction You are a ______at ______. Can you elaborate on your position? What’s your background?

And now you have chosen to work with blockchain. How come?

For this research, I will look at accountability as the process of measuring the performance of the media. They are called to account for fulfilling their responsibility towards society such as ensuring press freedom, providing information for the public good and limiting harm.

2. How well do you see this process implemented, especially in terms of transparency, audience participation, responsiveness? [How important is it?]

3. What are the struggles of online accountability? Have they changed over time?

4. Who do you feel / should journalists feel most accountable to? The state? The public? The profession? Oneself? The market?

5. Which do you deem as the most important factor / indicator to establish accountability? How is this changing through blockchain?

6. The blockchain frees news media from its dependency on ads so they don’t have to account for their actions in the market. Who do journalists account to on your platform?

7. Community is stressed and an essential component of a blockchain, being a decentralized network. How big of a part plays the community for holding the media accountable? How much is the community (being part of the process) accountable itself?

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8. How exactly does the accountability process work with blockchain? [Who makes the claim? Who are the actors? What are the stages? How is it enforced? What is the punishment?]

9. What is blockchain technology providing for the accountability process that traditional media structures are not?

10. How would you assess the practical implementation of such an accountability process?

11. To what extent have changes occurred to the online practices? How have journalists adapted e.g. reading more comments / interacting? Does the community participate more? [How do you respond to errors made? How transparent is it?]

12. Does blockchain technology change responsibilities of the journalist and if so, to what extent?

13. Overall, your platform / blockchain promises greater freedom and independence for the media. Has blockchain also enforced the decentralization of accountability? [Is there less accountability?]

14. To conclude, would you say blockchain is a feasible mechanism / process to contribute to media accountability in the digital environment?

15. Add Ons. Anything you want to add / deem as important?

Any questions?

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Appendix C

Illustration for Each Research Question

Illustration C1

Figure 1 for RQ1

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Illustration C2

Figure 2 for RQ2

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Illustration C3

Figure 4 for RQ3

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Appendix D

Whitepapers and Constitution

Whitepaper D1

Civil Whitepaper

Retrieved from: https://civil.co/white-paper/

For this research, the version was used that was online on April 3, 2019.

The Civil white paper Abstract Civil is the decentralized communications protocol for journalists and citizens, launched by The Civil Media Company. The protocol limits the need for (and influence of) third parties like advertisers and centralized publisher conglomerates. The protocol aims to support independent newsrooms initially focused on producing high-quality local, international, investigative and policy journalism. In time, we envision a vast ecosystem of journalists, citizens and developers building products and services dedicated to powering sustainable journalism throughout the world. Civil’s cryptoeconomic model seeks to enable a more direct, transparent relationship between journalists and citizens, while using blockchain to also strengthen protections for journalists against censorship and intellectual property violations. The goal of Civil is to create a sustainable, global marketplace for journalism that is free from manipulative ads, misinformation and outside influence. Civil will differ from current media companies, both platforms and publishers, where a centralized operator controls the distribution of content to the public. By improving transparency and autonomy through a decentralized approach, Civil aims to strengthen trust between citizens and traditional news reporting, creating a renewed appreciation for the value of financially supporting journalism directly. Activity on the Civil protocol will be mediated through the Ethereum blockchain and a community of consumers, content creators, fact checkers and publishers, who work together to decide which newsrooms to organize and the types of content published on the network. Rather than a given platform or publisher dictating the content its readers can consume, a decentralized network of people curates newsrooms and content. In order to achieve Civil’s decentralized goal, activity on the platform will be managed by an Ethereum blockchain-based token, CVL. Introduction Civil is the decentralized, Ethereum-based marketplace that aims to introduce a new, sustainable operating model for journalism predicated on two distinct features: economically incentivized self- governance and permanent recording of authorship and content (and soon, reputation). This approach promises to help revive a vitally important — and struggling — industry. In the process, Civil can also become one of the first truly consumer-facing applications of blockchain technology. Journalists, or “newsmakers” as they’re known on Civil, will own and operate independent publications (“Newsrooms”) while retaining full autonomy over all editorial and business decisions. Newsrooms primarily seek compensation directly from the citizens they serve and possess full control of their revenue model, while The Civil Media Company earns no commission on any direct transaction between newsmakers and citizens. What’s more, citizens will be able to choose to compensate newsmakers in any currency, including fiat using traditional credit card processors as well as cryptocurrency (even CVL!) via web wallets.

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To establish a high bar for quality content and discourse, all participants in the marketplace agree to abide by the Civil Constitution, a self-governed statement of purpose, values and code of conduct in keeping with our mission to power sustainable journalism throughout the world. This will not only help sustain a high quality filter as the community grows, but will also introduce economic incentives that reward individuals for launching quality Newsrooms, as well as those who flag individuals and actions that do not meet the standards laid out by the Civil Constitution. This approach will produce network-effects benefits for both newsmakers and citizens as the marketplace scales in service of our mission to power sustainable journalism throughout the world. Civil is made possible by the convergence of two distinct trends: • the inability of the journalism industry, which largely relies on traditional and programmatic ad-driven models, to develop a more sustainable funding model for a digital economy; • the rise of blockchain technology, which enables new operating models that promote fair, decentralized standards and open new revenue channels. There is a tremendous opportunity to introduce a new, sustainable model for journalists, who are unsatisfied with the current paradigm, which promotes a focus on satiating advertisers and chasing clicks, and which does not reward serving their communities above all else. To better understand this convergence — and how it can pave the way to a powerful new platform economy that brings journalism back to its core values — it’s important to first take a closer look at the dire state of the journalism industry in 2018, and how it came to this point. An Industry in Transition Journalism is a critical pillar of free, fair and just societies. It plays a vital role in exposing corruption, promoting accountability and giving a voice to marginalized populations. Today, it’s also an industry in crisis. With few exceptions, publishers are struggling to remain viable as they navigate the transition from a print- to digital-based economy. The advent of the Information Age has introduced new paradigms that have made it prohibitively difficult for publications to sustain themselves on the ad-driven model that was so effective for the duration of the print journalism era. This environment has caused mass uncertainty, layoffs and market consolidation in the journalism industry, and has severely limited the public’s access to quality journalism — especially at the local, international, policy and investigative levels. Print newspapers have been struggling mightily for decades as readers, advertisers and publishers have increasingly migrated to digital channels. While logic may dictate that the demand for digital reporters would follow suit, that has not been the case. According to the Columbia Journalism Review’s analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were more than 66,000 newspaper reporters or editors employed in 2005. Over the next ten years, more than 25,000 of those journalists left that workforce, a decline of more than 38 percent. During the same time period, the number of journalists at digital-only publishers grew by just 7,000.

But even as journalists have struggled to make ends meet in this climate, the media industry at large has profited handsomely from the shift to digital. Search engine and social media giants have emerged as the ultimate middlemen in today’s model: as their platforms continue to grow, so too does their already-commanding influence over publishers. Journalists have to spend outsized time and resources focusing on how to cater their content to audiences on platforms owned by third parties. Together, Facebook and Google form a duopoly that commands between 60 and 70 percent of ad market sharein the U.S. alone. This is even more alarming when one considers that the five most popular destinations for gathering news are: Google, Facebook, Youtube (owned by Google), Twitter (a major Google partner) and Instagram (owned by Facebook) — none of which self-identify as media companies.

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This has resulted in a dire state, driven by mass consolidation and constantly shifting models seeking to optimize ad revenue. Just six corporations control more than 90 percent of American media outlets — a phenomenon that’s similarly playing out around the world. Public trust in the media is at an all-time low. By and large, publishers prioritize attracting web traffic at scale due to its direct correlation with ad revenue, a pernicious influence over editorial decision-making. This “clicks for cash” model has also given rise to a cottage industry of sensationalist publications that place outsized value on attention-grabbing headlines and polarizing themes — and has increased pressure on the rest of the industry to follow suit, or face irrelevance. Local, international, policy and investigative reporting — longtime mainstays of high-quality journalism — are increasingly rare practices in this climate. While these important subject matters can and traditionally have driven major social change, they’re also among the least cost-effective — and currently endangered — forms of reporting to maintain under ad-driven, scale-at-all-costs revenue models. Pioneering a New Approach Civil is introducing a new solution that leverages the Ethereum blockchain and cryptoeconomics to take third-party interests out of the equation and allow newsmakers to run their own operations, and be accountable to their communities alone. Civil is the decentralized marketplace for independent newsrooms initially focused on local, international, policy and investigative journalism. It seeks to restore journalism’s eroding presence for severely underserved communities and to ensure mission alignment among all participants, including citizens and newsmakers, from day one. Although Civil will be radically different from centralized platforms like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for many reasons, it will also leverage many of the same strategic advantages of platform dynamics to help source, match-make and distribute value among the participants in a fair, open and honest manner. Each new newsroom will create additional value for the broader user base (people will soon find credible news about everything on Civil), while newsrooms also realize the benefit of plugging into a growing network of global citizens. To ensure that its marketplace would produce a diverse array of quality journalism from day one, The Civil Media Company has allocated $1MM USD in grants to support a “First Fleet” of more than 100 full-time, veteran journalists across approximately 15 newsrooms. This population is driven by newsmakers from well-respected publications including The New Yorker, LA Times, BBC, The Guardian, Foreign Policy, Gawker and DNAinfo, among others. Building up a large stable of talented journalists for the Civil platform launch ensures citizens will experience a robust content assortment and engaged community on day one. Once the platform is live, anyone may apply to start a newsroom on Civil. Applying to Start a Civil Newsroom To gain access to the Civil marketplace, a prospective newsroom must take four steps: • Submit a “Mission” outlining the newsroom’s purpose, its intended community, its plans for how it will generate funding from the community, and how it will direct that funding. • Submit a “Roster,” including any relevant credentials for those leading and working within the proposed newsroom. • Sign the Civil Constitution as a pledge to abide by its guidelines. • Stake CVL tokens, the software that connects the Civil platform to the Ethereum blockchain — and which manages all transactions tied to the platform’s self-governence. All Civil network participants (defined as CVL token owners) are notified of new applications. If they believe a prospective (or existing) newsroom violates any of the ethical values outlined in the Civil Constitution, they can challenge its ability to appear on the Civil Registry by staking tokens. The larger CVL token-holder community is then notified of the challenge and a vote will take place, also via CVL tokens, with a simple majority required for consensus.

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Only community-approved newsrooms can publish content on Civil. Beyond introducing a new manner for supporting quality journalism, this token-curated registry process introduces economic incentives for ensuring a high-quality filter for all journalism published on Civil. Much more detail on this model appears later in this white paper. Community Checks and Balances The Civil Constitution Civil is founded on the principle that a free and open press is an essential element of the foundation of a free, fair, and just society; and in the belief that global change in technology, economics, and politics have altered the basic conditions that provide for its fulfillment of that purpose. Civil’s protocol will be operated and governed by its participants — citizens and newsmakers alike — while protecting Civil’s core values and purpose. Civil is a community with a specific mission: promoting sustainable journalism. The Civil Constitution is a framework for defining what does — and does not — constitute ethical journalism on Civil. It is the foundation for the entire network and will drive Civil’s self-governance and community consensus. Specific interpretations of the core values and purpose will be the work of the community, operating according to a transparent governing framework. That framework will include provisions for the community to change this document as needed (i.e. “amendments”) to better promote the core values and purpose of Civil. Participants in the Civil protocol should always seek community-directed solutions to problems and conflicts that arise on the network. The Civil Media Company pledges to build and develop the software to power that community-driven conflict resolution, though our open-source technology will allow others to build supporting services as well. There will inevitably be conflicts between parties on the network that cannot be resolved using available tools, or because one or more of Civil’s core values come into conflict. In those cases, the community may propose other solutions — either by building software or seeking to establish new processes to address unforeseen conflicts. Or the matter may be appealed to the Civil Council, an independent body dedicated to upholding and interpreting the core ethical values outlined by the Civil Constitution, for review. Civil Foundation The Civil Media Company will instantiate and endow an independent, nonprofit organization to be called Civil Foundation, with the mission of upholding and advocating for the core values defined in the Civil Constitution. Civil Foundation will house the Civil Council, a protocol oversight body comprised of free speech lawyers, veteran journalists and journalism scholars. The Foundation will provide operational support to The Council, which will act as an appeals body capable of overturning community decisions if found to be in direct violation of the Civil Constitution. These should be rare, precedent-setting events that will inform the community in future votes — and can only be vetoed by a two-thirds vote from the community (see parameters outlined later in this paper). All Council decisions (and dissenting opinions among Councilmembers) will be published for community review. Civil Council Initial Iteration The Civil Media Company is instantiating an independent, non-profit Civil Foundation to house the voting members of the Civil Council as well as support staff such as researchers, auditors and translators. This entity will need to evolve in the following, community-led ways over time: Scale — This entity will need to grow in a correlative fashion with the network size in order to manage the increasing number of appeals, amendments, and general platform issues. Diversity — This entity will need fresh new faces/voices over time in order to remain a representative body for the network at large, especially as we become more global in nature.

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Decentralization — This entity should move beyond its Civil Media Company handpicked inception toward a future where its largely representative of the network at large, possibly through elections or similarly democratic procedures. Resources — This entity will need to finance its operations in order to maintain quality oversight over time. The community will need to determine the best method for this entity to generate sustainable operating capital without creating points of weakness or misalignment. The Civil Media Company does not expect to answer all these questions ahead of its general launch, and recognizes the importance of realizing community consensus around the Civil Council’s long term role. Therefore, the Foundation and Council will be tasked with sourcing global input and proposing a set of amendments to the Constitution to be ratified within the first two years after launch. The process will look like this:

Core Product The Ethereum blockchain plays a foundational role in Civil’s model: it enables the creation of a custom token, CVL, which is based on the ERC20 protocol. The token is a value stored in a decentralized database that’s managed by Civil’s smart contracts, which allows the Civil platform to interact with the CVL token. In essence, CVL is the software that bridges Civil with the Ethereum blockchain. It’s vital to Civil’s overall model, as it unlocks two vital business features for newsmakers: self-governance and permanent archiving. Civil will offer four core experiences for its users in its initial iteration: Business center The first place a newsmaker goes upon earning access to Civil’s platform. Here they may manage permissions for their workforce, manage their public account information and visual brand identity, define and price editorial products, manage their finances, and review the performance analytics. Content management system A modern drafting experience that will, among other features, allow newsmakers to permanently record the authorship provenance and publish the text of an article directly to the blockchain by simply checking a box. Citizen reader Where people discover and consume good journalism on Civil. Newsrooms are the primary brand throughout the citizen user experience, with newsmakers possessing lightweight abilities to customize their visual brand identity. Citizens will enjoy an intuitive reading experience, including specific features designed to increase media literacy and to make it quick and easy to compensate newsrooms. One such feature is Credibility Indicators: simple visual cues that represent different elements that went into the reporting of a given story (e.g. on-the-ground reporting, stories containing original reporting, whether the reporter is a subject matter expert). This approach aims to start conditioning citizens to ask critical questions about how and why a given story was reported, not just on Civil but anywhere. The Civil Registry The Civil Registry is a self-governing, token-curated whitelist of newsrooms that have been approved to publish content on Civil’s platform. To access the Civil Registry, a prospective Newsroom must submit a journalistic mission, a newsroom roster, sign the Civil Constitution and stake CVL tokens to state the seriousness of their intent. Any community member may mount a challenge to new or existing applicants via CVL tokens. In the near future, this registry model will expand significantly and be the self-governance system for every organization operating within the Civil ecosystem. The CVL Token Economy

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The Civil Media Company has built its product suite around a user-based design model. Everything on Civil is built with an eye towards making the process of supporting quality journalism as intuitive as possible. The underlying, token-based economy that powers the larger Civil marketplace, meanwhile, is entirely predicated on new business models unlocked by the advent of Ethereum and its decentralized nature. Tokens are the software by which key decisions on Civil will be made. A large community of CVL token holders will power these decisions. It’s important to note that holding CVL tokens — or even having an existing knowledge of, or will to purchase, cryptocurrency is not a prerequisite for experiencing a newsroom that runs on Civil. Newsrooms will be able to accept compensation from the communities they serve in any currency preferred by the end consumer (e.g. USD, EUR via credit cards; ETH, CVL via web wallets). Civil is offering such an expansive model for one simple reason: our core mission is to make quality journalism as accessible as possible to as many people as possible. A working knowledge of blockchain and cryptocurrency should not — and will not — be a barrier to entry for citizens. CVL tokens will play a vital role in the governance of newsrooms and the platform as a whole, and many members of the community — including newsmakers, citizens and developers — will elect to use them to participate in the governance of Civil’s protocol from day one. For citizens, the decision to do so is entirely optional, and the majority of Civil citizens may not elect to interact with Civil at this level at first. That’s entirely up to them; for some, Civil can be a marketplace for great journalism, and nothing more. For others, it can be a massive ecosystem in which participants are economically incentivized to promote good behavior that helps the platform grow and thrive, while keeping bad actors off of it. This concept is known as the “Waterline.”

Readers and supporters, the largest contingent of Civil’s citizen userbase, will visit newsrooms on Civil solely to access and support good journalism. Civil’s protocol participants, those using CVL tokens in the governance mechanisms, will exist underneath the Waterline. As CVL token holders, they will have the ability to vote on key decisions, including whether newsrooms meet the criteria and ethics laid out in the Civil Constitution. To unlock access to Civil’s marketplace, newsrooms will need to gain community consensus that they will be a good actor on the platform — and to be added to a whitelist of approved newsmakers. Incentivizing Community Developers In addition to the newsmakers, developers from the community will also play a central role at the “creator” level, which sits at the heart of Civil’s ecosystem. As the community grows, so too will demand for new software tools and professional services, all of which should also be subject to the same set of ethics and standards as newsrooms. This will be a way to quickly and effectively establish trust for the growing volume of tools and services that will be built on Civil, and begin to foster an app store-like economy that incentivizes screening for ethical developers, just as the current iteration does for newsmakers. Civil is committed to building a large and active developer community. The Civil Media Company will open source the code for all of its citizen-facing software and make it accessible on its GitHub page. An Overview of the Civil Registry To better illustrate this system of self-governance, known as a token-curated registry (known as “The Civil Registry” on Civil), consider the following example. A prospective newsmaker applies to launch a newsroom on Civil. Their ultimate goal is to be added to the Civil Registry, which unlocks marketplace access for their newsroom on Civil.

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Their application will outline the newsroom’s mission, roster, intended community, how it seeks to generate financial support from the community, and how it plans to direct that funding. The Newsroom Officers will also pledge to abide by the Civil Constitution to the best of their ability at all times. Finally, to state the seriousness of its intent, the prospective newsroom will deposit CVL tokens to activate the application process according to a parameter managed by the community. CVL token- holders will be notified of new applications. If the prospective newsroom demonstrates a viable application and no red flags emerge, the community takes no action, and the newsroom is added to the Civil Registry after a finite review period. If, however, the newsroom elicits concern according to the Civil Constitution, then a CVL token- holder can — and likely will — challenge their place on the Civil Registry. To do so, they’ll match the prospective newsmaker’s CVL deposit with one of their own. The challenger should base their argument around one or multiple aspects of the Civil Constitution of which the prospective Newsroom appears to be in violation. All CVL token-holders will then have an opportunity to vote whether they support the newsroom or the challenger, and their primary motivation will be to optimize for the highest quality Civil Registry possible. Doing so will lead to marketplace growth and sustainability overall, the value of which will be captured into the protocol’s baseline token, CVL. If the vote is in favor of the newsroom, the newsroom will be allowed to remain on the Civil Registry, and the challenger’s deposit will revert to the newsroom and majority voters. If the vote is in favor of the challenger, the newsroom will be removed from the Civil Registry, and the newsroom’s deposit will revert to the challenger and majority voters. Prior to enacting these outcomes, anyone may appeal its case to the Civil Council, which is required to describe the Constitutional rationale for its decision with at least one public report, issued by the majority; it may at the discretion of its individual members produce multiple reports from Council members who voted with the majority, as well as one or more reports from members who voted with the minority. If the Council rejects the appeal, the community vote is processed as is. If the Council finds for the appeal, the community vote is overturned and outcomes reversed. The Council’s decision is subject to a two-thirds supermajority veto. Broadly speaking, token voters are incentivized to vote in accordance with their shared understanding of the Civil Constitution; they’re rewarded for voting with the majority and ensuring that the Civil Registry effectively curates high-quality, trustworthy journalism. This cryptoeconomic model incentivizes participation and adherence to “good behavior” and makes it prohibitively difficult for bad actors and actions — Sybil attacks, spammers, trolls, those actively propagating misinformation — to gain access and flourish on Civil. The Civil Registry will initially be a self-governing system for approving high-quality newsrooms, but can scale to govern many other activities that occur on the platform, including supporting networks that aggregate cross-newsroom content, fact-checking, licensing, etc. This model ensures that an interdependence forms between citizens and newsmakers, and that each party is incentivized to maintain high standards as Civil’s ecosystem expands. Challenges to the Civil Registry Civil seeks to incorporate an “expert oracle” into its token-curated registry design to ensure community decisions remain as closely oriented to the Civil Constitution as possible. However, it will also seek to implement a cryptoeconomically robust system where participants are properly incentivized to participate and maintain the ultimate authority over the protocol. With that in mind, a quick overview of how this system of checks and balances — incorporating the Civil Constitution, the Civil Council and community consensus — will work: Appeals & Vetos

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• Any token holder may appeal the result of a Newsroom Challenge by staking a Council Deposit; • Any token holder may initiate a veto challenge to the Council’s decision by staking a matching Council Deposit; • Vetos must receive two-thirds supermajority in order to overturn Council decisions; • This is the only method by which the Council can affect the Newsroom Registry. Parameters & Amendments • Any token holder may propose and challenge changes to Civil’s dynamic parameters by staking a Parameter Deposit; • Civil will create a Civil Constitution contract to which the Civil Registry links. This contract points to the text of the Constitution and the Civil Council. The Civil Media Company will put the Civil Council in charge of that contract. Once an updated Constitution is ratified, the Civil Constitution contract will transfer to reference the new version, which would contain the logic for voting on amendments, Council members, etc.; • Any token holder may propose and challenge Constitutional Amendments by staking an Amendment Deposit; • Any token holder may initiate a veto challenge to the Council’s decision re: Amendment proposals by staking a matching Amendment Deposit; • Vetos must receive two-thirds supermajority in order to overturn Council decisions; • This is the only method by which the Constitution may be amended: 1) community proposal, 2) Council ratification, 3) community acceptance. • Note: the “Amendment” system will not be implemented at launch; it will come shortly after; Defining Parameters for the Civil Registry Note: the “starting values” are still being determined ahead of Civil’s general launch. We’re soliciting community input in the open beta version of the Civil Constitution and will update these parameters ahead of Civil’s governance launch.

Starting Value Parameter Notes (USD)

Newsroom Applying/challenging listings on Newsroom $1,000 Deposit Registry

Newsroom Listing may be challenged, not on Newsroom 14 days Application Phase Registry yet

Newsroom Time community has to vote on outstanding Challenge 10 days challenge Commit Phase

Newsroom Time community has to reveal their vote on Reveal Phase 7 days outstanding challenges (i.e. make it count) Challenge

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 73

Newsroom Percentage of revealed votes needed to win a 50% Winning Margin challenge

What winner of Newsroom Challenges Newsroom 50% (applicant or challenger) receives from loser's Dispensation lost deposit

Council Appeal Time any community member has to appeal 3 days Request Phase vote outcome

Appealing to Council, vetoing Council Council Deposit $1,000 decisions

Council Appeal Time Council has to agree to review appeal, 14 days Review Phase deny request

Council Veto Time any community member has to issue a 7 days Challenge Phase veto challenge to Council decision

Council Veto Time community has to vote to veto Council 10 days Commit Phase decision

Council Veto Time community has to reveal their vote to 7 days Reveal Phase veto Council decision (i.e. make it count)

Council Winning Percentage of revealed votes needed to win a 66.7% Margin veto challenge

Council What winner of Council Appeals (appeal or 50% Dispensation vetoer) receives from loser's lost deposit

Parameter Proposing a constructive change to any of our $10,000 Deposit parameters

Parameter Proposal may be challenged, not implemented 14 days Application Phase in TCR yet

Parameter Time community has to vote on disputed 14 days Challenge parameter updates

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 74

Commit Phase

Parameter Time community has to reveal their vote on Challenge Reveal 7 days parameter updates (i.e. make it count) Phase

Parameter Percentage of revealed votes needed to win a 50% Winning Margin parameter challenge

What winner of Parameter Challenges Parameter 50% (applicant or challenger) receives from loser's Dispensation lost deposit

Amendment Proposing a constructive amendment to the $5,000 Deposit Civil Constitution for Council ratification

Amendment Time community has to vote on whether an 14 days Challenge Phase amendment should be reviewed by Council

Amendment Time Council has to agree to review 28 days Review Phase amendment proposal, issue Yes/No decision

Amendment Veto Time any community member has to issue a 28 days Challenge Phase veto challenge to Council decision

Amendment Veto Time community has to vote to veto Council 10 days Vote Phase decision

Amendment Veto Time community has to reveal their vote to 7 days Reveal Phase veto Council decision (i.e. make it count)

Amendment Percentage of revealed votes needed to win an 67% Winning Margin amendment veto challenge

A m 5 What winner of Amendment e 0 Challenges (proposer or vetoer) n % receives from loser's lost deposit d

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 75

m e n t

D i s p e n s a t i o n

Technical Details of the Civil Registry Initially, the token curated registry system will be intended for “newsroom” contracts. Functionally this is a token curated registry of Ethereum addresses (which either point to a Newsroom contract or are ignored/removed). Civil’s Monorepo is located at: • https://github.com/joincivil/Civil Listing Definition A listing is simply an address that corresponds to a newsroom contract as well as the data required to track state of the listing (deposit, whitelisted/denied, etc). The newsroom contract will contain necessary links to the newsroom’s application displayed on the Civil Registry to help token holders make informed decisions when reviewing applications, whitelisted newsrooms, or challenges. Contract Design Overview • Civil has forked the token-curated registry created by Mike Goldin and AdChain from https://github.com/skmgoldin/tcr/blob/master/contracts/Registry.soland make a few modifications. • Rather than using bytes32 hashes as keys, we will use addresses that correspond to contracts. • We will modify the application process so that a contract can only be applied to the TCR by their owner. This means that contracts that apply to the TCR must implement the “Owned” interface. • Add transactions for Civil Council functionality (granting appeals, reversing community decisions) • Support the Appeal and Veto functionalities A graphical representation the challenge process:

The Civil Ecosystem Vision Civil is committed to powering sustainable journalism throughout the world. To realize this vision, it needs to build technology, ship products, attract network participants (newsmakers, citizens, developers), and scale ethically on behalf of the whole community. This will require growing the core

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 76 team at The Civil Media Company, but as much as possible it must stimulate third-party projects in order to catalyze rapid growth and truly achieve decentralization. In this spirit, The Civil Media Company seeks to establish several different organizational areas of growth in order to fuel the totality of our Civil ecosystem vision. Civil Foundation The Civil Media Company will instantiate an independent, non-profit to house the voting members of the Civil Council as well as support staff such as researchers, auditors and translators. It’s an independent organization established by The Civil Media Company to uphold and advocate for the journalistic ethics outlined in the Civil Constitution. The Civil Foundation will seek prominent journalism academics, outspoken free press lawyers, and veteran professional journalists to join a “founding” Civil Council. Over time, the Civil Council will evolve through some form of community governance. Civil Newsroom Mutual Civil is committed to ensuring protection for newsmakers from frivolous litigations and malicious intent by creating a media liability insurance company cooperatively owned by newsrooms. Journalists should be able to operate freely and without fear of excessive legal action in the pursuit of producing ethical journalism. The Civil Media Company The founding for-profit entity in this ecosystem has three primary mandates: 1. Serve the mission, values and ethos of Civil as thought leaders for the ecosystem, 2. Develop new and innovative uses for blockchain and cryptoeconomics, 3. Scale and optimize our marketplace businesses. At the protocol level (i.e. technology foundation), we will serve as core maintainers to ensure the scalability and security of our CVL token software, though this will also be open-sourced and we’ll encourage vast community involvement. At the application level, we will operate in a free market to create value for the Civil network participants through new products, tools, widgets and professional services. Some of these efforts may “spin out” as independent organizations if they reach “escape velocity”, while others may remain forever embedded within The Civil Media Company. What matters most is that while The Civil Media Company may possess what amounts to a first- mover advantage within the ecosystem, it has no monopoly or centralized control over the end users, and thus is motivated to develop the absolute best products and services on the market at all times in order to prosper. Should The Civil Media Company ever falter financially in the future, the ecosystem and protocol shall go on due to its open-source and decentralized marketplace infrastructure. Of course, the company’s intention is to contribute value to the network for a long time to come. Civil Studios This is a for-profit entity established by The Civil Media Company, motivated to pilot and fund marquee works of journalism (“Civil Originals” a la “Netflix Originals”). Civil Studios seeks white spaces with big upside (e.g. podcasts, documentaries, big names), acting as a producer investing for upside and providing high-level support but not directly involved in the legwork. Civil Labs This is a for-profit entity established by The Civil Media Company, developing software apps, tools and widgets for the Civil ecosystem. Civil Labs seeks to stimulate our developer ecosystem and consumer/enterprise “app store” through mission-aligned investments with significant potential upside, working as half R&D lab (internal moonshots) and half accelerator (support other entrepreneurial ventures). Who’s Behind Civil The Civil Media Company CEO; Co-founderMatthew Iles

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Matthew studied journalism at Duke University before embarking on an entrepreneurial career in digital marketing and innovative business modeling. He long imagined it possible to harness both the wildly explosive power of an open discourse platform along with the financial and behavioral incentives of a global cooperative, and first wrote about the concept behind Civil in November 2016. Beyond advocating for sustainable journalism, Matthew also believes deeply in evolutionary organizational methods over traditional command-and-control hierarchies. At Civil, Matthew and the team practice what he originally coined Synchronicity — a cascading, distributed leadership model predicated on vast common knowledge, continuous realignment and a deep appreciation for everyone's personal self-identity. He owes much of his career success to his wife and prior entrepreneurial partner Katie Iles. They live in Brooklyn with their dog Emma. When not working on Civil, Matthew enjoys reading science fiction, cooking and playing board games with Katie, and exploring New York City's and the Hudson Valley's best restaurants and bars. Operations Lead; Co-founderLillian Ruiz Lillian has nine years experience in digital marketing, audience development and brand and business strategy. At Civil, Lillian works on the Alignment and Operations team developing strategy and tactics for large-scale project execution and resource management. Prior to Civil, Lillian was senior director of growth and product optimization at InsideHook. There, she developed and implemented strategy to convert the email business into a full-suite digital publisher. Prior to InsideHook, Lillian launched the Girl Scouts of the USA's first social media marketing strategy, winning the company's first Overall Grand Champion and Category Champion in the Large Business division of the Social Media Leadership Awards. She also helped re-brand New York cult favorite brands Flavorwire and Flavorpill. Lillian holds a B.A. in History from Wesleyan University. Outside of the office she is the lead singer and co-manager of probably the sickest cover band in New York City. Don't invite her to your karaoke parties. Communications Lead; Co-founderMatt Coolidge With more than a decade of experience spanning both the tech and federal sectors, Matt drives brand strategy across Civil's ecosystem, including communications and content. Prior to Civil, Matt was a vice president at Bateman Group, an award-winning public relations firm, where he helped lead the agency's financial and developer tech practices out of its New York office. Previously, he was a marketing and communications consultant based in San Francisco, working primarily with early stage technology startups. He began his career at a Washington, D.C.-based lobbying firm working with non-profit science and technology organizations. He holds a B.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University. In his spare time, Matt loves to ski, hike, write and travel; he once spent six months doing all four across Southeast Asia and the Middle East, which he covered on his (poorly maintained) blog. Product Design Lead; Co-founderNguyet Vuong Nguyet leads product design at Civil, including user research, interface design and product strategy. Nguyet has more than a decade of experience working as a designer and creative director across industries such as publishing, hospitality, nonprofit, and media. Prior to Civil, Nguyet was Creative Director of Product at Atlantic 57, The Atlantic's creative agency/consultancy based out of Washington, D.C. There, she led the design and launch of digital products for the agency's mission-driven clients. Her work on The Cancer Atlas, The Cancer Society's interactive data visualization website, was nominated as a finalist of The Webby Awards, People's Choice Webby Award, and The Digiday Awards for “Best Use of Multimedia for Storytelling” in 2015. Previously, Nguyet led user experience design at Sabre Hospitality Solutions, where she was part of a team that designed the first web-based booking engine for luxury hotels and resorts, as well as other award-winning websites. Nguyet holds a B.A. from University of Maryland, College Park.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 78

When she's not obsessing over understanding user needs, Nguyet enjoys painting watercolor portraits, training to run races, and having travel adventures like cage diving with sharks in South Africa or hiking in Peru. Newsroom Strategy and Sustainability Lead; Co-founderNicole Bode Nicole is responsible for recruiting and supporting first fleet newsrooms on the Civil platform, including helping them thrive and overcome challenges. Nicole has spent the past 17 years as a reporter and editor in New York City, including as a founding member and Managing Editor of DNAinfo, an award-winning news site that served readers in New York and Chicago before its closure in 2017. During her tenure, the site earned awards from the Deadline Club, New York Press Club and Newswomen's Club of New York, among others. She also served as DNAinfo's first Data Visualizations Editor, and oversaw breaking news as well as day-to- day newsroom operations. Previously, Nicole spent eight years as a reporter at the New York Daily News, where she covered criminal justice, education and local, national and international breaking news. She holds a B.A. from Columbia University and is currently an adjunct journalism professor at the New School's News and Narrative Design program. Nicole loves drawing, comic books and illustration, as well as laughing at Peppa Pig with her husband and young son. Partnerships & Community Lead; Co-founderChristine Mohan Christine has 25 years of experience with media and technology firms in New York City, Boston and Washington DC. At Civil she manages partnerships and community, facilitates social media, and organizes national and international industry events. She spent 12 years at The New York Times Company and The Wall Street Journal in corporate communications, product marketing and web operations roles. Earlier, Christine oversaw the digital and sales teams for DeSales Media Group, where she created and launched a network of 100 websites across Brooklyn and Queens. She also founded Mohan Media Inc., providing PR and marketing for consumer and technology brands including Tiffany & Co., WordPress.com and Business Insider. Christine holds a bachelor's degree from the College of the Holy Cross. Christine is an avid golfer and voracious reader — just not at the same time. Engineering Lead; Co-founderDan Kinsley Dan leads the Engineering team at Civil. He brings over a decade of experience growing early stage companies and building highly scalable systems. Before Civil, Dan was building an e-commerce business accelerator at Launch and helped bring the luxury shoe brand M.Gemi to market. Prior to that he founded Surf, a streaming media aggregation company. He cut his teeth at Thinking Phone Networks (now Fuze), where he helped grow the business from 15 to more than 200 employees. When Dan isn’t writing code, he can be found cycling, cooking or playing guitar (poorly). As a new father, he is honing his diaper changing skills and perfecting his dad Jokes. Product Designer; Co-founderJulia Himmel Julia is a product designer at Civil. She brings five years of experience designing and developing for the web. Prior to Civil, Julia worked at Berlin ed-tech startup CareerFoundry, where she took core features from research through prototyping and user testing, then built them with a small team of developers. Before that, she honed her design skills working on print projects for both new startups and companies such as Time Warner. She holds a BA from Columbia University. A former wine professional, Julia still enjoys food and wine when she's not designing experiences for journalists and readers. She also spends her free time volunteering in local politics, reading sci-fi novels and seeing art.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 79

Ethereum Engineer; Developer Community LeadOlaf Tomalka Olaf has more than seven years experience as a world-class engineer, and has been working with Ethereum and its communities since early 2017. He brings his experience and passion — as well as a healthy dash of business sense — to Civil, where he's focused on smart contracts and liaising with its growing developer community. Previously, Olaf was a co-founder, CTO and majority shareholder for Boson Identities, a blockchain startup. There, he worked on decentralized identities using Ethereum as well as Getline.in brand, a decentralized, peer-to-peer lending protocol. He led the technological stack, a team of more than 20 people, and created a community of more than 5,000 cryptocurrency enthusiasts. During the nights, Olaf suits ups and each month organizes the biggest Blockchain Dev conference in Poland, with which attracts more than 500 developers on average. Traveling the world on a single backpack as a digital nomad, his goal for 2018 is to visit 12 countries. EngineerWalker Flynn Walker is a front-end engineer at Civil. He has five years of experience working on various parts of the web development stack and two years as a product designer. Before Civil, he was a senior front-end developer on the frameworks and infrastructure team at 1stdibs. Before that, he worked for XO Group and Evisors as a software engineer and Inch inc. as a product designer. He studied furniture design at RISD. Outside of Civil, Walker enjoys walking. It's what he was born to do. Beyond eponymic activity, he likes drawing, climbing, and building things in his studio. Ethereum EngineerNick Reynolds Nick is an engineer at Civil focused on writing smart contracts and the tools to interact with them. Prior to Civil, Nick was a full-stack engineer at Zynga working on massively multiplayer online games. Nick was responsible for implementing server-side logic and validation as well as client side views and inputs for numerous gameplay features, as well as designing several social features. Nick has a BSE in Digital Media Design from The University of Pennsylvania. In his free time, Nick enjoys playing games (both board and video) and traveling. He has trekked through the world’s largest cave. EngineerJorge Lopez Jorge is an engineer at Civil. Before joining Civil, Jorge worked at a multitude of startups such as Bark, Refinery29, and Etsy. He was the first engineer at Refinery29 and built their first content management system. He also played an instrumental role in relaunching The New Republic under Chris Hughes. When not pressing buttons on a keyboard, Jorge enjoys spending time at his home in Bushwick with his wife, two dogs and two cats. Technologist-in-ResidencePeter Ng Peter is a Technologist-in-Residence at Civil. He has more than 15 years of experience working on a multitude of tech stacks and platforms. Previously, Peter was working at Digg where he the led backend, data, and API engineering. Prior to Digg, he was at the New York Times for many years in where he held several roles including leading the engineering team behind the iOS app and exploring the future of media and commercializing ideas out of the NYT R&D Lab. He has also held engineering roles at Kargo and DoubleClick. Peter holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University. Outside of the office, he enjoys guitar, karaoke, travel and time well spent with his wife and dog. Technologist-in-ResidenceInna Shteinbuk Inna is a technologist-in-residence working on data science and machine learning initiatives at Civil. Prior to Civil, Inna was at Digg as a Data Scientist, where she implemented and put their first machine

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 80 learning models into production. She holds an M.S. from both Cornell University and The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, and a B.S. in Physics from CUNY. In her free time, Inna enjoys climbing, yoga, making kimchi and kombucha, and planning for her next outdoor trip. Technologist-in-ResidenceJon Ferrer Jon brings nearly 15 years of experience building products for the web to his role as a technologist-in- residence at Civil. Before joining Civil, Jon spent 6 years working on Digg with a focus on architecting and developing intuitive, performant user interfaces. Prior to Digg, he spent six years at Major League Baseball Advanced Media, where he directed a team of UI developers in addition to individually contributing to various products and features, ranging from multimedia, live stat-tracking, and partner projects. He holds a B.S. in Management Science and Information Systems from Penn State University. Away from his computer, Jon enjoys thinking about what he's going to cook and/or eat next — which is most likely ramen or pizza — and playing guitar way too loudly. Technologist-in-ResidenceSarah Ruddy Sarah is a technologist-in-residence at Civil focusing on Front-end Engineering. She has over 10 years of experience developing for news and media organizations. Before Civil, Sarah worked at Digg where she developed user interfaces focused on user retention. Prior to Digg she spent 5 years working at New York Magazine where she worked on various projects from strategizing and developing components for their custom CMS to helping lead the award winning data visualization and interactive team. She holds a B.S. in Digital Media from Drexel University. In her spare time Sarah likes kickboxing. listening to way too many podcasts, and biking and eating her way around the world. Technologist-in-ResidenceToby Fox Toby has been building stuff on computers for 15 years and building stuff on the internet for 8, and now builds stuff on top of a blockchain as a technologist-in-residence at Civil. Before that, Toby spent 4 years at Digg working on social, publishing, syndication, monetization, and internet plumbing projects. He also co-created intelligent note-taking tool Headsoak, builds web apps and art projects with small freelance team Genius Toast, and worked on hardware, firmware, and software as co-founder of medical device company Avantari. Toby has an M.S. in Computer Science from Oxford University and a B.A. in English Literature from Vassar College. In reality the Toby you might meet is a high-functioning clone placed in NYC, while the original lives out of a small backpack on top of a mountain telemark skiing, self-experimenting, meditating, and coding procedurally generated interactive fiction. Creative-in-ResidenceRobert Okrzesik Robert is a creative-in-residence at Civil. He brings over 10 years of knowledge creating meaningful experiences across various contexts of product design, editorial/interactive pieces, and visual systems. Previously, Robert was leading design and setting creative direction at Digg. Prior to Digg, he was a Product Designer at Microsoft under the GroupMe team working on their mobile efforts, and at Google Creative Lab contributing to various product and marketing initiatives. He also worked at various companies such as Dow Jones and Tank Design. He holds a B.F.A. from The College of New Jersey. Robert enjoys spending his free time tinkering on cars and bikes — essentially anything with wheels — and eating sandwiches. Brand MarketerMegan Libby Megan Libby is responsible for Civil's brand marketing, events and communications. Before joining Civil, Megan was running marketing and community strategy at an EdTech blockchain startup while

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 81 simultaneously completing an M.S. in Mass Communication at Boston University. She also holds a B.A. in Global Economics from UC Santa Cruz. In her free time, Megan enjoys yoga, backcountry backpacking, backcountry cooking, travel, and running long distances. Product LeadNaima Jinnah With nearly a decade of experience across technology, policy, legal and business operations, Naima has deep experience organizing and building teams in startup environments. Previously, Naima was the COO and product lead at Digg.com (http://digg.com/) where she led product initiatives focused on revenue and editorial growth, as well as R&D and enterprise initiatives focused on automated content curation utilizing ML and NLP. She has also worked with voter education NGOs, which reinforced the existence of information blockers as a result of stale political incumbencies and social media echo-chambers. Naima holds a B.S. in Legal Studies with minors in Economics, Humanities, and Paralegal Studies from Nova Southeastern University in South Florida. The unCivil Naima – who also periodically frets about the current state of media – enjoys stalking Street Easy listings, producing theater pieces, and doodling on all the things (especially white sneakers). Technologist-in-ResidenceMichael Young Michael is a technologist-in-residence at Civil and will be leading Civil Labs. He has over 20 years of experience in building products and technology for media companies. Before joining Civil, Michael was the CTO of Digg.com, helping to lead a rebuild of the social news service. Prior to that, he was the lead Creative Technologist at The New York Times R&D Lab. At the NYT R&D lab, Michael led a group charged with prototyping new ways of consuming media across mobile, web, tv and other connected devices (cars, etc). During his time there, he authored two books, won the Yahoo! BBC London Hack Day, received a patent for "Method and System for Providing Preference Based Content to a Location Aware Mobile Device" and was awarded a Knight- Batten Award for Innovations in Journalism. Michael has a B.S. in Computer Science and Math from Lewis & Clark College in Portland, OR. Outside of the office, he can be found hanging out with his family in Brooklyn, teaching (he is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University School of Journalism), cooking and drinking too much coffee.

ConsenSys The world’s largest blockchain venture studio as well as Civil’s deep technology partner and lone investor to date. CEO, Founder Joseph Lubin is also a co-founder of Ethereum and a board member at Civil.

Old Town Media Former Politico executive editors Tom McGeveran, Josh Benson and Katherine Leher formed Old Town Media to work with news organization at the intersection of editorial strategy and sustainable business models. They lead much of our thinking on journalism ethics, newsroom recruitment and other special projects related to unleashing a platform for sustainable journalism. Tom McGeveran is also a board member at Civil.

Morris, Manning and Martin

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Atlanta-based full-service law firm specializing in tech transactions, software licensing strategies, and blockchain/crypto compliance.

Klaris Law New York-based boutique practice specializing in media liability, intellectual property and first amendment protections.

Whitepaper D2

DNN Whitepaper

Retrieved from: https://dnn.media/static/storage/DecentralizedNewsNetworkWhitePaperDraftv1.5.6.pdf

For this research, the version was used that was online on April 3, 2019.

Decentralized News Network

News by the People, for the People By Samit Singh and Dondrey Taylor Draft Version 1.5.6 January 2017 Last Updated: January 2018 Special Thanks to Smith + Crown, which helped develop the token economy powering DNN Abstract A decentralized news network backed by incentives for individuals to create, review, and consume news. The primary innovation of blockchains is a verifiable and cryptographically secured global ledger that can lead to new types of incentive structures. Developers can take advantage of the Ethereum blockchain to build applications that are not only architecturally and politically decentralized, but are underpinned by tokens of value. We propose a network in which writers produce news content that is reviewed by fact-checkers before being published on the network without the risk of being taken down. All parties involved in publishing a factual article will be rewarded with

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 83 tokens in a self-sustaining environment that thrives on tangible activity and accuracy of content rather than on advertising revenue and corporate interests.

LEGAL DISCLAIMER As of the date of publication of this Whitepaper, DNN have no known potential uses outside of the DNN Platform. This Whitepaper does not constitute a prospectus or offering document, and is not an offer to sell, nor the solicitation of any offer to buy any investment or financial instrument in any jurisdiction. DNN should not be acquired for speculative or investment purposes with the expectation of making a profit or immediate re-sale. No promises of future performance or value are or will be made with respect to DNN, including no promise of inherent value, no promise of continuing payments, and no guarantee that DNN will hold any particular value. Do not participate in the DNN token sale unless you are prepared to lose the entire amount you allocated to purchasing DNN. DNN are not participation in Decentralized News Network Limited and DNN hold no rights Decentralized News Network Limited. DNN are sold as a functional good and all proceeds received by Decentralized News Network Limited may be spent freely by Decentralized News Network absent any conditions, save as may be prescribed in this Whitepaper. This Whitepaper is for information purposes only and is subject to change. Decentralized News Network Limited cannot guarantee the accuracy of the statements made or conclusions reached in this Whitepaper. Decentralized News Network Limited does not make and expressly disclaims all representations and warranties (whether express or implied by statute or otherwise) whatsoever, including but not limited to: - any representations or warranties relating to merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, suitability, wage, title or non-infringement; - that the contents of this Whitepaper are accurate and free from any errors; and - that such contents do not infringe any third party rights. Decentralized News Network Limited shall have no liability for damages of any kind arising out of the use, reference to or reliance on the contents of this Whitepaper, even if advised of the possibility of such damages. All information here that is forward looking is speculative in nature and may change in response to numerous outside forces, including technological innovations, regulatory factors, and/or currency fluctuations, including but not limited to the market value of cryptocurrencies. This Whitepaper includes references to third party data and industry publications. Decentralized News Network Limited believes that this industry data is accurate and that its estimates and assumptions are reasonable; however, there are no assurances as to the White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 1 accuracy or completeness of this data. Third party sources generally state the information contained therein has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable; however, there are no assurances as to the accuracy or completeness of included information. Although the data are believed to be reliable, we have not independently verified any of the data from third party sources referred to in this Whitepaper or ascertained the underlying assumptions relied upon by such sources.

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 84

Please note that Decentralized News Network Limited is in the process of undertaking a legal and regulatory analysis of the functionality of DNN. Following the conclusion of this analysis, we may decide to amend the intended functionality of DNN in order to ensure compliance with any legal or regulatory requirements to which we are subject. In the event that we decide to amend the intended functionality of DNN, we will update the relevant section of this Whitepaper and upload the latest version of our Whitepaper to our website.

PROBLEM

BACKGROUND 1 In 1983, 90 percent of the U.S. news industry was owned and controlled by 50 different companies. Thirty-four years later, 90 percent of American news coverage, whether read, watched or listened to, flows from just six media conglomerates: Comcast Corporation; News Corporation; The Walt Disney Company; Viacom Inc.; Time Warner Inc.; and CBS Corporation. With this substantial level of corporate media concentration, big publications and networks demonstrate overt political leanings that are almost predictable, as they indulge their respective target audiences. Over time, this affects how well the public perceives current events, due to a high degree of confirmation bias that veers toward groupthink. THE CURRENT STATE OF NEWS The state of big media today is analogous to the type of scenario we see within the U.S. telecom and cable industries, little-to-no regulation or transparency, a handful of massive corporations presiding over an oligopoly, a noticeable lack of choices for consumer consumption, and an overall anti- consumer tilt that favors profits over quality and satisfaction. Consequently, because of all of this consolidation in power, the general public is led to believe that the media landscape is rigged to primarily accommodate the biggest and most prosperous players involved. 1 Columbia Journalism Review, Free Press White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

2 According to The Economist, the overall concentration of ownership in IT, Telecom and Media is the highest amongst most U.S. based industries. This is a big part of the reason that “two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, have come to believe that the economy unfairly 2 favors powerful interests.” This leads to disastrous results. According to a September 2016 Gallup poll, Americans’ trust and confidence in the mass media “to report the news fully, accurately and fairly” has dropped to its lowest level in Gallup polling history, with just 32 percent saying they have a great deal or fair 3 amount of trust in the media. Let us take politics as an example. Most corporations today, media-driven or otherwise, are motivated by overt political agendas which more or less mirror the aspirations of the establishment. Politicians competing for power desire to win favor through any means by vying for votes and taking big money

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 85 donations from corporations and high net worth individuals. In the US, partisan media companies make substantial donations to political causes and have been doing so for decades, in order to gain a profound influence on election cycles. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, “these organizations had — either through corporate treasuries, sponsored political action committees or both — donated almost $7 million to political action committees and vaguely referenced ‘527 committees’ just during 2009 and 2010 and nearly $38 million since the 1990 election cycle.” Typically, these donations have switched between 4 Democrats and Republicans in back-and-forth cycles. All in all, while the bureaucratic establishment decides how to set the tone, the media frequently helps dictate it through large donations in exchange for political favors. This creates an endless cycle of powerful corporations and politicians passing the baton between one another, as they all enrich themselves further. These big bets are initially made by media companies so they can continue to consolidate their power, uninterrupted. In turn, their news becomes very skewed and one-sided in order to appease the political establishment and avoid a conflict of interest. The core values and principles of journalism are subsequently compromised in favor of biased and sometimes blatantly false coverage, that perpetuates the political atmosphere the media wants to cultivate. Most importantly, the issue of ‘fake news’ has increased with each passing day. With the growth of social and blogging platforms, as well the internet as a whole, publishing has turned into an act that is both simple and instantaneous. At the same time, the lines between what is fake and what is real have blurred, as we race to distinguish fact from fiction. Publishing is now a fully 2 http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21695385-profits-are-too-high-america-needs-giant-dose- competiti on-too-much-good-thing 3 http://www.gallup.com/poll/195542/americans-trust-mass- media-sinks-new-low.aspx 4 https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2010/08/news-corps-million-dollar- donation/ White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

3 democratized action, turning everyone into an editor, which is equally as powerful as it is potentially dangerous. ECHO CHAMBER OF SOCIAL MEDIA Over the past decade, there’s been a big shift in the way people stay informed. Americans looked to daily newspapers and television for much of their news; however, this behavior has significantly 5 shifted elsewhere. In the U.S., 62 percent of adults rely on social media for news. Among social media providers, Facebook has become a rival to the big suit-and-tie networks like CNN, Fox News, ABC, and NBC. Facebook has become a gatekeeper for much of the news that Americans consume online. Many traditional news outlets have morphed into being the so-called content pipelines for Facebook’s news factory. Truthful and fact-driven news has been forsaken in favor of click-bait headlines and digital ad revenues. The general public’s understanding of current events has been immensely distorted. In fact, there are a large number of websites whose sole purpose is to drive the spread of flimsy and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 86 groundless stories. For them, integrity is derived primarily from click-rates and impressions, rather 6 than factual reporting, as reported by The New York Times just after the 2016 presidential election. Reporters have come under increasing pressure to produce “clickbait” articles that pander to readers’ increasingly short attention spans. Content that is sensationalistic and exaggerated attracts more eyeballs and clicks than stories presented in a more accurate, thorough fashion. Partisan contributors share completely fabricated stories from fringe and alt-news websites, lending to confirmation bias. In some ways, social media, rather than improving, is contributing to political polarization and a lower quality of open conversation on the internet. According to Pew, 23 percent of Americans say they have shared a made-up news story, with 14 percent saying they shared a story they knew was fake at the time and 16 percent having shared a story they later realized was fake. Almost half said government, politicians and elected officials bear a great deal of responsibility for preventing made- 7 up stories from gaining attention. The order and visibility of posts in Facebook’s news feed is governed by a sophisticated proprietary algorithm, which has the ability to decide which posts to showcase over others. This amounts to the power to manipulate which posts consumers see. The platform tries to choose posts that people are likely to read, like, and share with friends. Facebook hopes this will induce people to return to the site. This has the dangerous effect of turning the platform’s feed into a tabloid that sucks users in and gives them a place to to continue reading the same type of content. “Filter bubbles” is a term referring to 8 this phenomenon. 5 h ttp://www.journalism.org/2016/05/26/news-use-across-social-media-platforms-2016/ 6 https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/25/world/europe/fake-news-donald-trump-hillary-clinton- georgia.html 7 http://www.journalism.org/2016/12/15/many-americans-believe-fake-news-is-sowing- confusion/ 8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_bubble White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 4 Simply put, our viewpoints, when combined with the personalized tailoring of social media, give rise to echo chambers in which we are mainly exposed to beliefs and facts that are consistent with those we already hold. Consequently, this leads to confirmation bias and we unconsciously surmise that many others share our perspectives on issues of the world. A well-known Forbes experiment called 9 Blue Feed, Red Feed delves deeper into these echo chambers that we all inhabit on Facebook. Much of the news content in the feed consists of the most attention-grabbing headlines, regardless of whether the articles are factual or important. Facebook’s algorithm, as clearly witnessed with the recent glut of fake news, doesn’t take into account whether a particular story is accurate or not. If it generates a lot of engagement, in the form of likes, shares, and such, it automatically gets moved to the top of the feed. And often, a sensational and blatantly inaccurate story will generate more engagement than a story that accurately explains an issue without exaggeration. As a result, bigger news organizations are swayed negatively. Businesses trying to maximize the traffic to their articles are made aware that sensationalism attracts clicks and impressions, while accuracy does not. This huge demand for clickbait created by Facebook creates a false incentive for reporters, thus warping what we read and making us apathetic in the absence of facts. Close to two billion people around the world utilize Facebook as a major source of information and the network is

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 87 exerting a substantial degree of control over the news we access on a daily basis.

DNN’S SOLUTION

WHAT IS DNN? Decentralized News Network is a news platform that combines news creation with decentralized networks as a means to delivering factual content, curated by a community of readers, writers, and reviewers. DNN will harness the power of the Ethereum blockchain to create an infrastructure that is virtually impossible to infiltrate or take down. Since DNN is not centralized, it does not suffer from having a single point of failure. The platform’s core purpose is to present news as accurately as possible, free of any corrupt incentives or hidden agendas, which plague most news corporations. 9 http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/ White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 5 The DNN platform will focus on facilitating the dissemination of balanced and factual observation of current newsworthy affairs. DNN's mission is to create news content that is both empowering for its readers, as well as representative of the integrity of its writers. DNN aspires to become the most trusted and democratic news alternative to the mainstream media.

HOW THE BLOCKCHAIN CAN HELP The Decentralized News Network will introduce a compensation model built on incentives and made possible by the Ethereum blockchain. DNN removes the need for advertisers because the platform will not source revenue from display ads. DNN will run as a network, fueled by the DNN token. Each action, which includes the writing and reviewing of an article, will be made possible by these tokens and linked to the Ethereum network. DNN’s system works to incentivize writers and reviewers, in a self-sustaining and autonomous environment that leaves no room for corporate bias. Compensation is derived from the community’s engagement, rather than external revenue streams such as native ads. In turn, there is no opportunity for corporate interjection, whether it is through sponsored content or elsewhere. Furthermore, with the blockchain providing the foundation for the platform, DNN can transparently display how money is made and transacted behind the scenes, and for what reasons and to which parties tokens are distributed. Ideally, the platform can create a new kind of transparency, dictated by a truly open and contributor-controlled environment for information sharing and consumption. By persisting the contents of published articles to a decentralized file datastore, and making references to these articles directly in ethereum smart contracts, we can ensure that every article is as immutable and everlasting as the ethereum network. A blockchain-based news media platform such as DNN’s has the ability to democratize traditional news media for several reasons: Since the blockchain contains data in time-stamped blocks that chain together, being continuously added and archived, it becomes nearly impossible for outsiders to manipulate existing data or

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 88 information within the distributed ledger. Next, the blockchain decentralizes authority to publish content on DNN. There is no single source that controls the message and feel of published works, which is something that is all too commonly witnessed with traditional media. DNN is not tethered to any special interests or political agendas, nor is it vying for a substantial chunk of ad revenue, which puts it in a category separate from most publications that are tied down to a bigger entity. Lastly, the blockchain’s core value rests on trust. The technology achieves a state of implicit trust, thereby securing a system where contributors don’t need to know one another or be associated White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 6 with a third-party intermediary to verify or confirm a transaction. It is implicit and autonomous- blockchain is the gatekeeper and enabler of all contributors’ incentives on DNN.

WHY IS DNN NECESSARY? The concept of decentralized news itself is not new. There were startups, like the now defunct Reported.ly (which lost funding due to lack of revenue), that have dabbled in community driven, 10 Internet-based news reporting, and dissemination. The idea is that if news distribution were to function without any central authority, less importance would reside on media titans and there would exist a higher degree of autonomy and independence from the bottom-up, starting with journalists and ending at readers. Distributors of news can act as nimble vessels for disseminating accurate information without any overseers but the community they serve, leading to greater integrity and a fearlessness to report. At the end of the cycle, readers can focus on the content — the news — free of corporate influence and more transparent because of the power and function of blockchain technology. Transparency in news can make way for a more democratic and freer thinking press. In addition, suppression of information and mass censorship by governments and corporations, is a threat to publishers and writers throughout the world. A gag order is a common tool used by governments to restrict publishers from disclosing certain details, regardless of how factual those details may be. The people have a right to the facts and the truth. The core purpose of DNN is to provide truly factual news that is curated and community-moderated.

HOW WILL DNN WORK? Overview of key actors on the network DNN is a decentralized platform built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, that allows anyone to submit articles that will be reviewed by a handful of quasi-selected and anonymous contributors that coordinate without the need for explicit trust. During review, contributors check articles to ensure that they are in accordance with the network’s public set of editorial standards. Each piece of news published on DNN is replicated across a series of community-hosted nodes and made 10 http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomwatson/2015/01/05/inside-the-decentralized-news-network-reported- lys-n ew-model-for-journalism/#1cb88a7a4a90 White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

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7 available to the public. Readers, writers, reviewers, and publishers earn tokens in proportion to the amount of positive contributions they make to the platform. DNN is comprised of four types of actors that each have key roles and contributions that together, make up the underlying functions and framework of the network: WRITERS Writers, or reporters, are individuals who submit news content in the form of articles. Whether freelance journalist, casual blogger, or an average consumer of global news, anyone can contribute to the DNN. However, since anyone can submit articles to DNN, getting published is not guaranteed. To increase the chance of getting published writers should ensure that they closely comply with the DNN content guidelines to mitigate the chance of reviewers rejecting their piece due to infractions. The DNN content guidelines are a set of agreed-upon best practices for constructing pieces that are both comprehensive in scope and that convey the facts clearly and concisely. Articles that are submitted to DNN go through a series of stages before being submitted. Please refer to Figure 1 . REVIEWERS Reviewers, or editors, read and vote upon submitted articles before an article is available for public consumption on the DNN’s article feed. The review process includes basic tasks such as noting grammatical errors, pointing out inaccuracies and questionable statements, as well as content classification. Most important, however, is that reviewers ensure articles adhere to the DNN content guidelines. Reviewers do not have the ability to modify articles, but rather can accept (i.e. vote to have content published) or reject (i.e. vote to prevent content from being published) any written piece. To make sure that no single reviewer has the final say on whether or not an article should be publicly incorporated into the network, the network will assign seven random reviewers to validate the article. The seven reviewers are chosen in a process called the Review Selection Bid, as seen in Figure 2 . All seven reviewers are completely unaware of one another’s identities; they vote and leave feedback in complete isolation to avoid groupthink or any form of collusion. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 8

White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

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Figure 1: Reviewer Selection Bid

9

White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 Figure 2: Article Stages 10 READERS Readers are news consumers. Readers can comment, add notes, share, tip, bookmark articles of interest, and denote articles they deem questionable. Unlike readers on traditional news platforms, readers on DNN play an active role in helping to shape the news they read, which includes participating in Reader Suggestions whereby article topics are put forward by you, the news consumer. Readers pay for access in DNN tokens. As Ethereum continues to improve scalability with additions like sharding, state channels, and plasma, an ideal way to implement a subscription model, a pay-per- article model, or a combination of the two will be explored. PUBLISHERS Unlike readers, reviewers, and writers who are human actors of the network, publishers are server nodes which act as a proxy between human contributors and the DNN network residing on the Ethereum blockchain. Specialized open source software consisting of the complete DNN contributor-interface and network interface, is bundled and installed on each publisher. Publisher nodes are responsible for replicating published articles and ensuring that the DNN network remains available in the face of coordinated attacks. Publisher nodes communicate with one another through a peer-to-peer protocol that makes use of the

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 91 same cryptography behind Bitcoin and Ethereum. Using this peer-to-peer protocol, publishers are able to relay details about their state to nearby node hosts. The main purpose for publishers is to provide an attack resistant transport for the DNN software, rather than host the DNN software on a centralized server, which introduces a significant point of failure. Storing DNN’s software on a decentralized network also allows the community to run and manage it without the need for an external facilitator or trusted intermediary. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 11

OVERVIEW OF DNN TOKEN ECONOMY Brief Introduction to token economy Tokens are a core component of decentralized platforms like DNN. In DNN’s case, tokens serve two purposes: to reward for contributions, and to carry out actions . For people who are new to cryptocurrency platforms like Ethereum, the idea of dealing with tokens may seem a bit far-fetched and unnecessary. To most people, the immediate benefit of using tokens will not be as apparent as using a more ubiquitous fiat based currency like the US Dollar. As a result, it is quite common for people to ask questions such as: how can I use tokens to pay for real-world things? Where exactly do tokens come from? How do tokens get their value? To answer these questions, a deeper understanding about what tokens are and how they work in the context of a decentralized network, will first need to be acquired. Broadly speaking, tokens are digital keys that grant access to a particular service or resource, which has been made possible by the technology that enables the Ethereum blockchain. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 Figure 3: Publisher Nodes 12 Depending on the platform, the amount of tokens that are available can be fixed or infinite, each of which affects the value of a token. To better conceptualize tokens, think of them as you would seat tickets at a sports game. Tickets enable you to reserve access to an available seat (i.e. interact or gain access to the event). Put another

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 92 way, for every available seat in the arena, there will be one ticket accompanying it. Depending on where the event takes place, the tickets will be priced in a local fiat currency (e.g. USD or EUR). A person who has a ticket is free to sell their ticket for a price that is greater than or less than the going rate. Since tickets are limited, the cost of the ticket will increase as less tickets become available. In the same way tickets give you access to seats in a sports arena, tokens enable you to interact with various aspects of the network. Tokens can also be sold or exchanged with other people who would also like access to the DNN network — much in the same way sports tickets or any scarce asset can be sold or exchanged

ROLES OF THE DNN TOKEN AND DNN POINTS The DNN platform consists of one token: DNN . The DNN token has unique usages on the platform and can be obtained in different ways. DNN TOKEN The DNN token is the primary instrument of value that can be used to carry out actions on the platform. To enable the ability to price actions (such as reader tips to writers or reader subscriptions) on a micro scale, the DNN token will be divisible by up to 18 decimal places. DNN tokens can be obtained in the following way: Earn it by contributing to the network. DNN tokens are used for a variety of things within the DNN network depending on the role the contributor chooses to take on. For example, writers use DNN tokens to pay for the Writer Fee associated with submitting their article to the network. Once an article has been accepted, writers can earn DNN tokens through the engagement generated by their article. Reviewers use DNN tokens to to be considered by the network as a reviewer of a submitted article. Readers use DNN tokens to interact with articles in the form of viewing, commenting, and tipping writers. Unlike writers, reviewers, and readers- publishers do not spend DNN tokens on the network because they don’t carry out actions. Instead, publishers must hold them to increase the amount White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 13 of DNN tokens they can potentially earn. Every time a review process completes (i.e. reviewers have reached consensus on whether or not to publish an article) newly minted DNN points (“described in the following section”) will be issued to all publisher nodes on the network proportional to their existing DNN token holding. The diagram in the following section showcases how DNN tokens are used, and distributed, based on the types of actions carried out by each user role on the DNN platform. DNN POINTS The DNN point is solely an instrument of accounting, which helps facilitate the distribution of DNN token rewards, while providing a mechanism that ensures that the DNN token cost of each action remains stable. Since the supply of DNN tokens is fixed, it is quite likely that as the demand for DNN tokens increases with the popularity of the platform, the amount of DNN tokens needed to carry out an action on the platform will need to adjust. DNN points provides the flexibility of determining the

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 93 amount of DNN tokens required to carry out each action on the platform inline with network growth. DNN points act as the reward or credit for various actions on the DNN platform, and get automatically converted on a bi-weekly basis into DNN tokens that have been accumulated through the actions of every user of DNN. DNN generates and credits DNN points to writers, reviewers, and publishers at the conclusion of the review process. The review process is considered to be finished when each reviewer has voted. The amount of DNN points a contributor can earn is determined by the types of contributions they make to the network, (and in the case of reviewers, how many DNN tokens they bid during the reviewer selection bid). The rewarding of points is structured in a way that rewards the actions that ensure the articles in the feed remain as factual as possible and consistent with the platform’s Content Guidelines. DNN points have no value on the platform, and only serve as an indication of entitlement to a portion of the DNN tokens available for distribution. As mentioned prior, DNN tokens can be spent in a variety of ways within the platform. DNN tokens that do not get immediately transferred to writers in the form of tips, get sent to a DNN tokens pool called the Reward Pool (refer to the section Reward Pool for an in-depth explanation). White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 14

SUBJECTIVE MINING DNN POINTS Most blockchains that are available today use some form of proof of work, also referred to as objective mining, to introduce new tokens or coins into the platform. In a proof of work blockchain, miners race to validate blocks of transactions by producing cryptographic hashes with the goal of earning a payout from the coinbase transaction included in each newly mined White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 15 block. Unlike objective mining, subjective mining involves the creation of tokens that gets triggered as a result of the actions of token holders. In DNN’s case, the creation of DNN points takes place at the conclusion of the review process, that is, when each reviewer casts his or her vote or when the total amount of time allowed to cast a vote for a

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 94 given article has elapsed. This process is what ensures that each contributor on the platform earns a share of DNN tokens accumulated in the reward pool, in a way that is proportional to their efforts. The more reputation a user has, the more DNN points get minted during the review process.

REWARD POOL The reward pool holds DNN tokens that have been used to carry out actions on the platform. Commenting, reading, and liking articles are some of the actions which fund the reward pool with DNN tokens. These tokens are held in the reward pool until they are distributed during the payout period. In a nutshell, DNN tokens held in the reward pool are automatically swapped on a biweekly basis for all DNN points that have been issued since the last distribution. The rate of DNN points to DNN tokens, gets determined by the available supply of DNN tokens in the reward pool and the amount of DNN points in circulation. Upon exchanging DNN points for DNN tokens, the DNN points collected by the smart contract are immediately burned and therefore reduce the overall DNN points in circulation. As users convert their DNN points for DNN tokens, the amount of DNN points needed to obtain a single DNN token will increase in proportion. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 16

Figure 4: Article Publish Flow White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 17

UNDERSTANDING PAYOUTS READER PAYOUT

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Readers can earn DNN points by suggesting topics to writers. If an article that is focused on a suggestion is accepted, a portion of DNN points generated from the review process will be given to reader who suggested that topic. Suggesting a topic requires any number of arbitrary DNN tokens from the reader. The more DNN tokens a reader gives per suggestion, the higher the bonus is for writers who construct articles about it, and the bigger potential amount of DNN points they can earn. Readers can suggest topics during the reader suggestion period, which lasts for one week (refer to “Reader Suggestions”). Following the conclusion of the reader suggestion period, topics are presented to writers for consideration. It is the responsibility of each reviewer to ensure that articles are tagged with the correct topic. Payouts from reader suggestions get distributed proportionally to the total amount of tokens a reader gave for that topic. For example, if a reader suggests a topic with 50 DNN, while the combined tokens for that topic is 1000 DNN, then the reader is entitled to five percent of the tokens set aside for reader rewards. PUBLISHER PAYOUT Publishers can earn DNN points for hosting nodes. Nodes help ensure that the DNN software is readily available to all participants on the network. Payouts for publishers comes from a portion of the reviewer process reward and are distributed to nodes proportional to their DNN token holding. The more DNN tokens a publisher has, the higher cut they will receive from the DNN points allocated from the review process for publishers. WRITER PAYOUT Writers have the ability of earning DNN tokens directly in the form of tips, as well as DNN points either through reader suggestions, or by submitting articles that end up getting approved by reviewers. TIPPING PAYOUT FOR WRITERS Once an article is published, it becomes immediately available to readers. To show support and explicit approval for a particular article, readers can tip the writer. Tipping requires a small amount of DNN tokens. The DNN tokens are then transferred in their entirety to the writer of the article. The point of tipping articles is to further incentivize writers into producing quality articles, which, are facilitated by DNN’s Content Guidelines, meaning writers will want to pay close attention to what is designated as good and bad reporting. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 18 APPROVED ARTICLE PAYOUT Upon acceptance of an article for publication, the writer of the piece will earn DNN points proportional to the quality of work they provide. Work in the context of the DNN platform is defined as the ratio between accepted and rejected articles from the writer to-date and adherence to the DNN Content Guidelines. Each writer earns a different amount of DNN points depending on their reputation. The writer’s reputation is based on the ratio between the writer’s total number article accepted and articles rejected. The higher the ratio is (i.e. the more articles the writer gets accepted than rejected) the more DNN points the writer will earn, and ultimately DNN tokens the writer will be entitled to in the reward pool. A writer’s acceptance-rejection ratio (or “AR ratio”) is the primary factor in determining whether or not to increase or decrease a writer's article pay rate.

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Since reviewing an article for the first time will result in a zero payout, first time writers who get their article accepted, will be entitled to a minimum payout (determined and issued by the network) of DNN point. The following expression describes the payout for an accepted article for a given writer. AR Ratio = (# of articles accepted / # of articles rejected) Payout = AR Ratio * # of DNN points minted In other words, the more articles a writer submits that are deemed worthy of being published by reviewers, the more DNN points that writer can earn. The possibility of earning a considerable amount of DNN for writing for the DNN platform is therefore limitless. To prevent abuse, the DNN network imposes a minimum and maximum word count. The lower and upper bound word counts are 700 and 3,000 words respectively. Article word counts are calculated by the DNN software that runs on each publisher node, and will be verified by reviewers. Articles that have word counts greater than the maximum word count are allowed to be published, however, writer payouts will only account for word counts equal to or less than the maximum word count. REVIEWER PAYOUT When a group of assigned reviewers reaches a consensus for a particular article, each reviewer within the group earns a percentage of DNN points minted based on his or her reputation. DNN point rewards come from the Writer Fee and newly minted DNN points. Each reviewer can earn a potential payout proportional to the amount of DNN tokens that he or she bids to review the article, and their personal reputation. We use the word “potential,” because no reward is issued to a reviewer should they vote incorrectly. Furthermore, the more DNN tokens a reviewer is willing to White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 19 forfeit for an incorrect vote, the higher the potential payout he or she can earn. When a reviewer votes incorrectly, the DNN tokens they bidded will be sent to the reward pool for later distribution. A reviewer's reputation is a ratio between the number of times they voted with the majority and as a minority. Reviewer bids can also be referred to as their stake, in the sense that, it is representative of how confident a reviewer is in a vote. The following is an expression of the potential reviewer payout. Potential Payout = (Reviewer’s Bid / Combined bids of all selected reviewers) x (Available DNN point minted based on reputation)

READER SUGGESTIONS In more traditional news organizations, the power in a reader-writer relationship heavily favors the writer, meaning that the writer produces a piece about a certain topic and the reader simply consumes whatever is published. There isn’t a strong way for the reader to directly suggest or influence the topics that media companies choose to cover, aside from those companies analyzing data metrics and engagement. For DNN, reader suggestions solve this issue by incentivizing writers to write articles about things that readers want. The power to suggest meaningful subjects directly to writers gives readers a voice by allowing them to participate in the creation of news that interests them. At the beginning of each suggestion cycle, readers will propose topics that they would like writers to potentially cover. These topics will be ranked by popularity, before being presented to writers for bidding. To entice writers into writing articles about the suggested topics, additional tokens are

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 97 awarded for each topic suggestion that gets approved and deals with that particular subject. Each reader is limited to no more than a single suggestion per cycle, which is a period of one week. DNN imposes these requirements in order to prevent active readers from exploiting the power to suggest and thereby, influencing the type of content that writers churn out on a daily basis. The reward that writers receive for writing about a suggested topic is known as a bounty. The amount of DNN points a bounty will consist of is based on how many readers suggested the topic. To suggest a topic, readers must pay DNN tokens. Since each vote is associated with an amount of DNN tokens put forth by a reader, the more votes a particular topic has, the bigger the bounties will be. To prevent writers from diluting the topic by flooding DNN with articles about a suggested topic in hopes of earning a bounty, only one article per 24 hours, that is based on a suggested topic, will be eligible for a bounty payout. In other words, the maximum amount of articles a writer can construct based on a suggested topic is seven per cycle or per week. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 20

OVERVIEW OF ARTICLE SUBMISSION AND REVIEW Before an article can be published to the network, it must first undergo a careful review to ensure that it is factual and abides by the DNN content guidelines. Each reviewer is required to place a bid using DNN tokens to be considered for delegation to an submitted article. The first seven reviewers from the pool with the highest bids that is less than the cap are selected to review the article. It is important to note, that bids must be lower than the maximum bid amount dictated by the DNN network. Any amount of DNN tokens that exceeds the upper cap will be transferred to the reward pool. During the review period, reviewers are able to provide written feedback and vote to reject or accept the article into the network. The actions performed by each reviewer are completely unknown to the other reviewers and more than 50 percent of the reviewers must approve the article in order for it be added into the network. If the reviewers choose to reject the article, the writer has the option of submitting the article again after making any suggested changes, in which case, a new set reviewers will be assigned. The diagram below shows a complete overview of the review process: REVIEWER ACCESS As mentioned earlier, the review process works by assigning an article to a group of seven reviewers who have bid the most DNN tokens to review an article. These reviewers may or may not be located in the same geographic region. However, in the future, there is a possibility of assigning articles to reviewers in the same region that the article pertains to. For example, articles about China will be handled by reviewers in China and articles discussing the U.S. will be assigned to reviewers in the U.S. Each reviewer, with the exception of super reviewers, has no knowledge of who the other reviewers assigned to the article are or how they voted. Super reviewers are a special type of reviewer with a reputation ratio greater than 2. They will be granted a broader degree of privileges that allow them to oversee the behavior of regular reviewers, in order to safeguard against repeatedly biased votes. Regular reviewers only have access to the contents of an article and DNN content guidelines. To prevent collusion, the identities (“ethereum addresses”) of each selected reviewer will remain hidden

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 98 to all regular reviewers during the review process. Access Reviewers Super Reviewers Is able to see reviewers involved NO YES Is able to see contents of article YES YES Is able to see stakes YES NO White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 Figure 5: Reviewer Access 21 REVIEWER BID FORFEITURE Since the review process depends on the collective votes of reviewers, it is imperative that each reviewer cast a vote in a timely manner. The amount of time a reviewer is allowed is built in and dictated by the network. This is because a reviewer could undermine the process by not promptly voting or working too slowly. Should a reviewer fail to cast a vote, the amount of DNN used to bid for the article will be forfeited and redistributed to other reviewers and the writer (dependent on acceptance into the network). In this regard, a reviewer’s bid also serves as c ollateral. In addition to forfeiting DNN, the reviewer’s reputation will be reduced (refer to “Reviewer Reputation”). A negative reputation will reduce the likelihood of a reviewer becoming a super reviewer with the right to handle articles that yield greater rewards. Reviewers who choose to put up, i.e. “stake”, more DNN tokens are more likely to get selected to review an article. Forfeiture of tokens happens when a reviewer either fails to cast a vote in a timely fashion or if their vote for an article does not match the majority vote determined by the other selected reviewers. When a reviewer votes incorrectly, the DNN tokens they bidded will be sent to the reward pool for later distribution. For example, if five of the seven reviewers decided that an article should be published, while two of the seven votes to reject the article, the combined bids for the two reviewers who voted against publishing will be distributed evenly between the other reviewers and the writer. Similarly, if five of seven reviewers decide to reject the article, while two out of seven vote to accept the article, the DNN tokens from the two reviewers who voted to accept the article will get distributed between the other reviewers, but not the writer. 4-3 REVIEW SCENARIO To account for divisiveness amongst reviewers over an article that may be discussing a controversial or polarizing topic, split decision articles will be reassigned to a different set of 7 reviewers. Divisiveness in a given review process manifests itself in a split vote outcome, that is 4 reviewers in favor of accepting and 3 reviewers in favor or rejecting the article, and vice-versa. For any article to get accepted or rejected, a difference of two votes will be required in favor or acceptance or rejected. Refer to Figure 9 for voting outcomes. Articles that get re-assigned a total of 3 times will be rejected by the DNN network. READER INITIATED REVIEW / VETTED AMENDMENTS White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 22

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In addition to a pre-review of articles, which takes place prior to the article being published, articles can also undergo a post-review process, initiated by readers. Post-review is an additional layer of assessment that allows readers to get involved in ensuring that published articles follow the DNN content policies. To place an article back into review, readers will be required to put a bond in the form of DNN tokens on the article. Bonding an article allows the reader to earn a portion of DNN points if the article bonded is rejected by the secondary review. Each reader can place no more than a single bond on an article they deem to be questionable. Furthermore, only one reader at a time will be entitled to a reward from an article being bonded. Bounded articles are placed into the review queue, preventing them from being bounded by any other reader. Therefore, to ensure that every reader has the opportunity to bond an article, reader bonds will work similar to reviewer bids, in the sense that, the reader who places the highest bond within the bond period (“1 week from the published date”) will be the one entitled a reward should the article be rejected. If the article ends up being accepted through the secondary review, the bond placed by the reader will be forfeited and transferred to the reward pool. Since articles cannot be taken off the DNN network, any article that is rejected through the secondary review process will display a notice to the reader informing them of its rejection. Any relevant notes left by reviewers will also be displayed on the article for added clarity to the reader. There is no limit to how many times an article can be placed into a secondary review, nor any restrictions on the number of bonds a reader can place, however to prevent the review queue from being overwhelmed, either inadvertently by honest bonds or by malicious bonds- a minimum amount of DNN tokens, dictated by the DNN network, will be required from any reader wishing to place a bond on an article they come across. SUPER REVIEWER Within the group of seven reviewers, it is possible that two or more will be “super reviewers”. They are elected monthly by active reviewers. The role of the super reviewer is to oversee the actions of standard reviewers, this includes taking into account past voting behavior, and the outcomes of past article assessments for which the reviewer in question has participated in. No more than 2 super reviewers can be assigned to an article at any given time. Aside from super reviewers having the role of overseer, votes cast by standard and super reviewers differ in weight. The voter weight diagram below showcases the weight of each vote between standard and super reviewers. Unlike standard reviewers who are unaware of the other reviewers involved, super reviewers are capable of seeing all reviewers within the assigned group, as well as their reputations. While super reviewers can see the identity hash of each of the assigned reviewers, they won’t know the final vote of each reviewer. To prevent super reviewers from colluding with standard reviewers, the hash representing each assigned reviewer will change for each new review and will only be visible to the super reviewer Using the reviewers identify (“ethereum address”), super reviewers look up any past articles the reviewer had been assigned and voted White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 23 on. The additional review history provided to super reviewers allows the to better judge how each

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 100 standard reviewer will likely vote on a future article based on any patterns they may find from past votes. Weights with 2 Super Reviewers Reviewer Groups Weight Standard Reviewers 1 - 5 33 percent Super Reviewer 1 33 percent Super Reviewer 2 33 percent Weights with 1 Super Reviewers Weights with No Super Reviewers WRITER FEE Figure 6: Review Weights Reviewer Groups Weight Standard Reviewers 1 - 5 50 percent Super Reviewer 1 50 percent Reviewer Groups Weight Standard Reviewers 1 - 5 100 percent As mentioned in earlier sections, the writer’s fee is paid to reviewers. The fee will be distributed based on two factors: the amount a reviewer bids with respect to every other reviewer, as well as the initial writer fee split between reviewers and super reviewers. This is described in the fee distribution chart below. Basically, if the combined bids by standard reviewers is greater than the total amount wagered by super reviewers, then the split is 70/30 in favor of standard reviewers. If the writer fee is 100 DNN tokens, the standard reviewers’ bids amount to 50 DNN tokens, and the super reviewers bid 15 DNN tokens, then standard reviewers will receive 70 percent of DNN points minted and super reviewers will receive 30 percent of DNN points. The reviewer reward (RR) distributions are listed in Figure 7 . White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 24 Super Reward Split Reviewers Reviewers 70 percent of Super Reviewers wages >= 50percent 30 percent of RR RR 30 percent of Reviewer wages >= 50percent 70 percent of RR RR 50 percent of Super reviewers and Reviewers have same vote 50 percent of RR RR 0 percent of Only reviewers selected 100 percent of RR RR RR = Reviewer Reward If the total of the bids are reversed and the total amount of DNN tokens bid by super reviewers is greater than the amount bid by standard reviewers, then 70 percent of the writer fee is allocated to super reviewers and 30 percent to standard reviewers. In the event that both super reviewers and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 101 standard reviewers bid the same amount, 50 percent of the writer fee is allocated to super reviewers and 50 percent to standard reviewers. By bidding a higher amount of DNN tokens to review an article, reviewers increase their chances of earning a larger reward. The writer fee is only paid when the process is finished. The writer fee is held in escrow until all votes have been committed or the voting time has elapsed. The purpose of the bidding system is to create an environment in which being selfish benefits the network. When each contributor seeks to maximize the amount of reward he or she can earn, the result is a more robust review process. To prove this, we’ll review how a reviewer earns tokens. During the process, a reviewer must read the submitted article, ensure that it adheres to DNN content guidelines and vote to accept or reject the article. This is known as the reviewer’s personal vote and is accompanied with feedback to the writer. The reviewer is entitled to a portion of the writer fee after the casting of a determination vote. After reviewers cast a determination vote, they must also cast a peer vote. The peer vote is a vote on the likeliness that the other reviewer type will accept or reject the article. The reason for this vote is to have a measure that is representative of how confident the reviewer group is in the outcome of the consensus. That is, if the consensus of the peer votes matches the determination votes, then it is highly probable that reviewer groups have produced aligned publishing outcomes. In other words, the more reviewers there are who vote the same for their peer vote as they do their determination vote in a given review group, the more likely it is the case the review outcomes are aligned. The consensus formed from the peer votes will strictly be used for metadata and will not influence the decision to publish nor affect a user's reputation. The amount of DNN tokens a reviewer bids, combined with the total amount of DNN tokens bid by all reviewers of the same type, indicates the portion of the writer fee to which the reviewer is entitled, assuming the vote is correct. For example, if a reviewer bids five DNN tokens and the White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 Figure 7: Reward Split 25 total amount of DNN bid by the reviewers assigned is 50, then the potential reward for that reviewer is 10 percent of the writer fee portion allocated to that reviewer type. If the writer fee is split between super reviewer and standard reviewers by 70-30, then the potential reward of a particular reviewer will be a percentage of either 70 percent or 30 percent of the writer fee. REVIEW OUTCOMES To determine whether or not an article should be added to the network, determination votes of both standard reviewers and super reviewers are considered. In the case of standard reviewers, only the majority vote will count. Each super reviewer vote counts as a separate vote. For an article to be accepted or rejected, five out of the seven votes must be the same. Included within those votes must be at least one super reviewer (if they have been assigned to the article) that agrees with the majority of standard reviewers. The below diagram outlines each of the vote outcomes for groups involving super reviewers. Standard Super Reviewer #1 Super Should Publish Reviewer Determination Vote Reviewer #2

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Majority Determinati Vote on Vote YES YES YES YES NO YES YES YES YES YES NO YES YES NO YES YES NO NO NO NO YES NO NO NO NO NO YES NO NO YES NO NO Figure 8: Publish Decisions For groups that do not consist of super reviewers, the following diagram outlines each of the majority vote scenarios. 1 0 accept 2 accept 3 accept 4 accept 5 accept 6 accept 7 accept accept votes votes votes votes votes votes votes votes Not Not Not Not 0 reject Not Not Not Publish Publis Publish Publishe Published votes Published Published Published ed hed ed d Not Not Not 1 reject Not Not Not Publishe Publish Publis Publish votes Published Published Published d ed hed ed Not Not Not 2 reject Not Not Publish Publis Publish Published votes Published Published ed hed ed Not Not Not 3 reject Not Publish Publis Publish Re-assigned votes Published ed hed ed White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 26 4 reject Not Not Not Re- votes Published Published Published assigned 5 reject Not Not Not votes Published Published Published 6 reject Not Not votes Published Published 7 reject Not votes Published REPUTATION SYSTEM Every contributor with the exception of readers has a reputation. Reputation provides a snapshot of all the activity a contributor performs day-to-day. Most importantly, it provides some means of public accountability. Since each type of contributor has a unique set of activities they can perform, the makeup of their reputation differs. WRITER REPUTATION Writer reputation reflects the number of articles accepted and the number rejected, referred to as the articles accepted to articles rejected ratio or AR ratio for short. The ratio is used to indicate whether or not the writer has a consistent history of submitting articles that are in accordance with DNN

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 103 content guidelines. An AR ratio that is greater than one indicates that the writer submits more articles that are accepted than rejected, while an AR ratio of less than one indicates the inverse. AR Ratio = (Accepted Article Count / Rejected Article Count) REVIEWER REPUTATION A reviewer's reputation is comprised of the total number of times they voted with the majority, and their net bids. Net bids, is the total amount of bids lost and returned. The reviewer reputation gives key insights into a reviewer’s behavior, such as how much effort he or she put into reviewing articles. The following diagram outlines what is considered a good reputation and bad reputation. Figure 9: Majority Vote Publish Decisions Account Reputation Good Reputation Bad Reputation Reader ------Reviewer Correct Votes / Incorrect Votes >= 1 <1 Writer Articles Accepted / Articles Rejected >= 1 <1 White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 Figure 10: Reputations 27 Note that incorrect votes and loss bids will negatively impact a reviewer’s reputation. In other words, bids that are lost will subtract from net bids, while votes against the majority will result in the subtraction of correct votes. OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS There are several outstanding questions that DNN will be answering, in order to finalize these issues. Much of this will be facilitated by feedback from the community, as we work to have an open conversation about said issues on various channels and blog posts. The issues are as follows: ● Super Reviewers : Broadly, we know that there needs to be some role on the network that polices or oversees the reviewers themselves. Much of the review design is predicated on reviewers wanting to vote with other like-minded reviewers, but it is possible that reviewers will collectively think that other reviewers are corrupt. They could begin asking themselves not “Does this article adhere to other standards?” but “Do other reviewers not want this article published--and will they make the same bet that the other reviewers think the same?” To combat this, we want to instantiate a kind of semi-privileged reviewer role who we can trust is upholding DNN’s content policies. The fact that such an entity could be involved in the reviewer panel should help mitigate this kind of thinking among reviewers. However, we haven’t fully fleshed out how these super reviewers are chosen (vote, application, algorithm?) and the full scope of their privileges, responsibilities, and compensation. ● Potential DNN inflation : We are considering implementing an initial inflation system to seed the reward pools with newly minted DNN to provide sufficient incentives while the platform is still attracting reader revenues. Any thoughts on this are appreciated. ● Redemption mechanism : There are some unknowns regarding the redemption mechanism of swapping DNN point for DNN. While we like the game theory aspect of distributing DNN in the reward pool pro-rata among DNN point contributors, we recognize that this creates immense uncertainty among many readers and reviewers regarding their

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compensation while also requiring them to engage in game theory. This would likely stymie platform adoption. Other possible options include using the reward pool to guarantee a redemption ratio and then having DNN point holders queue up, distributing redemption rights via lottery, or staggering the redemption period. We are broadly committed to pooling most revenues and distributing among DNN point holders, but the exact mechanism is still being debated. It is also quite likely that the redemption process may be subject to bot activity, in an attempt to get a better DNN point to DNN ratio. Various safeguards against bots will need to be explored to mitigate this scenario from occurring. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 28 ● Time period for participation : Writing and reviewing takes time. The news stays news only so long. This dynamic will pose a challenge to producing quality and timely content. We want a mechanism that ensures people who signal interest in reviewing articles actually follow through but we want to leave enough time for reviewers to reliably do a good job. If it’s too short a window, reviewers will be skittish about putting up their DNN for bonding; if too long, stories could become obsolete. We intend to test this in the early stages before finalizing a review window. ● Reputation : We are still iterating versions of a reputation system on DNN. We have introduced several parameters that could track reputation, but we haven’t finalized the magnitude of that reputation’s impact on token rewards. We have resisted introducing another token for reputation, though we recognize the value of having a single shared reputation across all functions on the platform. Recognize that the approach we have laid out is a proposal. ● DNN Fee : Broadly, we think that DNN could fund itself by charging a fee on transactions over the network. The one challenge with this is that our revenue will grow linearly with network growth, but one of the core advantages of having a distributed infrastructure is that the cost of maintaining the network doesn’t need to scale with network growth. We are considering several options here, including a dynamic fee, a fee system that gradually retires, and a portion of revenue seeding additional bounty contracts. ● Reputable and reliable sources being incorrect : In some cases, writers may get an article published on DNN which seems to perfectly meet the editorial guidelines. However, there have certainly been instances where the sources themselves have been incorrect and publications are forced to retract those particular statements. Instances such as these may prove to be somewhat tricky to navigate. We are thinking that we can allow readers to flag articles on the basis that they are deemed suspicious in terms of their factual integrity. DNN can append a disclaimer to such articles, warning the readers that said article has been flagged as suspicious by a number of readers. The article can then be sent to into a secondary review in order to take it off the news feed or clear it of any suspicion. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 29

DNN’S TECHNOLOGY STACK

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DNN's network will be built using Ethereum smart contracts, IPFS (eventually Swarm or Filecoin), and ZeroNet. SMART CONTRACTS When it comes to Ethereum, smart contracts written in Solidity are used to store verified and accepted articles, in turn creating a published article feed. DNN will utilize smart contracts to facilitate the entire review process and payouts. INTERPLANETARY FILE SYSTEM IPFS is a complete peer-to-peer network that allows for the storage and retrieval of hypermedia. Since the amount of gas required to store articles becomes less cost-efficient as the platform scales, only a reference to the article is stored within Ethereum (i.e. a IPFS hash pointer to the article). The hash pointer used for the article will be a reference to its complete contents in IPFS. ZERONET DNN ensures availability of its web application through the use of ZeroNet, though with slight variations. ZeroNet is a completely decentralized and censorship-resistant network built using the same cryptographic structure as Bitcoin and the technology of BitTorrent. Like BitTorrent, ZeroNet works by seeding data — in this case the DNN web application — to hosting nodes that are interested in using the data. Hosting nodes, known as peers, download ("leech") and upload ("seed") the DNN web application between each other rather than through a centralized server. Throughout the DNN, thousands of hosting nodes spread out across different geographical regions, containing complete copies of the entire DNN web application and making it available to interested viewers. In addition to the traditional BitTorrent approach, which requires contributors to install software in order to download data from the BitTorrent network, the DNN application network can also be accessed simply through a standard web browser. Contributors have the option of connecting directly to public hosting nodes or by navigating to DNN's domain and letting DNN find an available hosting node. Anyone can become a hosting node if they download the DNN application directly from the DNN domain instead of viewing it through a web browser. Once a contributor becomes a hosting node, they will automatically connect to nearby peers and begin to seed the DNN web application. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 30

GAME THEORY COUNTERING MALICIOUS BEHAVIOR The review process is one of the most important aspects of the platform. At any given moment, articles submitted must be vetted for sources and overall accuracy to uphold the integrity of the decentralized article feed. As a result, this makes the review process an attractive target for malicious contributors and network actors seeking to exploit it for nefarious reasons. Some of the most common attacks on the review process may include, but are not limited to: flooding reviewers with the same article to boost the likelihood of acceptance, automating the actions of the reviewer to obtain DNN by providing bogus contributions, submitting articles that contain little or no content and colluding with other like-minded reviewers to accept or reject articles of a particular topic based on personal political

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 106 views or inherent biases. The review process is designed to resist these types of attacks by making it costly to engage in activity that is not in the best interest of the network. DNN accomplishes this by gamifying all aspects involving contributor collaboration. VON NEUMANN-MORGENSTERN UTILITY THEOREM There is always a bit of uncertainty in every decision. What determines how people decide depends on their desires/values and how much risk they will take on. In a collaborative environment such as DNN’s review process, decisions made through collaboration are crucial to the platform’s success. However, because deciding collaboratively in an open forum can lead to erratic behavior, DNN uses the Von Neumann–Morgenstern utility theorem to ensure a benefit to the platform from decisions made by each reviewer in isolation. DNN’s incentive structure is designed to favor reviewers who work to vote rationally in line with DNN content guidelines, rather than irrationally. Von Neumann– Morgenstern theorem, tells us that given certain postulates of rational behavior involving risky outcomes a person who must make a decision will choose to behave in such a way as to maximize 11 some expected value. Put another way, a decision-maker will rank the outcomes by the probability 12 of occurrence, expected risk, and preference. The decision matrix explained under the schelling point, showcases each outcome. SCHELLING POINT What is the most effective means of ensuring that reviewers won’t misbehave? What measures will stop a reviewer from voting randomly or choosing to collude with other reviewers or writers? DNN’s answer to both questions involve Schelling points, named after Nobel Prize winning economist Thomas Schelling. His work shows that a person will tend to choose an option, in the complete absence of any line of communication with a collaborator, that has some significant 11 Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. Von Neumann, John and Oskar Morgenstern. 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_NeumannpercentE2percent80percent93Morgenstern_utility_theore m White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

31 13 value or appears more natural or logical then the other option. For example, imagine there are two prisoners held in separate cells without any form of direct communication. Both are given a paper with the numbers 15, 358, 266, 89, 13820, 1,000,000, written on it. Each prisoner is then asked to pick a number. If the number they select is the same as the prisoner in the other cell, then both of them will be freed. Should they choose incorrectly, they will both be faced with a 10 year prison sentence. According to Schelling, the answer that both prisoners will likely choose is 1,000,000. From the perspective of either prisoner, the best possible strategy is to think 14 about what one prisoner expects the other to select. In the case of DNN’s review process, reviewers are completely isolated, unaware of the identities of the other reviewers, and do not have any direct line of communication with each other. However, each reviewer has access to the DNN content guidelines and the article the group has been selected to review. Each reviewer is asked to vote the same as the majority. If the reviewer votes correctly, he or she will receive a reward. If the reviewer votes incorrectly, the bid will be forfeited.

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Therefore, each reviewer can consider their decisions as follows: I vote randomly and the other reviewers vote randomly, I vote randomly and the other reviewers vote according to the guidelines, I vote according to the guidelines and the other reviewers vote randomly, or I vote according to the guidelines and the other reviewer vote according to the guidelines. The following matrix showcases each reviewer’s possible strategy. Peer Reviewers Vote by Guessing Peer Reviewers Vote w/ Guidelines Reviewer Votes Reviewer cannot predict Peers cannot predict Reviewer cannot Peers likely to by Guessing outcome outcome Predict Outcome predict outcome Reviewer Votes Reviewer likely to Peers cannot predict Reviewer likely to Peers likely to w/ Guidelines predict outcome outcome predict outcome predict outcome Figure 11: Review Outcome Matrix According to the matrix, we can see that the best option for each reviewer is to adhere to the DNN content guidelines prior to voting. This is because each participant would assume that the other reviewers will likely vote according to the guidelines. This will lead to a predictable outcome and a higher chance for each reviewer to retain their bid. 13 http://lesswrong.com/lw/dc7/nash_equilibria_and_schelling_points 14 http://rbsc.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/Non-Cooperative_Games_Nash.pdf White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017

32 ATTACK VECTORS IN CURRENT ECONOMIC STRUCTURE For any decentralized network to be able to survive, it is important to identify various types of attack vectors and ways to either mitigate or prevent them altogether. Many of these attack vectors are common to all community-based decentralized networks and some are specific to DNN. SYBIL ATTACK Sybil attacks consist of creating a large number of accounts in the attempt to either overwhelm the network or seize control of a democratic process. In DNN's case, any successful attempt to hijack the review process would mean that an adversary could in theory, alter the guidelines by choosing to approve or disapprove articles that appeal to a certain bias. To prevent this from happening the DNN network imposes a cap on the amount of tokens that can be waged and takes into careful consideration the reputation of each reviewer bidding. Together, these two mechanisms will provide a decent safeguard for those seeking to out bid others by spreading their tokens between multiple accounts. BIG BROTHER ATTACK Companies or nations rich with resources could theoretically pool their resources together into an attempt to carry out a massive sybil attack. Big Brother attacks are notorious for being difficult to stop, by the simple fact that it is difficult to gauge how much resources an entity has or their intent to attack the network. A big brother attack could happen on DNN, if an entity were to purchase more than 51% of all DNN tokens, in which case it would be possible to out bid the entire network. The only counter to a big brother attack is to amass honest contributors, whose collective DNN holding and reputation is greater than or equal to the adversary's. Attacking a network of this size wouldn't be sustainable and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 108 would likely be a waste of resources for any such organization. PUPPET MASTER ATTACK The puppet master attack is a variation of the Big Brother attack. Similar to the Big Brother attack, an attacker controls a large number of accounts, each consisting of DNN tokens and reputation. After a certain threshold has been reached the attacker uses some means of sabotaging the publisher nodes by either removing them from the network or creating a hostage situations using the published data. Like the Big Brother attack, The only counter to a big brother attack is to amass honest contributors, whose collective DNN holding and reputation is greater than or equal to the adversary's. One way to mitigate the hostage situation is to distribute article data across various nodes that are unrelated to the network. REVIEWER BID SELECTION COLLUSION White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 33 Preventing users from guessing which article they will be selected to review is crucial in mitigating possible collusion. To accomplish randomization, the highest bidders will be randomly assigned to articles within the review queue. For example, let’s say that there are five articles in the review queue and seven reviewers who decide to bid large amounts of DNN tokens in hope of being assigned to the topmost article. To prevent this from happening, each of the seven top reviewers will be randomly assigned to the five articles, one top bidder per article. The idea behind randomly delegating articles in the queue to top bidders, is to make it difficult to coordinate bids. ERRATIC AND COLLUSIVE VOTING BEHAVIOR Collaborating to get articles published, that fit a narrative endorsed by a group of contributors, is certainly a real possibility. To prevent this from happening, reviewers will only be shown the necessary details to prevent any foreknowledge of which articles they will be bidding on. To become a reviewer, a contributor needs to put forth a certain amount of tokens. Since reviewing articles costs tokens, which can potentially be lost if a reviewer ends up voting against the majority, it will be less likely that reviewers will vote blindly or in a biased manner. This is because the cost of voting blindly without reviewing outweighs the cost of reviewing according to our guidelines. Each reviewer must cast a “personal vote,” for which a reviewer says a “yes” or “no” to an article according to our guidelines. It is certainly a possibility that a reviewer can say whatever he or she wants without reviewing properly, but if that’s the case, the reviewer will lose his or her initial stake if their vote turns out to be wrong. This introduces a harsh penalty for reviewers attempting to game the system. The aspect of anonymity also helps to prevent reviewer collusion if multiple reviewers try to rig the votes. There is no centralized review team and none of the reviewers for a specific article are aware of each other's identity. Based on our research of blockchain-based networks, we believe everyone on the platform will want to maximize their personal gain and act out of greed. In this case that’s a good thing, because more reviewers will act in the best interest of the system if the rewards are high enough and the penalties are sufficiently harsh. We’re confident that reviewers will vote in a proper manner. Of course, it’s possible that all seven reviewers assigned to an article don’t vote properly, but the probability of that happening seems too low, considering that they’re all working for a specific reward and don’t even

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 109 know how the other reviewer are voting. Eliminating bad behavior completely is not possible and shouldn’t be the goal. Even those who are attempting to abuse the system are still doing work. Any compensation they get for their successful attempts to abuse is at least valuable for the purpose of distributing the token. All that White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 34 is necessary is for us to ensure that abuse isn’t so rampant that it undermines the incentive to do real work in support of the DNN and causes the value of the DNN token to plummet. Steemit, a community-based social media platform on the blockchain, believes preventing malicious behavior for just a small subset of contributors, may not always be best for the platform: "The goal of building a community currency is to get more “crabs in a bucket” already full of crabs. Going to extreme measures to eliminate all abuse is like attempting to put a lid on the bucket to prevent a few crabs from escaping and comes at the expense of making it harder to add new crabs to the bucket. It is sufficient to make the walls slippery and give the other crabs sufficient power to prevent others from escaping." Another example would be like forcing every car manufacturer to impose a reduction in the speed of their cars to jogging speed, all because a few people continue to break driving laws. As long as there are measures in place to ensure that voting randomly and without feedback causes the contributor to lose tokens, then the probability of an anonymous set of reviewers—with no chance of communicating with one another, colluding to accept or reject articles that otherwise shouldn't have been accepted/rejected—is quite low.

ACCESSING DNN Each party on DNN, with the exception of publishers, is capable of accessing the network through both web and mobile. Since publishers are merely nodes on the network and do not require human intervention, they must use platform-specific software to access the network. Furthermore, for all other contributors, the DNN application provides an interface to interact directly with the network and to perform actions such as: 1. Submitting, consuming, constructing and editing articles 2. Reviewing submissions 3. Managing tokens Every party is capable of carrying out a particular subset of contributor actions and given access to certain features on the web and mobile app, as demonstrated below. WRITER ACCESS Mobile and web apps provide writers with a fully featured editing interface for constructing the article they plan to submit to the network. The editing interface allows writers to draft, categorize, style and apply specially tailored article layouts. For example, if an article is rich with images and videos, a writer may want to choose a layout that puts more emphasis on the media than the writing. Another example is if an article consists of a video, writers may opt to display the video White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 35 prior to the written portion. These configurations and various others are available using article

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 110 specific layouts and are similar to blog layouts. Although the article editor interface can be accessed directly on the DNN web and mobile app, there is no centralized server that is actively saving changes. In other words, since there is no central repository that sits on a controlled server, the contents of the draft, layout and styling are together saved to the device on which the article originated. This enables articles to be edited offline and reduces the potential for single point of failures within the network. In the event the article is rejected, writers will have the ability to make changes and see reviewer feedback within the same editor interface used to create the article. REVIEWER ACCESS Reviewers use the DNN app to review articles, manage their tokens and receive notifications. To ensure that reviewers are informed of articles they have been selected to review, the DNN app will send them a series of notifications. These notifications can either be in the form of emails or push alerts. Present in each notification is a link that directs the reviewer to the stage of the given article. The stage is an interface used by reviewers to give feedback and to vote on whether or not an article should be included in the network. Similar to word processing software, the stage allows reviewers to insert notes, highlight, and apply various overlaying styles to convey their feedback to the writer. To eliminate groupthink, reviewers are not allowed to know what feedback or vote the other assigned reviewers have provided. Once the reviewer has provided feedback, the next step is to decide whether or not the article is eligible to be added to the network. This is done by casting a vote to "accept" or "reject" the article within stage. Reviewers also have the option of passing the article to another reviewer if they find themselves unable to review. READER ACCESS Since articles are replicated across tens of thousands of publisher nodes, readers must use the DNN app to view and interact with published articles. Much like a web browser is used to view websites that reside on various servers, the DNN app is used to view articles stored on publisher nodes on the network. Similar to a cryptocurrency explorer, the DNN app works by displaying the longest published chain of articles. Within the DNN alpha app, articles are listed in the chronological order in which they were published as a vertical stream dating back to the first published article. Using the stream, readers select an article to view its entire contents, flag or comment on any published article. Since each contributor is associated with a unique hash, each action the contributor takes is tracked as metadata. This metadata is later used to determine the amount of activity the reader performed and the amount of payout earned. In the future, articles could be sorted by topic and/or keyword; White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 36 these details could be provided by the writer, curated by DNN itself, or perhaps a combination of both.

NETWORK EXPANSION Mutually Incentivized Referral Program Community-based networks like DNN depend on having contributors. A network without nodes or contributors is simply not a network. What would Facebook be like without your friends? What would

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Twitter be like without followers? Community-based networks are measured by their contributor base, because contributors are a pivotal part of the experience. In the case of decentralized networks like DNN, contributors both enhance the experience and, even more importantly, improve the robustness and accuracy of the platform. To help grow the contributor base of DNN, a unique and mutually beneficial referral program serves a way to incentivize both the referrer and referee, by using reputation. All contributors of DNN have the potential to increase their reputation by positively contributing to the platform. What makes reputation important is that it directly influences the amount of token reward a contributor can earn from interacting with the platform. For example, the more reputation a writer has, the more tokens will be given to them for each article they submit. The more reputation a reviewer has, the bigger their potential reward is for voting with the consensus. Furthermore, the higher the reputation is for a reader, the more bond reward they can receive for pointing out inaccuracies. To expand the DNN network, the DNN referral program will focus on enhancing contributor growth and contributor engagement. DNN's referral system accomplishes this by rewarding contributors up front and over time. Whenever a referrer successfully invites a referee, a connection between the two is made to signify a referral link. Both the referrer and referee earn a reputation for establishing a referral link (See Figure 12 ). The more people a referrer brings onto the platform, the more referral links they will establish, and reputation points awarded. To prevent contributors from earning reputation points by creating bogus accounts, reputation points will only become redeemable when the referee earns a positive reputation or obtains a reader subscription. In addition to being rewarded reputation for establishing a referral link, referrers have the opportunity to earn reputation proportional to the positive reputation of each of their referees. This means that referral links, enable a long term bond between the referrer and referee.

WRITER & REVIEWER GUIDELINES DNN CONTENT POLICY DNN has three core content rules that make up its policy: 1. Verifiability White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 37 2. No Unsourced Content 3. Faithfulness to Sources Together, these three content rules determine the style and quality of material that is acceptable and should not be viewed separately from one another. Writers and reviewers on the network are strongly encouraged to familiarize themselves with all three policies. DNN’s content policy is non-negotiable and cannot be overridden by editor or writer consensus. VERIFIABILITY Verifiability in DNN means that other people, whether readers, writers, or reviewers, can trace the information contained in any given article back to its original source. Every definitive statement, presented as fact, has to be backed by a reputable and published source, thereby granting readers the freedom to look through a writer’s source material. DNN will not publish material that lacks proper sources. Our news content is mainly determined by

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 112 information that has already been published and is not to be based solely on the personal viewpoints of writers. This also means that anonymous sources cannot be utilized since they lack a publicly visible point of origin. Regardless of whether or not writers are sure that a certain aspect is indeed true, it must be verifiable by the audience before they can include it in their final piece. Many times, reliable sources can be in conflict with one another; in such cases, it is essential for writers to maintain accuracy and an objective perspective by simply presenting what all the sources state, while also citing the corresponding place of origin. All material in DNN, including articles, lists, and captions, must be verifiable. The onus to prove verifiability is the responsibility of the writer who includes the material , which means the reporter must be comfortable with providing attribution that can back the corresponding content directly and effectively. Anything that is quoted, as well as any content with verifiability that is being debated or could end up being debated, needs to have an inline citation present that directly supports it. The attributed source material must visibly support the content as shown in the piece. Additionally, any passage in an article that clearly requires a source but has not been given one, may be subject to scrutiny by reviewers on DNN. In such cases, this may lead to rejection for the writer, if the reviewer deems that the passage needs to be adequately backed up by a reference. Condescending or malicious content about living or well-known individuals that are not sourced or is poorly sourced, is subject to immediate rejection by DNN’s reviewers. Reliable sources include: ● University-level textbooks White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 38 ● Books published by reliable publishing houses ● Books published by university presses ● Magazines ● Peer-reviewed journals ● Mainstream newspapers ● Reliable and accurate blogs At times, writers must exercise caution with certain sources, since they may not have been scrutinized during their organization's normal fact-checking processor may have been published in error. NO UNSOURCED CONTENT DNN articles must not contain unsourced content. Unsourced content on DNN to refers to content such as theories, allegations, and ideas, that cannot be traced back to any reliable and published sources. This also includes analysis of published material where a writer attempts to reach or imply a conclusion that is not stated by the source material. For writers to show that they are indeed not including unsourced content, they need to be able to cite reliable, already published sources that are directly related to the topic of the article and directly support the content within. Despite attributing content to its source material, writers need to be cautious to not plagiarize said content. Instead, writers should write the material in their own words through paraphrasing while still keeping the original source’s meaning. By actively barring writers from including unsourced content in their work, DNN can place limits on the degree

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to which writers present clear falsehoods within articles. In turn, this also becomes a supporting pillar for accuracy on the platform. For DNN’s writers, research that consists of gathering and shaping content from existing, previously published sources is important to writing a factually accurate article. Ideally, the best practice for writers on the platform would be to research the most reliable and significant sources on a given subject before summarizing what is said in his or her own words, while clearly attributing statements to their correct sources. Source material needs to be carefully paraphrased and structured while continuing to retain its original meaning. Writers should not interject and deviate from what is contained in the sources by implying or directly stating things that were not otherwise stated. This includes positioning the content out of its primary context. Simply put, content on DNN must stick to the nature of its sources and never stray. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 39 FAITHFULNESS TO SOURCE All news content existing on DNN that is attributed to sources must be consistent with said sources. This means that any piece of content must fairly and accurately represent the perspectives that have been already published by reliable sources on a given topic. Additionally, sourced information should be presented in such a way that editorial bias is mitigated, even if only a little. In essence, while writers are allowed to maintain a voice in their writings, articles on DNN need to be clearly supported by evidence. It is the job of reviewers to validate and publish articles that present information with clearly attributed sources and without editorial manipulation of the sourced content. To achieve this, a writer must critically and meticulously analyze a variety of reliable sources before attempting to portray to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and with as little bias as possible. Listed below are the following principles to achieve the level of both faithfulness and fairness to sourced content that makes DNN purposeful: ● Do not state opinions as facts. Many time, articles will contain information conveying important opinions that have been expressed about the subjects at hand. However, these opinions should not be stated in the writer’s voice. Instead, they should be accurately attributed in the text to those particular sources, or where sensible and acceptable, described as widely held views, minority views, etc. ● Do not state seriously debated/questionable assertions as facts. Sometimes, two or more reliable sources may conflict with one another. Writers should treat such assertions as opinions rather than facts, and not present them as direct statements, otherwise, this would give rise to bias. ● Do not state facts as opinions. Factually-backed a ssertions that are uncontested and uncontroversial, as well as made by reliable sources should usually be directly stated on DNN. Unless a particular topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, writers would not need specific attribution for such assertions, although they may add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Most importantly, any passages containing information about factual assertions should not be worded in any way

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that makes them appear to be debatable. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 40 ADDITIONAL NOTES For writers, an important point of note is that they must use their real name. This is a measure primarily meant to prevent anyone on the platform from impersonating another writer and DNN may incorporate social sign-ins to enforce this. Ideally, reviewers should strive to encourage writers to reword certain sections or sentences that deviate from their sources, or to include sources if they aren’t already present for statements that seemingly require them. Information that is blatantly untrue or lacks a clear origin can usually be detected in the fact-checking process by weighing said information against its source. Essentially, such problems should be rectified when possible through the normal review process. Certain material should only be removed if there is good reason to believe that it misinforms readers in ways that cannot be addressed by rewriting it. Furthermore, the views of the writer (since they are unsourced) should only be included, in a "see also" or “to be sure” subsection to an article that explicitly speaks on those specific views. DNN hopes to report on issues, free of any blatant falsehoods and statements describing events that never occurred or statements that were never made. Research that is both extensive and properly referenced, as well as based upon the most authoritative and reliable sources available, can help mitigate conflicts in accuracy, even if it does not eliminate them altogether. Lastly, not only will all written articles have an upper and lower character limit, but will also be consistently presented in sections. Each article on DNN will be designed in a format that contains its content in three distinct sections. The sections will be titled as follows: Section 1: What is the issue? Section 2: What do we know about this issue? Section 3: Why is this issue important? Each section will be concise and straightforward, allowing for writers to potentially present less misinformation and for reviewers to have a simpler time reviewing. The format of articles on DNN should always be clean and consistent, making the total reviewable surface area much more manageable. NOTES ON LIBELOUS CONTENT Even though publishing will be facilitated by a robust review process, there may be instances or edge cases where content is published to DNN that its community or certain individuals deem slanderous. DNN will implement a formal complaint system tailored for such instances; if an article White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 41 is targeted by any individual(s) as being damaging to said individual(s) on the grounds of falsehood, DNN reserves the right to take such content down from the application after careful analysis of the inquiry. Secondly, there may be instances where content that is published to the network isn’t necessarily slanderous, but still questionable in terms of factual integrity. To mitigate this, DNN shall allow readers to flag articles on the basis of overall accuracy. Unlike most platforms where flagging is a

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 115 passive action that can be subject to being abuse. Flagging on DNN will be an expensive action, requiring users to pay more DNN tokens than other actions such as commenting, to prevent a high multitude of readers flagging articles simply because it’s controversial. If an article is flagged enough times, it will be appended with a disclaimer for all readers, which states that said article may not necessarily be entirely accurate based on the suspicion of readers. For cases such as this, the article will be sent back into review for a second look, while still displaying the disclaimer. If the article is deemed to be untruthful during this secondary review process, it will be taken off DNN’s feed. If it is deemed to be acceptable, it will continue to be viewable without any disclaimer.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE Dece Content Uses Purpose Peer-Review Payouts ntral Focus Tokens ized - Reviewers earn A community of tokens to fact check reviewers fact-check News platform articles news articles for combining news - Readers earn veracity using DNN's creation with tokens by Content Guidelines. YES decentralized suggesting topics to General DNN's incentive-based - YES - networks to writers DNN News review process is Ether DNN deliver factual - Writers earn gamified to prevent eum content, curated tokens from collusion and reward by the accepted articles all parties involved community. and reader interest with getting an article (i.e. tipping, published. comments, etc.) - Writers earn A platform that Professional money through brings paid journalists hired by donations and WikiTri journalists and a General WikiTribune to work reader subscriptions NO NO bune community of News with a community of - Volunteers are not volunteers volunteers to fact- part of payout together. check articles. - Readers are not part of payout White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 42 Publishers of Social media content get paid in platform where for creating content everyone gets Social No formal review (e.g. comments, YES - Steemit YES paid for creating Media process posts) that STEEM and curating accumulate content. significant engagement. A newsroom Utilizes Newsroom Readers, Writers, platform using Officers for each Reviewers are YES blockchain newsroom’s fact- General rewarded with - CIVIL technology and checking. Disputes are YES - CVL News tokens through the Ether cryptoeconomic handled by a activity generated eum s to create an Journalism Advisory in each newsroom. open Board.

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marketplace for journalists and citizens - Tokens earned Content ranking Content Rules for peer- from curators YES & reputation specific YES - reviewing content is backing other - Userfeed system for to ETH, specific to blockchain curators Ether blockchain commun Reputation community. - Readers are not eum communities. ity part of payout Decentralized - Contributors earn world tokens by knowledge base contributing which rewards YES General Experts in same field content YES - contributors - Lunyr Informat as content review it for - Experts earn LUN, with app tokens Ether ion accuracy. tokens by peer CBN, HNR for peer- eum reviewing reviewing and - Readers are not contributing part of payouts information. Allows content creators to - Curators get paid easily monetize for matching original works content with without having appropriate to turn their Curators, identifying community channels into General high quality content - Content creator YES - Synereo advertisement YES Content and matching it with gets paid for AMP real estate, while appropriate audiences. publishing original granting their videos, music, followers the pictures and texts opportunity to - Readers are not be rewarded for part of payout getting the word out. Decentralized Qualified reviewers network of YES append opinions Pramani different General - YES - Not addressing authenticity Not specified ka heterogeneous News Ether specified of article prior to its news eum publishing. institutions. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 43

DNN Token Distribution

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MARKETING AND COMMUNITY BUILDING In an effort to attract writers and kickstart the DNN platform with new content, 4% of the token supply will be for DNN accounts created and pre-seeded with DNN tokens. The pre-seeded accounts will be created prior to Mainnet launch and will be provided to the first wave of new users during the initial phases of the project. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 44 BOUNTY DNN will set aside 1% of the token supply for a general bounty program. The bounty program will be open to everyone who would like to participate and will end on the last day of the crowdsale. Distribution of DNN tokens earned through the bounty program will occur within the first week of the end of the crowdsale. CROWDSALE 40% of the DNN token supply will be put aside for purchase during the DNN token sale. The DNN token sale will be available to the general public and will require a minimum transaction of 0.01 ETH in order to participate. There will be no maximum transaction amount. Any tokens not sold during the crowdsale will be transferred to the DNN holding. ADVISORY 14% of the DNN token supply will be distributed to various advisory firms and individual advisors, who have helped with the conceptualization and implementation of the DNN platform. These tokens will be dispersed without vesting, during the presale period. PRIVATE PRESALE 20% of tokens will be reserved for the private presale. The private presale will take place the month before the crowdsale and will be subject to a minimum transaction of 5 ETH in order to participate. Any unsold tokens from our presale will be available for purchase during the crowdsale. FOUNDERS

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DNN’s founders will be entitled to 10% of the DNN token supply. Theses tokens will be subject to a 10 month vesting schedule with one twentieth of the tokens being released to both founders monthly. DNN HOLDING DNN will set aside 11% of the token supply for the DNN holding. The DNN holding is a portion of funds reserved from the token supply, that will be gradually introduced into circulation after certain growth milestones have been met. The idea behind adding tokens with incremental increases in activity, is to ensure that the amount of DNN tokens in circulation is representative of the current demand for them. Having an ideal amount of DNN tokens in circulation helps to reduce the amount of unused DNN tokens that are held outside of the system. Since the review White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 45 process acts like a coinbase for DNN points, it makes for a great indicator of user activity, because the DNN point serves as a way to gauge the amount of outstanding DNN tokens needed to satisfy DNN point holders. The more article reviews that take place, the more likely DNN tokens are being consumed by the platform. To prevent the DNN holding from being mismanaged, the funds will be held in and controlled by a smart contract programmed to transfer one one-thousandth of the DNN holding into the reward pool for every five thousand newly published articles.

USE OF FUNDS General and Administrative 35% Development 40% Legal 10% Marketing 10% Miscellaneous (outreach, travel, etc.) 5% GENERAL & ADMINISTRATIVE Refers to costs of operating the business such as building rent, consultant fees, depreciation on office equipment, supplies, subscriptions and utilities, as well as managerial compensation. DEVELOPMENT Refers to costs of building and maintaining the product, such as developer salaries, server costs, and development tools. MARKETING Refers to costs of communicating and delivering the company’s value to its users, such as general outreach through various channels, public relations, media coverage, community building/management, and advertising. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 46 LEGAL Refers to the company’s ongoing legal expenses, due to company setup, and any and all legal advice. MISCELLANEOUS Refers to incidental expenses which cannot be classified such as travel, lodging, and attending

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 119 conferences. NOTES ON GOVERNANCE DNN’s content guidelines and policies, (which function as the primary method to govern how reviewers will assess submitted articles,) will be governed by community. While DNN has established baseline rules for how content should be reviewed, the company intends to pass governance down to the community, once the platform’s development has reached its final stage. Community members will be able to hold voting periods, to assess the overall effectiveness of the guidelines and to propose potential amendments for greater positive impact. The core team will not hold exclusive ownership of the platform’s content policies, in order to allow the community to have a more significant presence. DNN’s protocol will be owned by the core team, since the company is structured as a private entity with its founders being the principals. That being said, the team will open-source the platform’s smart contracts and front-end codebase, allowing anyone to contribute additions, and fixes that the community can decide to incorporate into the protocol. Secondly, individuals can host nodes on the network, thereby giving the community the ability to fork the DNN protocol. This can be done by garnering enough support, in cases where the network is compromised or crucial protocol changes are needed.

DNN TEAM Samit Singh, Co-Founder Product & Design Samit is an experienced web and mobile designer/product developer, who co-founded a messaging app startup called MiniChat, Inc. , along with his partner Dondrey. Together, they also created a video and photo app called Tack Video . He has 7+ years of startup experience, having worked at other startups before this. He follows UI/UX design, mobile technology, and emerging technology— especially all the unique ways in which we can explore social interaction and incentivized networks. This is what eventually led to his love of blockchain technology and White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 47 cryptocurrencies. As of now, he designs DNN's interface and defines its overall experience. Lastly, he has also taken part in running a large scale ETH mining operation with Dondrey. Dondrey Taylor, Co-Founder Tech & Development Dondrey is a seasoned web and mobile full stack developer, who was the co-founder and CTO of MiniChat, Inc . He is also one of the creators of Tack Video . He holds a B.S. in Information Technology with a specialization in systems architecture. His passion for blockchain based services began from a love of neural networks. Before creating DNN, he took part in building one of the top Ether mining farms, where he was tasked with building various types of mining rigs. He is currently working on DNN's front-end and back-end codebase (its Ethereum smart contracts) and implementing ways to distribute the DNN application between network nodes. Greg D’Alba, Advisor CEO and Co-Founder @ VIDL NEWS CORP

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Greg was named the President of Global Partnerships following the merger of WME/IMG in 2014. He was responsible for global management, strategy and development of client services including consulting, strategy & activation, creative services, experiential marketing, strategic planning & valuation, talent ventures, sponsorship & naming rights, and shopper marketing. Greg created a holistic approach to leverage the WME/IMG assets worldwide. Prior to his joining WME/IMG, Greg served as President & Chief Operating Officer of CNN for Turner Broadcasting Inc. D'Alba was responsible for all the cable news products and Turner’s digital ad revenue. He directed the marketing for the CNN portfolio of news networks and businesses including brand management of CNN/U.S., HLN, CNN Airport Network, and CNN.com. Under D'Alba’s leadership, CNN developed a fully integrated, multi-dimensional innovation marketing solutions program across the CNN platform. Charles Theiss, Advisor COO and Co-Founder @ VIDL NEWS CORP. Charles has more than thirty years of professional experience serving in key senior executive management positions and advisory roles with well-known legacy and digital media brands. He is an outside-the-box thinker who enjoys building new business models designed to help shape the future success of his clients. For the last sixteen years, he established a two tiered business consulting practice with a focus on integrated digital & tech solutions. These assignments range from a concentration on business development, strategic alliances and advertising sales solutions. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 48 His client experience includes Fox Interactive Media, CBS Television Station Group, OK Magazine, Singularity University, WeatherNation, MAVTV, The Sportsnetwork, The College Board, Lucas Oil, The Fred Rogers Company, RightMedia, KlowdTV, Screenvision Cinema Network, Anthem Media, The Film Detective, V-Me Television, Real Savvy Moms, and others. Serving as a senior executive with major media organizations, he launched the wireless platform “CNN Everywhere”, re-launched the CBS Television Station’s digital platform, developed Looksmart’s “Find Articles”, reorganized Lycos’ advertising sales organization, and re-launched the MavTV brand and network. At CNN, he served as Senior Vice President of television advertising sales and was promoted to manage CNN’s Digital advertising sales, business development and ad operations. He has held senior leadership positions with Terra Lycos, Looksmart, and FX overseeing their business development and advertising sales. He began his career working in the advertising agency business, moving into cable network affiliate relations and advertising sales at Group W Satellite Communications. Justin Festa, Advisor Digital Media Executive @ LittleThings Justin is a digital media executive with years of experience running both product and revenue at LittleThings , the largest women's lifestyle URL on the web. He intimately understands the opportunities and challenges that come from running a platform that reaches millions of people per day. Beyond his digital media experience Justin is a also a programmer who is fascinated by blockchains and believes adamantly in their potential. Festa is a graduate of Lehigh University with a

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 121 dual major in Computer Science and Business. Randy Mitchell Senior Product Manager Randy is a technology professional with product management, software development, UX and founding experience. He's led technology efforts across several verticals including Blockchain, SaaS, E-Commerce and Healthcare Innovation. Most recently he served as the Product Lead for an ICO funded ($7.2MM) blockchain startup where he was instrumental in architecting and leading that startups Product Development team in delivering the core technology for their inaugural blockchain solution. Additionally he’s served as a Blockchain Product Consultant/Advisor on several early stage blockchain projects and is an active part of the Blockchain Meetup Community where he helps to lead one of the nation's largest blockchain meetups. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 49 Matt Chwierut, Advisor Research Director @ Smith + Crown Matt Chwierut is the Research Director at Smith + Crown. He guides a research team in evaluating new cryptocurrency protocols, authoring briefing memos on key emerging topics, and reviewing countless white papers. His background includes research and consulting on emerging technologies, cross-sector innovations, and applied economics. Mališa Pušonja, Project Manager R&D engineer @ Devana Labs Mališa is Chief R&D engineer at Devana Labs, has been working on decentralized platforms for a while. Currently, his main focus is rapid prototyping and MVP development, especially in the context of blockchain/ethereum apps. He loves naming things that no one has named, because he believes that, when you do that you get new patterns and a whole new world. This is especially true in the context of MVP's in the building phase. His two favorite technical debt patterns are human-centric agile methodologyTM and Product-Abstractness Continuum Fit. He loves to mix and match this with sacrificial architecture, Strangler patterns, Atwood’s Law, and Dietlzer’s law, in order to plan and execute the best MVP building phase possible. Andrej Cvoro, Solidity Developer Software developer @ Devana Labs Andrej is a freelance software developer with more than 10 years of coding experience and a great breadth of technical knowledge and skills. Generally passionate about innovative and leading edge technologies, his current primary focus is on decentralized technologies such as blockchain. He has been following Ethereum platform from its very inception and started doing Solidity development last year. Uros Radovanovic, Solidity Developer Software developer @ Devana Labs Uros is a software developer, working at Devana Labs. He works on various decentralized, secure email services, and is primarily focused in developing encrypted backends. He’s a strong believer in

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 122 lifetime studying and the fact that anyone he meets knows something that he doesn’t, which means that every person can teach him something new. He is a Junior Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling champion. His big passions are free speech, information security, AI, and dogs. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 50 Rebecca (Grace) Rachmany, Advisor CEO @ DAO Leadership Grace (Rebecca) Rachmany is a serial entrepreneur and founder of two companies in the blockchain space: IwriteICOwhitepapers.com and DAO Leadership. She recently co-wrote and published So you've got a DAO: Leadership for the 21st Century. Formerly CEO of Gangly Sister, Tech-Tav, and Marketecht, Grace has held management positions in technology companies for over 25 years. Grace mentors startups in developing economies and mentored at Swisscontact, Microsoft Ventures and Google. She holds an MBA from Kellogg Northwestern and is a graduate of Anthony Robbins' Business Mastery and Landmark's Team Management and Leadership Program. Pietro Speroni di Fenizio, PhD, Advisor Mathematician & Researcher Pietro Speroni di Fenizio is a researcher in complex systems. He holds a Ph.D. in bioinformatics, a master's in evolutionary and adaptive systems, and a degree in mathematics. In his research, he specialises in using algebra to understand complex systems and design the rules of complex systems to obtain specific emergent behaviours. In the past, he first focused on artificial life and artificial chemistries and then on voting theory, e-participation, and consensus building, constantly aiming in developing tools that were mathematically fair to all participants. Some of those tools were then used by Italian institutions. More recently, his focus has shifted toward governance on the blockchain and how to build self-governing tools for DAOs. Dario D'Aprile, Advisor Former VP of Publishing @ National Geographic Dario is the founder of Human and Machine ltd, a customer experience and product strategy studio that helps teams to design and roll out innovative services. Dario implemented successful digital publishing programmes for National Geographic and News International, and brought early stage startups to profitability and international markets. His products and services have been used by over 800 million people worldwide: this has led to him receiving over 20 creative awards, including a W3 award and a Grammy. Richard Mills, PhD, Advisor Social Scientist @ University of Cambridge Richard Mills is a social scientist who studies peer production and online community governance. Richard is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge and Director of Research for the WikiRate project. He holds a PhD and Mres in Applied Social Statistics, as well as a Bsc and Msc White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 51 in Psychology. Richard's PhD research focuses on applying large scale data science techniques to understand the characteristics of resources produced by user interactions on sites like Reddit and the

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Stack Exchange. Richard has created various detailed case studies outlining how the design, structures, and algorithms, influence its resources. Since completing his PhD, Richard has been applying this knowledge to the design of WikiRate.org, an open community platform which facilitates collaborative research to understand corporate impacts. Richard also works on the Whistle project, which is building an app to facilitate the reporting and verification of reports of human rights violations. Aly Madhavji, Advisor Founder and Former CEO @ Global DCX Aly Madhavji is the Founder and Former CEO of Global DCX, an innovative technology company launching secure digital currency exchanges across the globe starting in India. He is also an avid investor in early stage companies, digital currencies, and Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs). He has served on various token advisory boards including Polymath and Jet8 and traditional advisory roles including the University of Toronto’s Governing Council. He is an internationally acclaimed author, publishing three books, including the award-winning book titled, “Your Guide to Succeed in University”, as part of the Succeed Series. He has lived and worked across 4 continents (North/South America, Europe, and Asia) with PwC, PayPal, Microsoft, Bloomberg, and INSEAD. He also holds the Chartered Professional Accountant, Chartered Accountant, Certified Management Accountant, and Chartered Investment Manager designations. Aly is a Schwarzman Scholar, holds a Master’s in Business Administration from INSEAD (Singapore and France), and a Bachelor of Commerce with Distinction from the University of Toronto. Mayank Banerjee, Advisor Co-Founder and CEO @ Compass News Mayank is the co-Founder and CEO of Compass News. Compass is an AI-driven curation platform, designed to offer an alternative to the echo chambers and fake news of social media. Compass is backed by some of the leading lights in the international media, including the ex-Editor of the Times and former CEO of the Guardian. Before Compass, Mayank worked at KPMG and was also President of the Oxford Union, a debating society which counts 5 British Prime Ministers as alumni. He studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford University, and has experience living and working in India, China and Russia. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 52 Mossy Wittenberg, Advisor Editor @ KYC360 Global Technologies An alumnus of Cambridge University and the Schwarzman Scholarship at Tsinghua University, Mossy is passionate about using technology to improve public discourse. He was previously employee number one at Curio.io, Editor at KYC360 Global Technologies and an intern and researcher at the BBC World Service. White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 53

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GO-TO-MARKET / ROADMAP White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 54

FUTURE PLANS White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 55 As DNN goes beyond its eventual beta and commercially-ready product, there will be a number of things that can be done with the platform in the future, including: ● Building a system granting contributors the ability to create community generated polls ● Letting writers pay in tokens to ‘boost’ their articles in the main feed, with a percentage of those tokens being circulated amongst DNN’s readers ● Creating a DNN Foundation which will have access to a portion of the tokens to pay for writers, cultivate reviewers, promote and maintain the network ● Growing the network internationally with different languages and regional news ● Building end-to-end native applications on iOS and Android, containing the full functionality of the network, instead of just a portion ● Live streaming important events White Paper Decentralized News Network May 2017 56

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Whitepaper D3

Po.et Whitepaper

Retrieved from: https://uploads- ssl.webflow.com/5a0c978e0d22aa0001464356/5a7796662b07370001ace7a1_whitepaper.pdf

For this research, the version was used that was online on April 3, 2019.

IMPORTANT NOTICE This whitepaper (“Whitepaper”) in current form is being circulated by the Po.et Foundation (as referred to in this Whitepaper) for general information and to invite community feedback only on the Po.et project as presently conceived, and is subject to review and revision by the Board of Directors (as referred to in this Whitepaper), the board of advisers and/or legal advisers of the Po.et Foundation. Please do not replicate or distribute any part of this Whitepaper without this note in accompaniment. No part of this Whitepaper is intended to create legal relations between a recipient of this Whitepaper or to be legally binding or enforceable by such recipient against the Po.et Foundation. An updated version of this Whitepaper may be published on a date to be determined and announced by the Po.et Foundation in due course. PLEASE READ THIS SECTION AND THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS ENTITLED “DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY”, “NO REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES”, “REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES BY YOU”, “CAUTIONARY NOTE ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS”, “THIRD PARTY INFORMATION AND NO CONSENT OF OTHER PERSONS”, “TERMS USED”, “NO ADVICE”, “NO FURTHER INFORMATION OR UPDATE”, “RESTRICTIONS ON DISTRIBUTION AND DISSEMINATION”, “NO OFFER OF INVESTMENT OR REGISTRATION” AND “RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES” CAREFULLY. IF YOU ARE IN ANY DOUBT AS TO THE ACTION YOU SHOULD TAKE, YOU SHOULD CONSULT YOUR LEGAL, FINANCIAL, TAX OR OTHER PROFESSIONAL ADVISOR(S). The Po.et tokens are not intended to constitute securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme or any other form of investment in any jurisdiction. This Whitepaper does not constitute a prospectus or offer document of any sort and is not intended to constitute an offer of securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme or any other form of investment, or a solicitation for any form of investment in any jurisdiction. While this Whitepaper does not preclude the Po.et Foundation from offering holders of Po.et tokens a share of the fees and revenue generated from the commercial applications of Po.et network, such offer, if any, and the extent thereof, will be at the sole and absolute discretion of the Po.et Foundation. Accordingly, there is no assurance whatsoever as to whether such offer will be made and holders of

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Po.et tokens should have no expectation of receiving any such offer. In the premises, no Po.et token should be construed, interpreted, classified or treated as enabling, or according any opportunity to, purchasers to participate in or receive profits, income, or other payments or returns arising from or in connection with the Po.et platform, the Po.et tokens or the proceeds of the Po.et token sale (as described in this Whitepaper), or to receive sums paid out of such profits, income, or other payments or returns. This Whitepaper does not constitute or form part of any opinion on any advice to sell, or any solicitation of any offer by the Po.et Foundation to purchase any Po.et tokens nor shall it or any part of it nor the fact of its presentation form the basis of, or be relied upon in connection with, any contract or investment decision. The Po.et Foundation will deploy all proceeds of sale of the Po.et tokens to support ongoing development and growth of the Po.et network. No person is bound to enter into any contract or binding legal commitment in relation to the sale and purchase of the Po.et tokens and no cryptocurrency or other form of payment is to be accepted on the basis of this Whitepaper. Any agreement as between the Po.et Foundation and you as a purchaser, and in relation to any sale and purchase, of Po.et tokens (as referred to in this Whitepaper) is to be governed by only a separate document setting out the terms and conditions (the “T&Cs”) of such agreement. In the event of any inconsistencies between the T&Cs and this Whitepaper, the former shall prevail. THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE (AS REFERRED TO IN THIS WHITEPAPER) IS INTENDED FOR, MADE TO OR DIRECTED AT ONLY PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE AND MAY BE ACTED UPON ONLY BY PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE. ACCORDINGLY, YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE AND YOU ARE NOT TO PURCHASE ANY PO.ET TOKENS IN THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE AT THE TIME OF YOUR INTENDED PURCHASE/PURCHASE OF PO.ET TOKENS IN THE TOKEN SALE. YOU ARE ALSO NOT ELIGIBLE AND YOU ARE NOT TO PURCHASE ANY PO.ET TOKENS IN THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE IF YOU ARE A CITIZEN, RESIDENT (TAX OR OTHERWISE), DOMICILED IN, OR GREEN CARD HOLDER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR A CITIZEN, DOMICILED IN, OR RESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE. No regulatory authority has examined or approved of any of the information set out in this Whitepaper. No such action has been or will be taken under the laws, regulatory requirements or rules of any jurisdiction. The publication, distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper does not imply that the applicable laws, regulatory requirements or rules have been complied with.

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There are risks and uncertainties associated with the Po.et Foundation and its business and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale and the Po.et network (each as referred to in this Whitepaper). This Whitepaper, any part thereof and any copy thereof must not be taken or transmitted to any country where distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper is prohibited or restricted. No part of this Whitepaper is to be reproduced, distributed or disseminated without including this section and the following sections entitled “Disclaimer of Liability”, “No Representations and Warranties”, “Representations and Warranties By You”, “Cautionary Note On Forward-Looking Statements”, “Third Party Information and No Consent of Other Persons”, “Terms Used”, “No Advice”, “No Further Information or Update”, “Restrictions On Distribution and Dissemination”, “No Offer of Investment Or Registration” and “Risks and Uncertainties”. DISCLAIMER OF LIABILITY To the maximum extent permitted by the applicable laws, regulations and rules, the Po.et Foundation shall not be liable for any indirect, special, incidental, consequential or other losses of any kind, in tort, contract or otherwise (including but not limited to loss of revenue, income or profits, and loss of use or data), arising out of or in connection with any acceptance of or reliance on this Whitepaper or any part thereof by you. NO REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES The Po.et Foundation does not make or purport to make, and hereby disclaims, any representation, warranty or undertaking in any form whatsoever to any entity or person, including any representation, warranty or undertaking in relation to the truth, accuracy and completeness of any of the information set out in this Whitepaper. REPRESENTATIONS AND WARRANTIES BY YOU By accessing and/or accepting possession of any information in this Whitepaper or such part thereof (as the case may be), you represent and warrant to the Po.et Foundation as follows: (a) you agree and acknowledge that the Po.et tokens do not constitute securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme or any other form of investment in any jurisdiction; (b) you agree and acknowledge that this Whitepaper does not constitute a prospectus or offer document of any sort and is not intended to constitute an offer of securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme or any other form of investment in any jurisdiction, or a solicitation for any form of investment, and you are not bound to enter into any contract or binding legal commitment and no cryptocurrency or other form of payment is to be accepted on the basis of this Whitepaper; (c) you acknowledge and understand that: (i) while this Whitepaper does not preclude the Po.et Foundation from offering holders of

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Po.et tokens a share of the fees and revenue generated from the commercial applications of Po.et network, such offer, if any, and the extent thereof, will be at the sole and absolute discretion of the Po.et Foundation; (ii) there is no assurance whatsoever as to whether such offer will be made and holders of Po.et tokens should have no expectation of receiving any such offer; and (iii) no Po.et token should be construed, interpreted, classified or treated as enabling, or according any opportunity to, purchasers to participate in or receive profits, income, or other payments or returns arising from or in connection with the Po.et platform, the Po.et tokens or the proceeds of the Po.et token sale (as described in this Whitepaper), or to receive sums paid out of such profits, income, or other payments or returns; (d) you agree and acknowledge that no regulatory authority has examined or approved of the information set out in this Whitepaper, no action has been or will be taken under the laws, regulatory requirements or rules of any jurisdiction and the publication, distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper to you does not imply that the applicable laws, regulatory requirements or rules have been complied with; (e) you agree and acknowledge that this Whitepaper, the undertaking and/or the completion of the Po.et Foundation token sale, or future trading of the Po.et tokens on any cryptocurrency exchange, shall not be construed, interpreted or deemed by you as an indication of the merits of the Po.et Foundation, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et protocol or platform and the Po.et network (each as referred to in this Whitepaper); (f) the distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper, any part thereof or any copy thereof, or acceptance of the same by you, is not prohibited or restricted by the applicable laws, regulations or rules in your jurisdiction, and where any restrictions in relation to possession are applicable, you have observed and complied with all such restrictions at your own expense and without liability to the Po.et Foundation; (g) you agree and acknowledge that in the case where you wish to purchase any Po.et tokens the Po.et tokens are not to be construed, interpreted, classified or treated as: (i) any kind of currency other than cryptocurrency; (ii) debentures, stocks or shares issued by any person or entity; (iii) rights, options or derivatives in respect of such debentures, stocks or shares; (iv) rights under a contract for differences or under any other contract the purpose or pretended purpose of which is to secure a profit or avoid a loss; (v) units in a collective investment scheme; (vi) units in a business trust; (vii) derivatives of units in a business trust; or (viii) any other security, class of securities or form of investment;

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(h) you are fully aware of and understand that you are not eligible to purchase any Po.et tokens if you are a citizen, resident (tax or otherwise), domiciled in, or green card holder of the United States of America or a citizen, domiciled in, or resident (tax or otherwise) of the Republic of Singapore or a person who is located in the United States of America or the Republic of Singapore at the time of your intended purchase of Po.et tokens in the token sale (as referred to in this Whitepaper); (i) you have a basic degree of understanding of the operation, functionality, usage, storage, transmission mechanisms and other material characteristics of cryptocurrencies, blockchain- based software systems, cryptocurrency wallets or other related token storage mechanisms, blockchain technology and smart contract technology; (j) you are fully aware and understand that in the case where you wish to purchase any Po.et tokens, there are risks associated with Po.et Foundation and its respective business and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et platform or protocol and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the Whitepaper); (k) you agree and acknowledge that the Po.et Foundation is not liable for any indirect, special, incidental, consequential or other losses of any kind, in tort, contract or otherwise (including but not limited to loss of revenue, income or profits, and loss of use or data), arising out of or in connection with any acceptance of or reliance on this Whitepaper or any part thereof by you; and (l) all of the above representations and warranties are true, complete, accurate and non-misleading from the time of your access to and/or acceptance of possession this Whitepaper or such part thereof (as the case may be). CAUTIONARY NOTE ON FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS All statements contained in this Whitepaper, statements made in press releases or in any place accessible by the public and oral statements that may be made by the Po.et Foundation or its directors, executive officers or employees acting on behalf of the Po.et Foundation (as the case may be), that are not statements of historical fact, constitute “forward-looking statements”. Some of these statements can be identified by forward-looking terms such as “aim”, “target”, “anticipate”, “believe”, “could”, “estimate”, “expect”, “if”, “intend”, “may”, “plan”, “possible”, “probable”, “project”, “should”, “would”, “will” or other similar terms. However, these terms are not the exclusive means of identifying forward-looking statements. All statements regarding the Po.et Foundation’s financial position, business strategies, plans and prospects and the future prospects of the industry which the Po.et Foundation is in are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements as to the Po.et Foundation’s revenue and profitability, prospects, future plans, other expected industry trends and other matters discussed in this Whitepaper regarding the Po.et Foundation are matters that are not historic facts, but only predictions.

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These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the actual future results, performance or achievements of the Po.et Foundation to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expected, expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These factors include, amongst others: 4. (a) changes in political, social, economic and stock or cryptocurrency market conditions, and the regulatory environment in the countries in which the Po.et Foundation conducts its respective businesses and operations; 5. (b) the risk that the Po.et Foundation may be unable to execute or implement their respective business strategies and future plans; 6. (c) changes in interest rates and exchange rates of fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies; 7. (d) changes in the anticipated growth strategies and expected internal growth of the Po.et Foundation; 8. (e) changes in the availability and fees payable to the Po.et Foundation in connection with its businesses and operations; 9. (f) changes in the availability and salaries of employees who are required by the Po.et Foundation to operate their respective businesses and operations; 10. (g) changes in preferences of users of the Po.et platform; 4. (h) changes in competitive conditions under which the Po.et Foundation operate, and the ability of the Po.et Foundation to compete under such conditions; 5. (i) changes in the future capital needs of the Po.et Foundation and the availability of financing and capital to fund such needs; 6. (j) war or acts of international or domestic terrorism; 7. (k) occurrences of catastrophic events, natural disasters and acts of God that affect the businesses and/or operations of the Po.et Foundation; 8. (l) other factors beyond the control of the Po.et Foundation; and 9. (m) any risk and uncertainties associated with the Po.et Foundation and its businesses and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the Whitepaper). All forward-looking statements made by or attributable to the Po.et Foundation or persons acting on behalf of the Po.et Foundation are expressly qualified in their entirety by such factors. Given that risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual future results, performance or achievements of the Po.et Foundation to be materially different from that expected, expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements in this Whitepaper, undue reliance must not be placed on these statements. These forward- looking statements are applicable only as of the date of this Whitepaper. Neither the Po.et Foundation nor any other person represents, warrants and/or undertakes that the actual future results, performance or achievements of the Po.et Foundation will be as discussed in

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 131 those forward- looking statements. The actual results, performance or achievements of Po.et Foundation may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward- looking statements. Nothing contained in this Whitepaper is or may be relied upon as a promise, representation or undertaking as to the future performance or policies of the Po.et Foundation. Further, the Po.et Foundation disclaims any responsibility to update any of those forward-looking statements or publicly announce any revisions to those forward-looking statements to reflect future developments, events or circumstances, even if new information becomes available or other events occur in the future. THIRD PARTY INFORMATION AND NO CONSENT OF OTHER PERSONS This Whitepaper includes information obtained from various third party sources (“Third Party Information”). None of the publishers of the Third Party Information has consented to the inclusion of the Third Party Information in this Whitepaper and is therefore not liable for the Third Party Information. While the Po.et Foundation has taken reasonable action to ensure that the Third Party Information have been included in their proper form and context, neither the Po.et Foundation, nor its directors, executive officers and employees acting on its behalf, has independently verified the accuracy, reliability, completeness of the contents, or ascertained any applicable underlying assumption, of the relevant Third Party Information. Consequently, neither the Po.et Foundation nor its directors, executive officers and employees acting on their behalf makes any representation or warranty as to the accuracy, reliability or completeness of such information and shall not be obliged to provide any updates on the same. TERMS USED To facilitate a better understanding of the Po.et tokens being offered for purchase by the Po.et Foundation, and the businesses and operations of the Po.et Foundation, certain technical terms and abbreviations, as well as, in certain instances, their descriptions, have been used in this Whitepaper. These descriptions and assigned meanings should not be treated as being definitive of their meanings and may not correspond to standard industry meanings or usage. Words importing the singular shall, where applicable, include the plural and vice versa and words importing the masculine gender shall, where applicable, include the feminine and neuter genders and vice versa. References to persons shall include corporations. NO ADVICE No information in this Whitepaper should be considered to be business, legal, financial or tax advice regarding the Po.et Foundation, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et platform or protocol and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the Whitepaper). You should consult your own legal, financial, tax or other professional adviser regarding the Po.et Foundation and its businesses and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et platform or protocol and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the

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Whitepaper). You should be aware that you may be required to bear the financial risk of any purchase of Po.et tokens for an indefinite period of time. NO FURTHER INFORMATION OR UPDATE No person has been or is authorised to give any information or representation not contained in this Whitepaper in connection with Po.et Foundation and its businesses and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et platform or protocol and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the Whitepaper) and, if given, such information or representation must not be relied upon as having been authorised by or on behalf of the Po.et Foundation. The Po.et Foundation token sale (as referred to in the Whitepaper) shall not, under any circumstances, constitute a continuing representation or create any suggestion or implication that there has been no change, or development reasonably likely to involve a material change in the affairs, conditions and prospects of the Po.et Foundation or in any statement of fact or information contained in this Whitepaper since the date hereof. RESTRICTIONS ON DISTRIBUTION AND DISSEMINATION The distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper or any part thereof may be prohibited or restricted by the laws, regulatory requirements and rules of any jurisdiction. In the case where any restriction applies, you are to inform yourself about, and to observe, any restrictions which are applicable to your possession of this Whitepaper or such part thereof (as the case may be) at your own expense and without liability to the Po.et Foundation. Persons to whom a copy of this Whitepaper has been distributed or disseminated, provided access to or who otherwise have the Whitepaper in their possession shall not circulate it to any other persons, reproduce or otherwise distribute this Whitepaper or any information contained herein for any purpose whatsoever nor permit or cause the same to occur. NO OFFER OF INVESTMENT OR REGISTRATION This Whitepaper does not constitute a prospectus or offer document of any sort and is not intended to constitute an offer of securities of any form, units in a business trust, units in a collective investment scheme or any other form of investment, or a solicitation for any form of investment in any jurisdiction. No person is bound to enter into any contract or binding legal commitment and no cryptocurrency or other form of payment is to be accepted on the basis of this Whitepaper. THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE (AS REFERRED TO IN THIS WHITEPAPER) IS INTENDED FOR, MADE TO OR DIRECTED AT ONLY PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE AND MAY BE ACTED UPON ONLY BY PERSONS OUTSIDE THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE. ACCORDINGLY, YOU ARE NOT ELIGIBLE AND YOU ARE NOT TO PURCHASE ANY PO.ET TOKENS IN THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE IF YOU ARE LOCATED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR THE REPUBLIC OF

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SINGAPORE AT THE TIME OF YOUR INTENDED PURCHASE/PURCHASE OF PO.ET TOKENS IN THE TOKEN SALE. YOU ARE ALSO NOT ELIGIBLE AND YOU ARE NOT TO PURCHASE ANY PO.ET TOKENS IN THE PO.ET TOKEN SALE IF YOU ARE A CITIZEN, RESIDENT (TAX OR OTHERWISE), DOMICILED IN, OR GREEN CARD HOLDER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA OR A CITIZEN, DOMICILED IN, OR RESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE. No regulatory authority has examined or approved of any of the information set out in this Whitepaper. No such action has been or will be taken under the laws, regulatory requirements or rules of any jurisdiction. The publication, distribution or dissemination of this Whitepaper does not imply that the applicable laws, regulatory requirements or rules have been complied with. RISKS AND UNCERTAINTIES Prospective purchasers of Po.et tokens (as referred to in this Whitepaper) should carefully consider and evaluate all risks and uncertainties associated with the Po.et Foundation and their respective businesses and operations, the Po.et tokens, the Po.et Foundation token sale, the Po.et platform or protocol and the Po.et network (each as referred to in the Whitepaper), all information set out in this Whitepaper and the T&Cs prior to any purchase of Po.et tokens. If any of such risks and uncertainties develops into actual events, the business, financial condition, results of operations and prospects of the Po.et Foundation could be materially and adversely affected. In such cases, you may lose all or part of the value of the Po.et tokens.

WHITEPAPER 7-13-2017

Table of

1 Introduction 1.1 Problem Overview 1.2 Mission Statement 1.3 Core Objectives 1.4 Stakeholders

2 What is Proof of Existence? 2.1 History 2.2 Utility

3 What is Po.et?

4 Project Roadmap and Applications . 4.1 Bootstrapping a Network

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. 4.2 Stage One: The Rosetta Era . 4.3 Stage Two: The Gutenberg Era . 4.4 Stage Three: The Alexandria Era

5 The Po.et Token . 5.1 Functionality . 5.2 Po.et Token Overview . 5.3 Potential Revenue Streams . 5.4 Token Distribution . 5.5 Use of Proceeds . 5.6 The Po.et Foundation

6 Po.et Architecture . 6.1 Definitions . 6.2 Proof of Existence . 6.3 The Po.et Protocol . 6.4 Po.et Node . 6.5 Publisher Integrations

Contents

2

Abstract Po.et is a shared, open, universal ledger designed to record metadata and ownership information for digital creative assets. Po.et is a continuation of Proof of Existence, the first non-financial application of the blockchain. By creating an open platform on the Bitcoin blockchain, Po.et aims to create the most institutional, globally-verifiable record of digital media assets. This record will be a framework for building smart, interoperable media applications using a shared, standard and extensible metadata format. In the same way that blockchain technologies have revolutionized the financial industry by creating immutable and distributed accounting ledgers serving as a platform for financial applications, Po.et will transform the publishing industry by creating an immutable and distributed ledger for creative works that may serve as a platform for both centralized and decentralized media applications. IMPORTANT ADVISORY This whitepaper in current form is being circulated by the Po.et Foundation (as referred to in this whitepaper) for general information and to invite community feedback only on the Po.et project as presently conceived, and is subject to review and revision by the Board of Directors, the Board of Advisers and/or legal advisers of the Po.et Foundation. Please do not replicate or distribute any part of this whitepaper without this note in accompaniment. No part of this whitepaper is intended to create legal relations between a recipient of this whitepaper or to be legally binding or enforceable by such recipient against the Po.et Foundation. An updated version of this whitepaper may be published on a date to be determined and announced by the Po.et Foundation in due course.

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3

Introduction 1.1 Problem Overview Po.et seeks to address three key problems that are difficult to answer about digital assets on the internet today: 1) Ownership — Who owns this digital media asset? 2) Utilization — May I use, license or repurpose it? 3) History — What is the origin of this asset and what is its trajectory? With the advent of the internet, the defensibility of established copyright and intellectual property has struggled to maintain pace with the reduced cost of information sharing. Media marketplaces like Shutterstock have attempted to address this issue by creating centralized hubs for licensing and ownership information of photos, but these marketplaces are neither interoperable nor do they openly and freely share the information with other applications and websites. The issues in particular include proper and verifiable attribution of ownership, licensing and creation. Digital content lacks metadata information such as authorship, ownership, history and often the date of creation. Furthermore, metadata can be altered or removed after it has been finalized by the author, transferred to the cloud, resized or optimized for network performance. This inherent lack of verifiable information breeds uncertainty, especially when applied to complex chains of licensing, syndication and ownership. For example, a digital publisher licensing a pre-published article does not have the ability to be certain of whether the document in its current form is authentic and owned and able to be licensed. Currently, there is an immediate opportunity for an open protocol to establish the rightful ownership of creative assets, but this protocol must allow for inherently complex and adaptable ownership models. 1.2 Mission Statement We leverage blockchain technology to ensure the existence, integrity, attribution of assets, analytics and data as we lay the groundwork for new models of financial exchange, collaboration and sharing. As such, Po.et enables value and trust to flow within the publishing and digital media industry between publisher, editor and content creator. 1.3 Core Objectives The core objectives of Po.et are to create a platform which simplifies the process for publishing, licensing and authentication of digital assets. Simplifying the publishing process necessitates solving the issues of document integrity, licensing, arbitrage, analytics, syndication and attribution of digital assets. Po.et aims to create a blockchain-based platform with added smart contract functionality and applications to facilitate distribution of digital creative works and removes marketplace friction for publishers, editors and content creators by solving these issues. 1.4 Stakeholders Publisher: Any person or entity that disseminates digital content, including articles, e-books, digital images, digital videos, etc. for a profit. Editor: Any person or entity that curates, compiles or selects digital content, including articles, e-books, digital images, digital videos, etc. for a profit.

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Content Creator: Any person or entity that produces any form of digital content, including articles, e-books, digital images, digital videos, etc. 4

What is Proof of Existence?

2.1 History Proof of Existence, one of the first non-financial applications of a blockchain, was created in 2013 by Manuel Araoz. This blockchain application allows for users to anonymously and securely store a cryptographic digest of a file linked to the time at which the user submitted the file. This was the first online service to allow a user to publicly prove they possessed a certain file or data without revealing the data or their identity in a completely trustless manner.1 Proof of Existence utilizes the Bitcoin blockchain to ensure that the file’s hash is permanently stored in an immutable data structure without the need for a central timestamping authority. 2.2 Utility Three common uses of Proof of Existence include demonstrating data ownership without revealing actual data, document timestamping and validating document integrity. Demonstrating data ownership is vital when a conflict of ownership arises because it enables a user to cryptographically prove possession of the data that generates the hash. This functionality goes hand in hand with document timestamping because timestamping proves that a certain set of data existed at a certain point in time. Using these two features, a user can prove possession of a set of data at a given time, which provides strong evidence in support of copyright or patent claims. Third, Proof of Existence facilitates the verification of document integrity because modifications within the document will result in a different hash and alert the system that there has been a change. If a document has not been altered, it will produce the same hash that is stored in the Bitcoin blockchain, therefore providing evidence that the document has not been changed. These utilities are beginning to align with demonstrable changes in legal admissibility of such “smart contracts” and records on a blockchain. Taking the lead last year, the State of Delaware started the Delaware Blockchain Initiative (DBI), probably the most well-known state program focused on smart contracts and blockchain technology.2 Delaware’s then-governor, Jack Markell, launched DBI to jumpstart recognition of blockchain technology under state corporate law, an especially significant move considering the many companies incorporated in that state. Also last year, the State of Vermont passed a bill making it possible for blockchain-registered digital records to be admissible in court.3 More recently, the State of Arizona introduced the so-called “Smart Contract Bill” in early February 2017, and it quickly landed on the governor’s desk for signature on March 29 of that year.4 Arizona’s new statute does more than recognize the legality of smart contracts — it also brings any signature, record or contract that is “secured through blockchain technology” within the ambit of the state’s Electronic Transactions Act. Other jurisdictions could recognize smart contracts under existing state laws modeled on the Uniform Electronic Transaction Act or the federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, without having to

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 137 pass smart contract- or blockchain technology-specific legislation. In accordance, a group of journalists, editors and publishers at Bitcoin Magazine, the first publication focused on Bitcoin and digital currencies, saw the value of leveraging the capabilities of publishing digital assets to a blockchain and engaged Esteban Ordano and a team of developers to build a project that extended Proof of Existence to new commercial applications. These commercial applications begin with solving challenges unique to digital media, such as identifying ownership of digital assets, determining whether a use of a piece of an asset is authorized and simplifying the often manual, complicated licensing and onboarding process for outsourced authors, journalists and content creators. Thus, Po.et, or Proof of Existence 2.0, was born. [1] https://proofofexistence.com/ [2] https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/delaware-blockchain- initiative-to-streamline-record-keeping-for-private-companies-1462812187/ [3] http://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/Docs/BILLS/H-0737/H- 0737%20As%20Introduced.pdf [4] http://www.coindesk.com/arizona-governor-signs-blockchain-bill- law/

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What is Po.et?

Po.et extends the timestamping and hashing features pioneered by Proof of Existence to enable new commercial applications by including additional metadata and discoverability. While Proof of Existence requires users to have the original file in order to verify the file’s hash and timestamp, Po.et allows for the original file and its metadata to be discoverable. This makes it possible for anyone to verify both the authenticity of the original file and the associated metadata. Po.et uses this shared ledger and data layer to create an extensible platform designed to record ownership and metadata for digital media assets. Po.et’s platform allows a user to generate an immutable ownership certificate of digital works, track and license assets on the web, discover new assets and verify the authenticity of discovered assets. Po.et is an open source project that is designed for the media and digital publishing initially — the original industry disrupted by the internet. While the internet diminished the barriers to entry for publishing and ushered in a new era of self-publishing and access to information, Po.et aims to enable

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 138 value to flow within the publishing and digital media industry, from publisher to editor to content creator. In order to do so, Po.et will enable anyone to discover more information about the digital asset(s): Who owns it, can it be licensed or repurposed and what is its origin or publishing trajectory? Historically, the answers to these questions have been siloed into specific content libraries like Getty Images, Creative Commons or other licensing organizations. Po.et will augment these existing content repositories by creating a shared, open, universal, metadata framework that will enable smart media applications to be built on top. Additionally, Po.et’s implementation of blockchain technology extends the functionality of these existing marketplaces by enabling users to discover and verify their content across the internet. Growth of the network will provide developers with valuable media data and metadata. This will facilitate the building of new and disruptive decentralized applications (DApps) and unique media integrations including asset marketplaces, rights management applications and open research marketplaces. 6

Project Roadmap & Applications 4.1 Bootstrapping a Network Po.et’s strategy for seeding a network and repository of rich media information relies on providing unique value propositions for different stakeholders at each stage of the network’s growth. Just as Instagram initially created a photo editing application before growing into the world’s largest photo sharing network, Po.et will begin by providing publishing tools that are valuable without immediate network effects. Po.et’s first development era, Rosetta, is designed to attract digital publishers by providing them with a useful and inexpensive platform for timestamping and generating immutable ownership certificates for their digital assets. The next era, Gutenberg, will provide additional features which facilitate seamless licensing, syndication and attribution of digital assets among a network of publishers and trusted content creators. After a strong network of publishers is created, the project will move to the third era, Alexandria. Having a strong network of publishers will create sufficient critical mass for the project to move to an open network and marketplace of independent content creators, editors and publishers. 4.2 Stage One: The Rosetta Era Po.et’sfirststageisdesignedtobeusefulforanypublisher.Timestampshavebeenusedformanyyears as legal evidence, to verify regulatory compliance, manage liability risks and record possession of intellectual property. However, they have typically been used only on high-value documents like patents because of the associated cost. Po.et makes trusted timestamps free, accessible and further improves their utility. FEATURES The first feature integrated into Po.et is a standardized metadata schema for creative works. This enhances internal discoverability by creating a digital asset catalog and facilitating the search of a publisher’s timestamped assets. Associated metadata includes original URL, word count, author and

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 139 publication, as well as any custom attributes chosen by the publishers. At this stage, Po.et also provides an accurate log of edits to assets and an identity management system to prove who amended a document. Users can create a Po.et profile secured cryptographically by private keys stored in the Po.et Authenticator mobile app. Identity management, when combined with proof of existence, creates an immutable edit log which defends against cyberattacks and manipulation of assets by allowing attribution of every change to its authorized source. Furthermore, a multi-signature permission will be available to ensure only members of an organization with the proper authority are allowed to view or make changes to any given asset. The next issue Po.et addresses is the inability for publishers and editors to know whether the use of a digital creative work is authentic and authorized. Po.et solves this issue by providing an authentication Badge for every digital asset registered on Po.et. This Badge provides a visual representation of the asset’s registration in the Po.et ledger, allowing users to follow the link to discover metadata and originating information about the asset, authentication and its use is authorized by the owner(s). A sample Badge showing an article that is verified on Po.et

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SELECT USE CASES Timestamping Academic Research and Analysis Admissible Legal Evidence Internal Discoverability Po.et, in the Rosetta Era, not only solves internal issues for publishers, but also provides a tool for improving accountability in the use of academic research and legal industries. Bitcoin Magazine, a Po.et Alpha Partner, currently uses timestamping and Badge authentication to improve internal discoverability of its assets, demonstrate proof of ownership and provides readers with verification of content authenticity. Clicking the Badge allows a reader to view the timestamp of a given piece of content, its related metadata and analytics and an immutable edit log with a given piece of content’s complete history. A Po.et Badge indicates proper attribution and provides editors with a link to reliable document history and performance statistics. Researchers in industry and academia often have the authenticity and timing of claims called into question. Patent applications frequently involve disputes about dates and original experiment design. By creating an immutable record of the experimental design and results using the Po.et platform, this inherently wasteful aspect of research can be eliminated. Governments are looking to streamline rules of evidence to allow blockchain evidence to be deemed admissible without an expert. U.S. states are leading the way. Vermont passed a bill that creates a presumption of admissibility of blockchain records that meet certain requirements.5 Admitted records can be used as evidence of contractual parties or terms, effective dates, ownership, money transfers, identity, authenticity of a document or anything else. This means that a Po.et timestamp will provide strong evidence in a wide variety of claims. 4.3 Stage Two: The Gutenberg Era

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Stage two of Po.et is designed as a distributed network of publishers, editors and their trusted content creators. As the content network meets critical mass, all of the major stakeholders in Po.et will benefit. A publisher will be able to purchase, distribute and claim content with confidence. An editor has access to a growing asset library and transparent licensing parameters. Content creators get exposure to more potential revenue and the ability to advertise their services more broadly and efficiently. FEATURES The first features implemented in stage two will be a streamlined licensing system, payment channels and immutable portfolios. Anyone using the Po.et network will be able to search for, access the title to and license assets registered on the Po.et ledger. Po.et facilitates the secure distribution of assets by allowing publishers to define contracts and individual terms of use, employing cryptography to automate a licensing system that minimizes the roles of third parties. Publishers, content creators and editors can choose from pre-existing licenses or create custom parameters, automate micro-payments and transfer or issue licenses. Payment channels further improve the experience by facilitating payment cycles with custom timing, parameters and terms set out in the licensing agreement. This platform of direct access can create a marketplace for quality assets with lower pricing by minimizing the overhead and manual processes needed to procure re-publication rights today and facilitating a direct relationship between trusted publishers, editors and their distributed teams of content creators.

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The last feature, immutable portfolios, will allow for all content creators to create a profile highlighting all of their creative and digital assets across different publications, with well-defined parameters for licensing globally-creating a direct channel for any interested publisher to solicit their services or license their existing or future works.with well-defined parameters for licensing globally- creating a direct channel for any interested publisher to solicit their services or license their existing or future works. SELECT USE CASES ISBN Replacement Discovery Marketplace A use case enabled in the Gutenberg Era is laying the foundation for the replacement of the antiquated and expensive International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system. An ISBN is the standardized numbering system that allows for any book or e-book to be searched in a database that contains basic metadata about the author, title and publisher.6 A new ISBN is required for each edition and format of a publication. In the U.S. and many other countries around the world, this standard numbering system is monopolized by one private company that charges fees per ISBN number. A Po.et hash not only stores more metadata than an ISBN number, but also saves publishers money by providing this service for free. At this stage, Po.et enables an asset marketplace with native discoverability, search and financial exchange. In this marketplace, trusted content creators may submit new, unpublished content.

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Publishers and editors can then search this marketplace, discover content they would like to publish, then connect and transact directly on the platform using smart contracts to automate payments and verification. The Po.et platform will also enable content creators to incentivize the sharing of assets. For example, a corporate publisher would attach a monetary bounty to a press release, with licensing terms compensating other publishers for syndicating that asset. Today, networks like PRWeb and PR Newswire perform this function as intermediaries. However, Po.et would enable content creators to connect directly with said publishers. 4.4 StageThree:TheAlexandriaEra The third stage is where Po.et can reach its greatest potential as an open, public network and asset database. The asset marketplace and other features will be just the first of many DApps built on top of Po.et. It will grow into a user-friendly and developer-friendly platform designed to connect content creators, publishers and editors to streamline the process for contracting, creating and licensing creative works. With the help of the early network participants and publishers, Po.et will research and develop reputation systems, economic incentives and other methods for fighting spam and promoting quality assets on the open Po.et network. FEATURES At this stage, Po.et’s documentation, APIs, plugins, tutorials and educational resources make it easy for companies, applications and services to be built on top of the Po.et platform and benefit from access to Po.et’s network and features. The Po.et Foundation will continue to build and implement new DApps to improve the Po.et network. The open network will allow many others to apply Po.et’s blockchain to address new use cases and solve countless other problems.

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SELECT USE CASES Brand Licensing Open Asset Marketplace One potential use during the Alexandria Era is brand licensing. Examples of brand licensing are found everywhere in daily life, from NFL t-shirts to Donald Duck wristwatches to Spongebob Squarepants macaroni. The brand licensing market is estimated to be worth well over $200 billion annually through sales alone.7 The Walt Disney Company recorded over $52 billion in sales coming from licensing product agreements spanning across the globe. The industry, however, has its challenges. Copyright infringement on original assets and barriers to entry keep creators from attaining adequate recognition and compensation. Po.et offers an innovative solution by providing content creators the ability to generate immutable ownership certificates and seamless licensing agreements with integrated payments using the blockchain- based network. Po.et creates an encompassing network on which parties can explore unique assets through the Po.et network for potential partnerships. This substantially reduces the amount of resources required to identify partners and simplifies the due diligence required — a draining process in the current brand licensing model. Furthermore, this brings an unprecedented level of accessibility to the licensor/licensee relationship under the Po.et network. Rather than limiting licensing agreements to

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 142 large corporations with huge negotiating power, Po.et democratizes peer-to-peer sharing and the expansion of brand ideas. [5] http://legislature.vermont.gov/assets/Documents/2016/Docs/BILLS/H-0737/H- 0737%20As%20Introduced.pdf [6] http://www.isbn.org/ [7] http://www.licensemag.com/license- global/top-150-global-licensors-2

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The Po.et Token

5.1 Functionality The Po.et native token serves several purposes: 1. To bootstrap the network effects of Po.et by creating a community of engaged, invested stakeholders and publishers 2. To raise funds for the long-term development of Po.et. As the network grows and improves, the Po.et token will evolve with it and may serve a role in the governance and reputation systems for the network. Potential additional applications include staking tokens as a form of reputation and providing an economic mechanism to prevent spam on the Po.et platform. The token is intended to serve as a native payment system for the network, with Po.et tokens required to register new content, and as a governance method for the protocol. While this Whitepaper does not preclude the Po.et Foundation from offering holders of Po.et tokens a share of the fees and revenue generated from the commercial applications of Po.et network, such offer, if any, and the extent thereof, will be at the sole and absolute discretion of the Po.et Foundation. Accordingly, there is no assurance whatsoever as to whether such offer will be made and holders of Po.et tokens should have no expectation of receiving any such offer. In the premises, no Po.et token should be construed, interpreted, classified or treated as enabling, or according any opportunity to, purchasers to participate in or receive profits, income, or other payments or returns arising from or in connection with the Po.et platform, the Po.et tokens or the proceeds of the Po.et token sale (as described in this Whitepaper), or to receive sums paid out of such profits, income, or other payments or returns. The Po.et token is an ERC20 compatible token, built on the Ethereum blockchain for wide compatibility with existing wallets, exchanges, smart contracts and other financial infrastructure. 5.2 Po.et Token Overview Total tokens Ticker Type Inflation Token sale start Sale length Fundraising goal Implied market value of Po.et tokens (based on purchase price at token sale and total number of Po.et tokens to be created) 5.3 Potential Revenue Streams 3,141,592,653 POE ERC20 None August 8, 2017 at 8:08 a.m. EST. Four weeks $10,000,000 USD $20,000,000 USD In the Rosetta Era, all fees will be fully subsidized by the Foundation. In the Gutenberg Era, the licensing system and facilitating payment channels involved therein

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 143 present opportunities for additional revenue. The development of immutable portfolio composition and verification DApps can provide another revenue stream at this stage. 11

In the Alexandria Era, Po.et Foundation revenue streams open up as the brand licensing and digital asset licensing marketplaces thrive. Network effects drive expansion of accessibility to markets, audiences and revenue for content creators and sources of content for editors and publishers. 5.4 Token Distribution Of the 3,141,592,653 Po.et tokens, 50 percent will be distributed to the community in a public token sale. Of the remaining Po.et tokens, 10 percent will be distributed to the early investors who funded Po.et development prior to the token sale. An additional 10 percent will be distributed over time to publishers, journalists, alpha partners and others who contribute to growing the Po.et network. The Po.et Foundation will retain 22 percent of all tokens for long-term development, with the remaining 8 percent going to the early team and founders. 5.5 Use of Proceeds The Po.et Foundation will use all funding to support ongoing development and growth of the Po.et network. The majority of funding will be used for developer salaries and bounties for open-source contributions to Po.et. 5.6 The Po.et Foundation Po.et is an open-source project being developed by the Po.et Foundation (Poet Technologies Limited), a Singapore-based organization whose mission is to develop and grow the Po.et platform. The Po.et platform codebase will be released under the MIT License, ensuring that any network participant is able to extend and adapt the platform for its specific use cases. The Po.et Foundation will be governed by a board of directors composed of no less than 5 and no more than 10 individuals who are either investors, founders, partners, advisors or team members of Po.et.

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Po.et Architecture

6.1 Definitions Claim: A low level concept for a statement made on the Po.et platform. Title: A claim made by one or more users regarding the ownership of a creative work. License: A type of claim that states that somebody is allowed, under given circumstances, to license,

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 144 publish or use a creative work. Notary: Any user of the system that does the work of verifying claims made by other people and publish their decision on the Po.et platform in the form of certifications. Certification: A type of claim that refers to another claim. It is the mechanism by which a notary asserts that a given claim is valid. A certification can be nullified by issuing a revocation. Revocation: A mechanism for notaries to revert previous assessments. This allows for corrections due to error or in light of new evidence. Offer: A claim that the owner of a creative work can emit to specify the terms under which it will issue a license for that work. 6.2 Proof of Existence Proof of Existence uses the SHA-256 hash of a file as a digital identifier for that asset. SHA-256 is one of many cryptographic hash functions that take an arbitrary amount of input data and deterministically produces a fixed-length output, known as the data’s “hash.” It can be used to easily verify that data has not been altered because if any part of the input data is changed and the hash algorithm is run again, the hash will change. Proof of Existence embeds this hash or digital identifier in the Bitcoin blockchain by generating a special Bitcoin transaction that includes the hash using the OP_RETURN opcode, which allows for the storage of up to 40 bytes of arbitrary data in a provably unspendable transaction output. At the time of preparation of this paper (June 11, 2017), the cost per byte of data to store on the blockchain was approximately 280 Satoshis. At current bitcoin market price (~$2,500), the cost to store 350 bytes (an estimate of a basic transaction with the OP_RETURN data) is $0.06. This price per claim is negligible compared to alternative solutions, though as Bitcoin adoption becomes more widespread, this price is expected to rise significantly. Thus, a more efficient way to prove existence of many claims at the same time is necessary to scale. 6.3 The Po.et Protocol The basic building block of the Po.et network is a claim. A claim is simply a message (arbitrary data) stored along the public key of who sent that message and a valid cryptographic signature for that message and public key: 13 Claim messages store information that an actor wants to keep in record for future reference. For scalability as a key strategic differentiator and to minimize transaction fees, Po.et stores multiple claims in a single Bitcoin transaction by hashing an entire claim set into an OP_RETURN output. While the Bitcoin blockchain provides the most secure, immutable data store that has ever existed, data storage on the blockchain is expensive. Instead of storing assets and metadata on the blockchain directly, Po.et stores this data in a distributed hash table, using BitTorrent and the Kademlia DHT network. Po.et nodes hash creative works and announce a BitTorrent magnet link to the Bitcoin blockchain. Other users are notified that this way of new information is available for download, as other nodes constantly watch the Bitcoin blockchain to get notifications about new claim sets that they can download. The hash proves that the claims existed at a given point in time. Po.et could use any

HOW BLOCKCHAIN CONTRIBUTES TO MEDIA ACCOUNTABILITY 145 blockchain, or an aggregate of multiple blockchains, to publish this information in the future. In today’s data format, valid Po.et transactions must follow these rules: Have at least two outputs One of the outputs has to be an OP Return standard output with the ”POET0001” prefix written in ASCII encoding, the infohash of the torrent containing the claimset information and the BEP009 Tagged Info Hash that is expected to replace the use of SHA1 for SHA256 One output paying at the minimum fee, currently 1,000 Satoshis, to the Po.et Foundation’s Bitcoin address which will be waived during the first Era of Po.et’s development cycle. Hashing is a one-way function that proves a work existed, but one cannot retrieve the work itself using just the hash. Therefore, Po.et uses the BitTorrent network to store the complete works in files and allows them to be shared via torrent.

Once a claim has been made, it can be queried through interaction with a Po.et node or any other system adhering to the Po.et protocol. A similar process to placing a claim can be used by a notary to add another layer of claim (a certification), revoke a claim or signal that the claim is available to be licensed (an offer). 6.4 Po.et Node A Po.et Node is made up of the following micro services: ClaimSet Creator: Exposes an API for the creation of claims, groups together multiple claims created by users over short periods of time (minutes to an hour) into a single claim set, hashes and timestamps this claim set onto the blockchain and passes the claim set to the torrent subsystem and claim processor. Torrent Service: Responsible for downloading and seeding torrents and notifying other subsystems when new information is ready to be consumed. Bitcoin Scanner: Scans the Bitcoin blockchain (both on an ongoing basis and retroactively) looking for valid Po.et transactions. Claim Processor: Coordinates the Bitcoin scanner and the torrent subsystem, enriches claimset information with blockchain confirmation information and stores the information in a database. Trusted Claim System: Processes information from the claim processor and filters out only those claims that are certified by trusted notaries. The output of this is a curated database of trusted claims. Copyright Domain Subsystem: Applies the domain-specific rules to the information gathered by the trusted claim system and exposes the information with a RESTful API. The microservices inside a Po.et node communicate with each other via RabbitMQ and Po.et nodes communicate with each other via the Bitcoin blockchain and BitTorrent protocol. 6.5 Publisher Integrations There will be 3 main ways to write assets to the Po.et blockchain. 1. Single creative works can be manually registered through the Po.et node UI. 2. The Po.et foundation will develop integrations via popular CMS Plugins (Wordpress, Django, Ghost, Drupal, etc.), RSS Feeds, social media and code libraries for direct integration. 3. For large archives of assets and partnerships, the Po.et Foundation will work with partners to run a mass import of creative works from existing databases, websites or APIs.

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Constitution D4

Civil Constitution

Retrieved from: https://civil.co/constitution/

For this research, the version was used that was online on April 3, 2019.

Introduction Civil is a community-managed network for trustworthy and sustainable journalism. It is founded on the principle that a free press is essential to a fair and just society. Civil is built on blockchain technology, which enables: • the permanent archiving of content to the blockchain, • the operation and governance of the network by its participants. • a trustless payment system for the public to fund, commission, consume and contribute to journalism The Civil Constitution lays out Civil’s purpose and values, and serves as a framework for the network’s self-governance. It is intended to vest governing power to the journalists and the public who participate in the network, as a means to uphold Civil’s founding mission. The Civil Constitution is a living document. It intentionally leaves questions unanswered. The gap- filling and interpretation will happen over time as the community votes on challenges and the Civil Council publishes decisions. Civil Newsrooms are expected to comply with the Constitutional norms using their best efforts, considering their stage of development and distinct local conditions. Key Terms The Civil Constitution uses some specific terms, as well as common terms that have specific meaning within the Civil network. These are defined below; many of them refer to bodies or organizations that will be treated in greater detail in this document. Civil Civil is the community owned and operated network of token holders, including newsrooms and interested members of the public. The Civil Media Company The company that created the Civil network, its underlying protocol (defined below), and related businesses and services. The protocol is based on open-source software and maintained by a community of developers, which, at least initially, The Civil Media Company will manage. Civil Foundation The Civil Foundation is an independent not-for-profit organization. It is dedicated to upholding and advocating for the Civil Constitution’s purpose, values and principles. The Foundation also provides operating support to the Council and appoints the founding members of the Civil Council. CVL CVL is the cryptocurrency used to operate the Civil protocol. The Civil token (CVL) is an ERC-20 token built on the Ethereum blockchain. Token Holder A Token Holder is any person or entity, including Newsrooms, that owns any amount of CVL tokens. CVL token holders have a responsibility to the greater public to ensure Newsrooms are upholding the values of Civil. The Protocol

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The Protocol is the underlying, open-source “smart-contract” architecture of Civil. The Public The Public includes anyone who engages with Civil Newsrooms, whether they hold tokens or not. The public does not have to hold CVL tokens (nor cryptocurrency in general) in order to consume or access content on Civil Newsrooms. Newsroom A Newsroom is the basic functional unit for journalism on the Civil network. A Newsroom can be composed of a single journalist or a group of journalists. Newsrooms are also Token Holders. Newsroom Officer A Newsroom Officer is the representative authority of an individual Newsroom on Civil. Roster A Roster is the list of Journalists associated with a Newsroom. (Journalists may appear on the rosters of multiple Newsrooms.) Charter A Charter is the application submitted by Newsrooms for participation on the Civil network and that details the Newsroom’s mission, business model and roster, and pledges the Newsroom to uphold the Civil Constitution. Civil Registry The Civil Registry is the list of organizations whose Charters have been approved by Token Holders according to the process outlined in the Civil Constitution. Civil Constitution The Civil Constitution is this document, as originally written or subsequent versions as amended by Token Holders. Civil Council The appellate governing authority within the Civil Protocol, to whom Token Holders can raise disputes for possible adjudication. The Civil Council has the ability to overturn Community decisions. The Community in turn has the power to veto the Council in certain circumstances as set forth in this document. Civil’s Purpose Civil is dedicated above all else to the public, which journalism is intended to serve. Its purpose is to provide citizens with information that enables them to fully participate in society. Civil seeks to establish the conditions for journalism to fulfill that purpose with minimal interference from government, commercial pressures, or other interests that inappropriately attempt to influence, control or stop the gathering and dissemination of facts, opinions and ideas in the public sphere through unjust laws, commercial pressure, intimidation or violence. Civil seeks to accomplish this through the establishment of a self-governing Protocol, owned and operated by Token Holders, which holds journalists accountable and supports their work directly. Journalism can be defined as the the activities involved in an independent pursuit of accurate information about recent or current events. It can take many forms including audio, video, illustration, photography, data visualizations, animation and text; “straight” news reporting, features reporting, long-form narrative journalism, opinion writing, advocacy journalism and personal essays. They are diverse in the topics they cover and the geographic regions in which they operate. Journalism Ethics Policy As a network managed by a distributed, global community of CVL Token Holders, the Civil Protocol enables news organizations to practice independent, fact-based and responsible journalism. It is not meant to replace or supersede the ethical guidelines of any Newsroom on the Civil network. Rather these policies are meant to define the terms by which a Newsroom can be included in and remain in good standing on the Civil Registry.

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The ethics policy must be applied in the context of local journalistic traditions, taking into account customs and practices, country and local laws, as well as journalistic norms in the relevant area. Crucially, Civil Newsrooms must be judged by their intent, responsiveness and body of work. This document recognizes that Newsrooms are fallible, that mistakes are inevitable and that norms and conditions vary by region. A Newsroom must not be at risk of its standing on the Civil Registry due to isolated errors or lapses of judgment. Journalistic Principles Newsrooms that are part of the Civil Registry agree to abide by a set of core journalistic principles, with a commitment to the following: 1. Accuracy: Newsrooms will aim to operate with journalistic integrity, keeping their responsibility to the public at the fore. They should aim to report and present facts with the highest degree of accuracy possible given the circumstances. This may include: o verifying information before releasing it (including verifying third-party content) o consulting first-person sources; avoiding exclusive reliance on third-party reports where possible, acknowledging when this is not possible o acknowledging where information comes from, and crediting other news organizations where appropriate as sources o Labeling opinion and commentary as such Accuracy shall also be maintained by presenting relevant facts from different points of view. A newsroom shall not knowingly mislead or deceive its readership. 2. Transparency: Civil is founded on a belief that transparency — including, among other things, revealing categories of funding, biases, conflicts of interest, naming sources where possible, covering multiple angles of a controversial story and delineating facts and opinions — is a core value of journalism, and necessary to its sound practice. Newsrooms should make public their editorial mission and values, and consider the adoption and application of internal codes of conduct and editorial ethical guidelines, as well as mechanisms for internal self-regulation, such as the appointment of a readers’ editors or ombudsman. 3. Independence: It is understood that Newsrooms employ a variety of revenue sources to funds their operations, including advertising, philanthropic funds, membership and other activities. However, to fulfill its public purpose, journalism must be exercised freely and without undue pressure from political, commercial or other special interests. As indicators of that independence, Newsrooms must be clear and transparent about the lines between economic interests and editorial activities, which may include a posted policy on advertising, sponsorships and sponsored content; and consistent and clear signals to indicate the differences between editorial and advertising or other sponsored content, through use of labels, design and other messaging. 4. Accountability: Newsrooms are accountable to the public they serve. To the extent possible, Newsrooms should make every effort to be responsive to critiques and other feedback from the public particularly when it comes from the communities they cover. Such systems may include the adoption and application of internal codes of conduct and editorial ethical guidelines, as well as the provision of mechanisms for internal self-regulation, such as the appointment of readers’ editors or ombudsman. A Newsroom should provide way for the public to comment on its work, as well as to provide corrections and otherwise respond to calls for transparency and access. These opportunities may take the form of email; comments, social media; interaction with the public on the Civil Token Curated Registry; in-person responses at public events or via other methods.

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5. Respect and consideration of the impact of journalism on the lives of others. This Includes balancing the public’s need for information against potential harm, and showing compassion for those who may be affected by news coverage. Ethical Newsrooms recognize that legal right to publish differs from an ethical justification to publish or broadcast. They weigh the consequences of publishing personal information and avoid pandering to lurid curiosity, even if others do. 6. Permanence: Newsrooms should consider providing a permanent a record of their work. Journalistic content is considered public record and part of a community’s archive. 7. Original Work: Newsrooms must not represent the work of other Journalists or Newsrooms as their own (plagiarism) 8. Fair and Equal Access: Civil is dedicated to fair and equal access to the means of producing and consuming journalism. Newsrooms will not deny any person a position because of their religion, race, gender or gender identity, ethnicity, sexual orientation, age, economic status, political beliefs, educational background, language, literacy or disability status 9. User data: Civil Newsrooms respect the privacy of their audience, and such will be transparent about the collection, storage and use of user data collected A note about International Standards: Civil has a global vision for trustworthy journalism. Free speech and a free press are at the core of what Civil stands for. We recognize that some countries have varying norms when it comes to media, the press and privacy. Further, it is recognized that some Newsrooms operate in countries that are restrictive of free press and every effort will be made to allow such Newsrooms to flourish on the Civil Platform where bona fide journalism is being performed. Civil’s Governance 1. Civil Foundation: The Civil Media Company established an independent, not-for-profit organization called Civil Foundation, with the mission of upholding and advocating for the core values defined in the Civil Constitution. 1. Civil Foundation will explore the most contentious and novel disputes faced by the Protocol, the Public and the Newsrooms, releasing research into how they are resolved, while fighting for press freedom, press accountability and public-service journalism around the world with like-minded organizations and relevant collaborative efforts. 2. Civil Foundation has a dedicated staff to handle operations. 3. Civil Foundation houses the Civil Council, whose activities and responsibilities are defined below. 4. Civil Foundation’s primary objectives in the protocol’s first year are to: § Begin a process of meaningful, global input from the Token Holders, Newsrooms and the Public about the Constitution, the Council, and the evolutionary management of the Protocol overall; § Make iterative amendments to the Constitution, including updates to its decentralized decision-making framework, while protecting its values as the Protocol grows, as well as creating a method for making amendments as a community going forward; 5. Approximately one year after the Protocol’s creation, token holders will vote either to ratify the Constitution, or to issue a continuing resolution. Token Holders may vote to ratify certain elements and reject others; 6. Failure to ratify the Constitution within two years will result in dissolving the Council. In this case, the Civil Foundation will become the de facto Council until

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arrangements can be made to appoint and confirm via community vote new Council members. 2. Civil Council: The Council serves as the appellate governing authority within the Civil Protocol, whereby Token Holders can surface disputes for possible adjudication. The members are initially selected by the Civil Foundation with a goal of turning over decisions about nominating, selection and term limits to Token Holders over time. Initial Council members are journalists an array of nationalities and backgrounds, and experts in related fields. The Civil Council has the ability to overturn community decisions, but the community in turn has the power to veto the Council in extenuating circumstances, via a “supermajority” vote, initially set at 66.67% or more. Subsequent versions of the Constitution will outline additional features of the Council’s operation, such as term limits, conflict of interest policies, and nomination processes. 3. Civil Constitution: This document must be referenced in support of any argument for limiting the access of any Newsroom to the Civil Protocol, whether that argument appears in a proposed Challenge, Vote, Appeal or Veto. o Temporary Constitutional authority, before Ratification: This document — and its subsequent amendments — are in force until such a time as it is ratified by the community according to the process detailed above. 4. Constitution Ratification Process: The Civil Constitution will undergo various iterations prior to full ratification, as follows: o Beta Constitution: On May 4, 2018, Civil published the Constitution in beta form and solicited feedback from the community. Since then, the public has contributed hundreds of comments and suggestions. o Inaugural Constitution (Published December 19, 2018) The “launch version” of the Constitution will reflect the comments and feedback from the beta version, as well additional sections to add clarity to the self-governance framework. o Revised Inaugural Constitution (2019): Once Civil is live, real-life opportunities, challenges and dilemmas will present themselves. The community will have thoughts about what’s working and what’s not. The Council will be fully established and will help synthesize that community feedback. In the first half of 2019, the Council will propose and vote on a new version of the Constitution to share with the Community. o Community Governance (2020): Civil’s ultimate goal is community self- management. That will come with a formal ratification of a Constitution that reflects a year’s worth of experience from a broader set of global stakeholders, Newsrooms and others. From this stage forward, Token Holders will be able to offer up amendments to the Constitution to be ratified by Token Holders. The Council, after a period of advising on the content of the Constitution, will transition to serve solely as a court of appeals in response to community action, and over time the Council members themselves will be elected by Token Holders. 5. Civil Registry: In order to publish on the Civil Protocol, Newsrooms must be listed on the Civil Registry. 0. Requirements for listing on the Civil Registry include: § Provide a Charter, a short standardized form which specifies: § Journalistic mission or purpose § Ownership structure and categories of funding § Business model, current or intended

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§ Any barriers or limitations on a Newsroom’s ability to report independently that the Civil Community should be aware of § Any additional information to support the Newsroom’s inclusion on the registry § Roster of Journalists § Signatures from each Newsroom Officer pledging to abide by and uphold the Civil Constitution § Staking the required amount of CVL tokens to satisfy the application requirement. Token Holders have the power to alter the application token requirement at any time. More information can be found in the Appendix under Governance Parameters. 1. Any Token Holder may challenge a Newsroom’s position on the Registry at any time by staking a matching deposit and specifying the reasons they believe the Newsroom is in violation of the Civil Constitution, or evidence that the Newsroom has shown itself unwilling or incapable of meeting those standards. 2. If a Newsroom is challenged, all Token Holders will be allowed to vote on whether they support the Newsroom or the challenger. Unless otherwise specified in the Civil Constitution, all Token Holders are eligible to participate in any vote held on the Protocol. Each Token Holder’s vote is weighted according to the number of CVL tokens they stake. Votes require a simple majority (more than 50.00 percent) to carry. More information on the voting process can be found in the Appendix under Voting Process. 3. If the vote is in favor of the Newsroom, the Newsroom will be allowed to remain on the Civil Registry, and the Challenger’s deposit will be distributed to the Newsroom and majority voters. 4. If the vote is in favor of the Challenger, the Newsroom will be removed from the Civil Registry, and the Newsroom’s deposit will be distributed to the Challenger and majority voters. 5. Prior to enacting these outcomes, anyone may appeal their case to the Civil Council, which is required to describe the Constitutional rationale for its decision with at least one public report, issued by the majority. Dissenting Council Members may publish their own reports. Council votes will be made public. 6. If the Council rejects the appeal, the Community vote is processed as is. If the Council finds for the appeal, the Community vote is overturned and outcomes reversed. 7. The Council’s decision is subject to a supermajority veto. Conclusion Civil is a social contract entered into by Token Holders in service of supporting a free, open and trustworthy press for all. That contract is embodied in this Constitution. The Constitutional framework for steering consensus over all network-wide governance disputes — as it is or as amended — by Newsrooms and Token Holders. Through the enactment and collective maintenance of the purpose (paragraph IV) and values as expressed in the Journalism ethics policy (paragraph V), the Civil Community expects to see ethical and trustworthy journalism flourish far into the future.

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Appendix E

Interview Transcripts

Transcript E1

Interview DNN

Transcript Samit Singh and Dondrey Taylor, 19 April 2019 [Not in audio: Tanja: Before we start, is it ok if I record this interview? DNN: Sure, that’s fine. Tanja: Great, thanks. So for the beginning, can you maybe elaborate a bit on your position at DNN, what is it that you do there exactly? DNN: First sentence not understandible due to very noisy environment ] DNN: 00:00 Currencies and blockchain and ethereum was already here as you bitcoin [inaudible... or production to lodging benefit area.] And uh, we just kind of got deeper and deeper into that there. And uh around that time, the US president uh presidential election was going on and that's when we came up with the idea for uh DNN. We started thinking, well, look how polarizing uh the media is right now, especially when it comes to the likes of CNN, Fox News, so on and so forth. We were the age of like, just like sort of like the biggest degree of polarization ever seen in mass media, especially as far as the US is concerned. Considering how little trust levels are when it comes to global media and uh just how low satisfaction ratings are right now. It's a historical low for the US. So at that point we started thinking, okay, what if we could build a sort of like [inaudible. dcis, like Houston, for?] A blockchain where the community essentially owns the content that's hosted on the chain. So fast forward to where we are now: We spent about a year and a half conceptualizing everything. writing that white paper and building our early Algebra and now we're gearing up to build the whole full product for the theory of uh [inaudible] made that it's own blockchain. And uh, we're just currently in the process of sort of developing everything and uh, you know, working on the finished design that we uh that we already have. But uh but what DNN is at its core is it's essentially just a news network who's on the blockchain and it guarantees immutability of the content that's hosted on it, meaning that journalists or any writer for that matter can put their content on the platform. They know that they hold it in its entirety and it won't be [inaudible the only thing. We're ?] no third party can send in that data, no one can tamper with it once it's on the chain. It's forever, uh, hosted and owned entirely by the legal [inaudible]. DNN 2: 01:42 Oh yeah, sure. And uhm, so there is like two, there's two aspects that actually kind of really caught our attention that was extremely appealing to us. Um, one was, you know, of course like the blockchain and the whole immutability aspect and the fact that, you know, blockchain's are global by

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nature and the fact that uh really, anybody can interact with the blockchain in a very similar way to that they would with like the internet. You know, it's ubiquitous thing. It's not really owned by anybody. It's this shared medium. And uhm one of the things that we wanted to do is kind of separate, like the whole notion of getting involved with uh using the blockchain and then using cryptocurrency. Cause I think a lot of people when they look at DNN and they're like, okay, like there's a cryptocurrency and you're using a blockchain has this intertwined. So, um, with the journalism aspect, so, uh, just to kind of break that down, like with the blockchain where we're using the blockchain is really for uh access to news and journalism. So, uh, you know, a growing trend that's going, going that's going on right now and a lot of different regions is this idea of censorship uh. So you know, with censorship it's like you have really these very limited outlets that you, you can get your work published. So with that we saw the blockchain as being like an extremely great fit for that. And it kinda aligned with the whole notion of like this freedom of information uh and also enabling like this mass distribution of news, so that's where we're using the blockchain. And then the cryptocurrency is where we're getting into like the funding of transparent and quality journalism that is rooted in uh facts, and reading sources that can be verified by the community. And where we're involving the crypto aspect is in the funding of that type of stuff. And also in this idea of incentivizing people to actively [bet / read?] their types of news there, be more active when they're reading the news. Um, and that's where the crypto aspect is coming in. So we have like our own token and we're able to like essentially use that token tool to reward certain behavior with the crypto. So if you had a particular source, um, you know, for authenticity you get rewarded or if you're incorrect on your assumptions, you get penalized... Things like that that we otherwise couldn't do. That's what we're using crypto for. Um, and uh, yeah, we really collectively together we're trying to like introduce this idea of collaborative news, collaborative journalism uhm, which you know, when you combine crypto and blockchain, it kind of gives you that. Tanja: 04:08 Okay. So this actually leads me also to uhm my actual research topic because I'm looking at uhm accountability and how journalism based on blockchain is actually contributing to a new concept of accountability. DNN: 04:27 Oh, absolutely. Tanja: 04:28 For me, I define like how I look at accountability is I basically look at it as a process of measuring the performance of the media. Um, and so I wanna ask you how well, but you kind of already implemented that, uhm indicated that how well you see this accountability actually implemented in real life. Like especially when it comes to transparency. You already mentioned audience participation and yeah. How well does that function? DNN: 05:03 You know the way to look at it and uh, you know, Dondrey can get more technical than I can on that aspect. Um, but usually I don't get like too technical about it in the sense of like, we'll get ordinary consumers where they will get blockchain accountability. It's tough to like understand it from

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a tactical matter. But what it means for you as a consumer is that I really think, you know, Don and I always say think the blockchain is a database except the difference is the end user is uh this database that everyone can sort of like see, you can see the guts of it. You can see exactly, oh, you know, what went into creating an article and what changes were made uh and by whom. It's, it's like a sort of like a public wiki of sorts. Think of like, think of uh you know article on Wikipedia, except you can publicly see everything, every reaction, why something was redacted, why something was changed, anything from the end user and the community can then participate. And, you know, and I think that confidence comes through and you know, you know the data and the changes behind that data are effectively stored on the blockchain uh forever. But Dondrey can ... [inaudible] . DNN 2: 05:59 Yeah. Uh, extremely, uh, exactly how we're doing it. And like all together we're trying to introduce like this, this new concept that we like to call radical transparency or extreme transparency. And like what we're trying to do in the end is get people like away from this mentality of like short term thinking when it comes to news. Like I think a lot of people have short term memory when it comes to different types of stories in the news media. And a lot of times what happens is, because we're inundated with all this information, news, we forget where, you know, the, the media may have made mistakes with certain things and it's very hard to hold them accountable unless we, we're like involved with the media, shows that like 100% of the day, 24 / 7 following all of these stories that we possibly can't do that. So uhm, with, with the type of format like, and this is something that we were thinking of early on, and it's like, we actually wanna change the way the articles are formatted. So if you look at like traditional media like with like CNN or Washington or I think that they typically have like this very like long format where it's like, you know, you guys are really kinda got to read the whole thing and you know, follow the different links that are in the article to even figure out what's going on and a lot of times, sometimes the article may not even have all the context that you need to even judge what it's trying to say. Like, you know, me, myself, like as a news reader, like I won't lie, I don't even really read the entire article. I typically read the headline and a couple, uh, first sentences. So with like our type of format, we want to have it very concise where, you know, as soon as you go to the article, it's just like a Wikipedia page. Like, you know how there's like history in there. It's like read the synopsis in the beginning, we want to do the same thing with news articles. So if you go to a DNN article, the first thing you'll see is like, you know, what is the issue, you read about that, you know that, okay, following this we're gonna hard facts. Like these are links linking to this. Like the who, what, where or like I think in journalism they call that the inverted pyramid of journalism. So we're following that methodology when it comes to like the construction of our types of news. Tanja: 07:59 Okay. So, um, you would probably say that the most important factor for accountability is radical transparency. Is that right?

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DNN: 08:09 Yup, that's correct. Yeah. And the fact that you know, you're able to follow things, everybody can see it and you know, holding [the blockchain?]. Yeah, yeah. DNN 2: 08:17 Yea I just wanna quickly deject, say like, of course, you know, you have transparency within organizations themselves, but at the end of the day, it only means so much when you look at the main stream news [corporates?] right now, you know I question whether there's even transparency within those organizations... Even if there is, what does it matter if there's no transparency to me and the reader. So yeah, it does definitely tie in to a, you know, this whole concept of like extreme transparency, which, which carries on to the end reader uhm and abstract everything until like a very clean Ui. You don't have to know anything about the blockchain you don't have to know how to explore the blockchain. But you know, we, we've, uh, you know, design in the sense of like having your own like uh, so it's like a blockchain explorer where you could see everything that happened related to the article that you're reading and, and you know, how, which way the viewers voted on something, uh when it comes to amendments to an article. Uh, which specific you're, you're reading them connect to something ... And all things like that, I think it's like bringing you know identity and trust to the journalist that I think has been lost over the years and it shifted to the publication. So like with Washington journal, with New York Times, like your trust, you have to assume that what you're reading as the truth. Exactly. In a lot of times like you don't even know who, like the people who are writing these articles, like their identity is not really quite at the forefront and that's something that we want to change with Dnn where like the writer, their reputation and everything is on the line and people can start off kind of see that okay now this writer, just because they're writing for CNN doesn't mean they're politically leaning to the left or the guardians of lefters, no, whatever publication, you know the history of how they publish their article... DNN: 09:51 And I quickly wanna add a, the results of that old question or like okay so what do you need the blockchain for that as far as that is concerned. You can also do that without the blockchain uhm. True, to an extent you can, but the beauty of it is like a, you know I was looking at Wikileaks as example. Wikileaks is still an issue [inaudible]. Anyone uh any, any malicious hacker, would that head kick it shut down with give you said there is a centralized point of failure, right? Yeah, absolutely. As far as the blockchain is concerned, there isn't. It's the set up of its architecture and uh you can even take on node down. It doesn't matter. You know how our readers can still access the news on any other nodes without interruption whatsoever. So yeah. So the blockchain still [inaudible] on a technological level. Speaker 3: 10:37 So who would you say do the journalists account to on your platform the most? Is it the public or the readers or also their profession or their integrity? Speaker 2: 10:47 Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So with, with the system, we actually want to bridge kinda together the public and the professionals. Um, so this is something

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that's actually missing from our current site, but in a new site, we're a little bit more clear in the messaging of that. But we do wanna have aspects where, you know, professionals, that worked for a Wall Street Journal or anything like that are shown to that they work for x, Y, Z organization that can be [embedded?] by the community. But, um, the, the whole community, the whole accountability aspect, we're not solely relying on the public. What we're trying to do instead of like holding them to account on if you want to define that as like being objectively true. That's actually something that we're not doing that a lot of other platforms are trying to do. Like a lot of, a lot of platforms, like if you look at like Google or you know social media networks like Facebook, they're all trying to say, you know what is objectively true, what is not objectively true. That's not the goal of DNN. DNN is to lay out everything that you're doing transparently and then allow whether that is the professionals or whether that is the public to then give you that public reputation of saying like, you know, this is, this is accurate over time based on, you know, our editorial guidelines, which are editorial guidelines that are nothing more than just saying like, you know, sources have to be cited, making sure that things are in the right format and if they adhere to that and then to us that's holding them to account because they're not transparent. Uh, yes, in what they're putting together. Tanja: 12:12 Alright. So basically also the community becomes a part of this accountability process. So they're also responsible for their judgment in some way. Is that correct? DNN: 12:24 Yeah, that's correct. I guess that ties into like the news literacy aspect. Yeah. Uh, you know, a lot of readers are passive nowadays when you look at the news, so you're just taking the word of journalist, you know, who wrote the article and at the end of the day, we've all become one [inaudible]. News should be, you can say whatever they want. At this point as far as like the US media is concerned and even a lot of places in the world and what can readers [like you?] Do. And so the responsibility goes both ways and self responsibility should fall to contribute as well. Excellent. Yes. Tanja: 12:55 Yeah. And can you maybe explain uhm more how exactly this process works? Like who makes the first claim when something is wrong? What, who are all the actors? Cause you said it's, it's both the public and the professionals, but how is it exactly measured? DNN: 13:12 Yeah, sure. So, um, if you look at like the traditional editorial flow, like typically what happens is when like a journalist or a writer constructs a piece, it usually happens in a newsroom and these newsrooms are really closed door to like the outside public, you know, um, you know, when it comes to constructing our vetting sources and things like that, that process can still exist. So, you know, if you're a journalist and you have your own newsroom, you can still go through and construct that article and everything back. And then once you feel that it's ready to be published, you can publish it. Now this is where we change things up. So once the article's been published, we present the article as like, this has not been vetted by the community at all. Take it for what it is from what the journalist or writer

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may be saying or what their historical, uh, what they published in the past. And then where we involved the community at is in disputing certain claims as to like our editorial guideline. So one of the things in our editor, editorial guidelines is to say that has to be in a correct format. So things that the community can do is say, hey, you know, this is in the correct format. They can just be the claim or within each section, um, so for example, a section where we're saying like, these are the known facts, um, the readers can get involved in pointing out certain inaccuracies within those facts. And as someone was saying with the news literacy, these are things that we educate them on what they should look for it. So things like, you know, uh does the claim cooperate amongst multiple other sources. That's one thing. Or, um, you know, looking for funding habits, uh, our funding behaviors of the sources that are being included. So the example that we like to use is, for example, if you're reading an article that's talking highly about cigarettes, but this sort of uh, the sources that are being used is from a research that was funded by a tobacco company. So things like that, we're getting the readers to be, play a more active role in citing those things. Um, you know, and uh, disputing those claims and this is where we get into like the whole incentivization Crypto aspect is we reward that type of behavior. Tanja: 15:13 Ah, okay. Okay. So the reader also can get money out of it or is it mostly reputation? DNN: 15:21 That that's correct yes. So they can get, um, our DNN token, which is like the cryptocurrency that we issue for certain behavior. And um, you know, this is where we were originally like kind of experimenting. So, uh, when we, we had actually an early demo that we have put out that we have since taken uhm being private again. Um and with that, we're kind of trying to like play around and see like how does the crypto affect certain behavior when it comes to vetting, uh certain certain types of news. And it was really interesting because we saw that, you know, it was, it was a particularly small among like kind of the crypto enthusiasts, but you know, where some of the shortcomings spell was amongst like the bigger journalism, you know, uh, the, the more news media, traditional, uh, people and players, they didn't really see the value of it, so they didn't have incentives. And the token at that time didn't have a value. So you know, those are some of the things that we're tweaking but, uh, yeah, the token is something that we're using, uh, you know, to reward that type of behavior and kind of see where that goes. Tanja: 16:20 And you also punish, you said, does it mean that you um, you make them pay a fee or that you take away their tokens or how does it work? DNN: 16:30 Yes, correct. Yeah, there'll be a security deposit of sorts they initially put in, uh, as a bid to review an article and depending on how to behave in the system, we either reward them, you know, back with this positive conditional tokens on top of that or we take away the security deposit [inaudible, so that it becomes debit on there?] Tanja: 16:47 Ah okay. Okay. And can you already assess how this implementation is going?

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DNN: 16:55 Yeah, so right now we're actually altering how the review process works. So what we're explaining is something that we have not implemented in the uh our original beta. So the original Beta, it was, it was not, you didn't, you didn't review the article after it's been published. You reviewed the article before it was published, but then we found out that didn't work. Yeah. It was hugely flawed because if you're a journalist and you're writing, you want to get something out immediately to, because it's, it's relevant at this time. Yeah. Yeah. You can't wait. And, uh, one of the problems in our Beta that we saw was that reviewers were reluctant to review the article. If A, they didn't understand the language or B, they didn't know what, they didn't have enough education to be able to better assess it. And then the articles fell in limbo and they never got reviewed. So those are things that we're changing, you know, in this version and now it will be copied to kind of assess what's out there. Tanja: 17:49 Oh, okay. And, um, who actually writes these editorial guidelines that must be met? Is that also community based or is it just uh given? DNN: 18:02 Yeah, so initially, you know, we wrote like a very early version and then after that we started tweaking, more working with the actual journalists. And like our, our team. But from there, uh, you know, at the end of the day, we don't want to keep it that way because it's centralized. We want the community to essentially make all our commandments, that's something we have in mind as well. Uh, obviously the review guidelines like the editorial uh should not be the end all be all like uh first version. Of course we have the you know, the necessary journalists and [inaudible] basis of whatever the network is like, yeah, like I said that is absolutely community provided and it's actually very similar to again Wikipedia. We took big bits with wikipedia because there's a working model, right? You know right there. Of course wikipedia, it does face criticism every now and then. For the most part it's a fully functioning model that works and the community essentially votes on the magnets or when any guidelines exactly change as far as governance is concerned in the network and we wanna sort of go in that direction as well. But also add like a layer of incentives to get people who want to contribute. We've got ones. Yeah. Tanja: 19:09 And is, is this concept actually working? Like, um, can you also already see that the community really likes that they can participate and um, they actively also participate more? DNN: 19:23 Yeah. So, uh, so everything that we're saying actually has been based on feedback that we've got from the community. So originally when we started the idea, we created that white paper and we didn't build anything, we just put the uh white paper out on uh reddit. And so we just let people rip it apart and get comments and all of that stuff on what they thought was nice. And so everything that we're saying is based off of what they what they wanted to see. And one of the criticisms that we got early on was like, Hey, if you're putting out these editorial guidelines, they..., uh what's to say that it's like, how do you know what's going to be all encompassing? And we got this criticism, both from community and from some of the, uh, more, you know,

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bigger players within the journalism space, as in these are working documents. So, uh, you know, that's something that we're going to kind of see how that unfolds as we, uh, once we release this, this new version. But um, yeah, I'm still kind of developing it. So this new version is not out yet, but you know, it should be, you know, definitely there this year at some point. Tanja: 20:21 Okay. And how, do you get any responses from journalists? Like how do they... DNN: 20:25 Say that one more time? Tanja: 20:29 Did you already get some responses from journalists? Like how do they react or adapt because they, I feel like they have to participate also more with the audience. Like also respond to comments, interact and um, just respond to some errors they made or something. DNN: 20:47 Yeah, absolutely. So eh, in terms of like the communication, so in general, the feedback that we got from more [inaudible] journalists is very polarizing. So on the one side they were very skeptical of like the token aspect. And I think that was just because of the time we introduced the project was around the time that you had all these projects trying to raise money. And then you've got scams involved in legal [...] bad reputations. Yeah, it was really bad. So we got some stuff. This isn't there, but once the actual people that looked beyond that, they were extremely interested in it. And like, so for example, there was a better lasting, but uh, Lauren from wired magazine, uh she was very interested in what we were doing. Uh, we also spoke with, uh, some journalists at Washington Post. We spoke with, uh, one of the senior editors of Wall Street Journal uh and a lot of their feedback was, you know, kind of, you know, it's an interesting concept. I kind of wanna see where it goes. Uh, and I think, uh, in general the criticism was just like, okay, well you kind of need this network of people there from the beginning. So, you know, that's something that we're trying to address with having the right balance of writers and reviewers. Um, and then in terms of, to your question about the communication between journalists and the public, uh, currently we don't have like a system for them to communicate back and forth as in like, okay, you know, you should change this source or, you should change this. Uhm. Because, and the reason for that is because the feedback that we got from journalists is that like, well, you know, by me continuously changing the article, it's no longer like mine, it's no longer my work. So we wanted to keep that and then just kind of allow the public to annotate it for, you know, rather than change it. Tanja: 22:30 Ahh. So the public basically comments after the article is published by also deciding on how many tokens they want to give? DNN: 22:41 Correct. Yeah. Okay. Yes. Tanja: 22:43 Ah okay. So they, but they don't write a comment physically? DNN: 22:48 You're, so you're saying the readers don't write comments? Tanja: 22:50 Yeah, yeah.

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DNN: 22:55 Oh you're asking. Yea, uh, so yeah, so there is no comments in the system. So I think what, like the traditional, the traditional media use comments like the reader goes and they write a comment. We don't want that message. Yeah. It's terrible. And then the, you know, you're on the bottom of the article, so we're involving that uh within the article. So, for example, uh, you can like hover over a particular sentence or something like that and you can see what people are talking about and just, you know, disputes that are going on, uhm at the right hand side of that article. You can actually see it side by side. Um, and so, so at that point, it's taking what people are saying and putting that alongside with what the journalists is saying. And so you can see everything in context rather than prioritizing what the journalists and writers saying without hearing also the public. Tanja: 23:42 Ah okay. But the journalists, the journalists generally respond to what the audience writes? DNN: 23:49 Well, so now they don't need to, that's correct. They don't need to, but just like, uh, you know, if you take uh, you know, a food review, actually let Google reviews, right? So like Google reviews on different places, restaurant places. Um, you know, people can go in there and leave comments and leave reviews on it, but if there are any negative ones or anything like that, it's gonna reflect in your review. So it's up to you, if you want to add clarity on what you're thinking or improve that. And that's, that's the same mentality we're having with DNN. If the journalist wants to clarify anything that they had or they want to clarify what they mean by anonymous source and why they can't reveal their identity, then they can do so. If they don't, then it's out there in the public for everybody to see that they don't care about what people are saying and they just rather write. So it's kind of like a two way street uh is what we're trying to build with Dnn. Cause fully it's top to like 100% control that type of human behavior. Yeah. So it's actually a system with like so many variables. Yeah. Tanja: 24:45 Ahh. And what I just don't understand in this concept is because you upload the article on the blockchain, right? Eventually and then it cannot be altered. But then... DNN: 24:57 So yeah. So this is an interesting thing. So, uh, the original can't be altered, but we also, we have revisions that can be added onto. So yeah. So each time, each time a revision is made, it becomes a whole new article and just technically speaking, you know, for you as a reader, you wouldn't actually even notice what you're, you know, when you're on [inaudible, the sub dean?] and application, it'll just look like a visit to you under the existing article. But behind the scenes it's actually a whole other version of the same article stored on the blockchain. Tanja: 25:26 Oh, okay. Okay. And if someone would try to upload a fake article or something that would immediately be seen by the whole community and then, um, yeah, DNN: 25:38 yes, yes. We do have the concept of identity in the system and that identity, this is where the blockchain cryptocurrency aspect comes in. It's this

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concept of they're called signatures. So whenever you upload it, like, and of course, like from a user perspective, user experience perspective, you won't know any of this. Like you don't have to know any of this stuff. This is stuff that we do behind the scenes, but every single article is signed by the writer that puts that up. So it's not like you can, it's not like uh, you know, Glenn Greenwald can upload an article and then somebody can upload an article saying that they're also Glenn Greenwald. Um, there, the way this works is every eh, every writer has an a signature and that signature they can post on like their public profile. Um, something like, you know, if you think of like uh, I dunno, like, uh, your Twitter handle, right? So like if people post their Twitter handle and other places on a verified account, you know, that that's their real Twitter handle. So, uh, that's the same concept we're using here. Tanja: 26:32 Ah, okay. Okay. That makes sense. Um, so, uh, would you say that this blockchain technology also changes the responsibility that each journalist has? DNN: 26:44 Yeah, absolutely. So now it really just opens the door to their own personal credibility rather than the credibility of the organization. Yeah. Usually, when you look at uh you know, journalists today, journalists are, so we, uh, you know, they're, they're part of a bigger organization that basically dictates the flow of the beans, you know, coming out of it and you know you have good journalism when you also have bad journalism and uh a lot of you know bad journalism is nonetheless protected uh by the organization that hosts it and puts it out. You can't really hide behind that anymore when it's up to watch it because then everything is publicly viewable and [inaudible mass ...?]. It's like uh having those private databases behind those organizations being exposed to the entire public. And that's really what blockchain does. So I will say, you know, it doesn't necessarily add to the responsibility of journalists, but it does, uh, increase the need for accountability on their end. Tanja: 27:37 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Um, could that, could we also say that blockchain has somehow also decentralized accountability though? DNN: 27:50 Uh, ye, yeah, you could say that. So, um, so I guess like the term decentralization is something that has a lot of different means to different people. So like for us, decentralization has a couple means. One is like in the way the platform is spread out amongst all the public and then decentralization in the sense that it's democratic. Like everybody has a way of influencing the platform. So in that regard and both cases, yeah we're making the whole process more decentralized, and uh, involving more people and allowing them to influence things on a more grander scale. Tanja: 28:25 Yeah. All right. So overall you would say that blockchain can be a feasible mechanism to contribute to media accountability nowadays? DNN: 28:36 Yeah, absolutely. 100% and um, you know, everybody has like their own way of saying like this blockchain will do it or that blockchain will do it. Or there's different implementations of it. Like we tend not to have that type of mentality of like, it has to be done with bitcoin. It has to be done with this

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one. Like we're just trying to, you know, uh, whether that's our own or whether that's using ethereum, uh, trying to find a way to make blockchain a feasible like alternative, um, yeah. And just involve people in the process, in an easier way. Tanja: 29:07 Right. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Um, I think that you answered all my questions so far. Um, is there anything you want to add or deem as important or something I might have forgotten? DNN: 29:21 Um, yeah, I mean, well I guess just really that we're, you know, we're trying to emphasize, you know, independent journalism and you know, all the different types of journalism around that, we're also getting into more like data driven journalism, which is something that we actually spoke to I think was at a university in Sweden, forgot the name. Uh, but they were interested in the data aspect. Like how are we collecting all this information. Are people, how are people contributing news information to the platform and uh how we then uh, extracting that information and making it useful to journalists, journalists. So in that regard we're getting into that as well. Um, yeah. And I think that's pretty much it. Tanja: 29:59 Yeah. Perfect. Did you have any questions for me or for my research? DNN: 30:06 Ah, yeah, so I was actually curious, how did you find out about our project? Tanja: 30:10 Um, I honestly just googled. Yeah. Yeah, cause there are, there are not that may, um, platforms, um, journalistic platforms that already implemented or are trying to implement blockchain technology. So there are just a few out there in the world as far as Google tells me. So, um, yea. DNN: 30:35 yes. Yep. And that's, that's true for what we know as well. So yes. That's interesting. Tanja: 30:42 It's fascinating. And then I read your white paper and I figured, okay, I need to talk to these guys and they're relevant for my, uh, research. So yeah. DNN: 30:51 Awesome. Glad to be helpful with that. And uh, you know what I mean? We're, we're definitely like passionate about this. Like we, you know, as somebody said it after we come from a technical background, but this is something that we as newsreaders, you know, kind of deal on a daily basis. So yeah, no, just seemed fitting. Tanja: 31:08 Yeah. Yeah. All right, perfect. Well thank you again so much for your time. DNN: 31:13 Yeah, you're welcome, anytime. Tanja: 31:15 I wish you all the best for this project and I hope to read a lot more about you. DNN: 31:20 Awesome. Same here. And if you have any other questions, we're always available. Tanja: 31:24 Okay. All right. Thank you so much.

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Transcript E2

Interview Civil

Transcript Nicole Bode, 30 April 2019

[Not in audio: Tanja: So before we start, is it ok if I record this interview? Nicole: Yes, that’s ok. Tanja: Ok great, thanks. So... you’re the head of sustainibility at Civil. Can you elaborate a bit on your position... uh how you’ve come to work with blockchain? Nicole: First sentence lost in audio and notes. ] Nicole: 00:00 Cofounders. Um, and then subsequently Civil has um uh split into two groups. So there's the civil media company, which is now tasked with some of the tech and I'm part of the Civil Foundation, which is now in charge of this sort of journalism and the, and the care and, um, support of the newsrooms on the platform and the newsrooms that are hoping to join the platform. So the work that I'm doing now is similar to what I was doing before, but, um, larger in scope. So it's my job to help the newsrooms, um, and the journalists that are looking to bring their newsrooms on to civil, um, figure out the process, get comfortable, um, with their sort of newsrooms in a crypto, economic and blockchain world. Um, and like a lot of people trying to figure out what if anything we can do to help support them in a world where it is very hard to be a journalist who can make ends meet financially. So. Tanja: 00:56 Ah okay, alright. And how have you come to chosen to work with uh blockchain journalism? Nicole: 01:05 So I had no experience whatsoever with blockchain. I, until the, um, basically the first or second conversation that I had with someone about civil, I had no interest in learning anything about blockchain. I, um, I just, it wasn't in my radar at all. I had been a journalist for about 16 years, um, and sort of breaking news and daily reporting and editing. And so most of my experience had always been in the journalism side and, um, a group of people that I liked and respected and still like and respect um, were recruiting for civil and I was speaking to them about something unrelated and they started to tell me about civil. And I had said that what was the most interesting to me was the idea that most of the tech that affected journalists daily lives had been created without ever having a journalist in the room to give feedback on how it would help or hurt them. And that civil was the fact that civil was at all interested in having journalists in the room, um, at the start of its creation as opposed to sort of releasing it to the public once it was already baked, was really appealing to me. Um, and also being at the, um, you know, on, on the beginning, um, line of something that was so, um, technologically, um, cutting edge and still very, you know, was very

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difficult to understand and the Ui was really hard to use and, um, it felt like a really close group of people who were involved in it. And, and being able to basically get paid to learn it, um, was also incredibly appealing. Tanja: 02:50 Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, and um, for my research, um, I look at, um, accountability, um, in the media and, um, I wanna look also, and I for this define accountability basically as a process of measuring how well the media is doing, um, basically how they're called to fulfill their responsibility towards society, like press freedom and providing information. And, um, how well do you see accountability like this implemented in reality? Like in terms of transparency or when it comes to audience participation? Nicole: 03:38 Um, I think that's a great question. I'll give a little bit of a historical perspective. Um, so when I first started in 2001, um, at the New York Daily News, the majority of the ways that people could ever really have an influence on, um, the, the day to day running of the paper was primarily through letters to the editor or um, if they were upset they could withdraw their subscription. But beyond that there were sort of very limited ways for people to influence, um, daily coverage, um, in any kind of meaningful way. Um, then, you know, as I started to move into a more digital world, um, and joined a digital only news organization helped to found it called DNA info. Um, we were highly engaged with the readership, um, in a daily kind of back and forth kind of a way. Um, and to be fair to the Daily News, they would have people that would, um, be at the desk taking phone calls from incoming tipsters who were actually quite dedicated. And, um, probably the closest thing to a sort of an audience engagement team. And every journalist would pick up their own phone and they'd get calls all the time from people in the public. So it wasn't to say that there wasn't any kind of feedback, but that was just basically between the person on one side of the phone and the person on the other side of the phone or one person on this. There's one side of the email and the other side of the email. It wasn't really something that other people could watch happening in press in process. Nicole: 05:11 Um, at DNA info we were exploring all the different ways to use social media. So we were having very public discussions on Facebook and on Twitter and on some other venues to figure out how to um, really bring people in. And one of the, one of the people I thought that did the most fantastic job was going by the name of Carla Senoni, who then went on to be a mass head of Wall Street Journal as their audience engagement editor. And what I watched Carla do that I thought was incredible was that she wrote about the neighborhood where she lived and maintained, um, a sort of real town crier responsibility to her audience. And she was able to do that because number one, she was incredible. Also. Number two, she had a very small population that she was serving, people who didn't have a ton of other outlets. So she was covering Washington heights and Inwood and um there she took their story seriously. She was available to them and she was accountable to them. And when they, when she did something that they didn't like, they would absolutely let her hear about it. But that was again, small groups, small setting, kind of, um, one to one to one or several people.

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Nicole: 06:25 About the time that I came to civil, I saw that, um, there were a lot of news organizations both new and established who were making a lot of decisions that the public had problems with. So, you know, there've been a number of news organizations that have had kneed to allegations and affecting their own staff, the New York Times, you know, Wnyc. And so there were, in New York City alone, there were a number of examples of people who felt really strongly about news organizations that were doing things that they didn't necessarily agree with and um, and they wanted to show that in some way and so they could show it through, you know, putting it out on social media or they could show it through, um, you know, I think probably a million other ways, um, that probably existed before social media, like boycotts and protests out front and things like that. Um, but that when it came to sort of decisions that were being made at the board level, most of the time it was, um, if, if there was a really squeaky wheel or a really threatening, um, you know, advertiser withdrawing their money, um, as a result of some actions that were taken, those were the things that really would make a news organization consider changing their position. Nicole: 07:48 Um, at civil what has been really interesting and it's really only been in the last, I would say last month, um, since the registry has gone live, there's this new way where people are in a position to want to hold news organizations accountable. Um, and as a journalist I can definitely see both sides. So, um, there is right now if you go on to civil.co and you go to the registry and you can see, um, the registry home in the dropdown and I don't know if you've had a chance to look at it, but, um, inside of each of those newsroom tiles that you see, there's sort of, um, all the newsrooms that have already been approved, all the newsrooms that are in the process of applying. And then there's one newsroom so far that has been, or two, there's two newsrooms so far that have been successfully challenged off of the platform. And newsrooms have only been able to apply to civil for basically a month. And already now there are, um, there are three newsrooms that have been challenged, two of which have been challenged successfully. And the definition of a successful challenge, it means they've been kicked off the platform. And the way that they've been kicked off the platform, um, it doesn't mean they can't still publish. It doesn't mean it doesn't really change their day to day, but it is, um, it means they can't have their information disseminated on the platform. They couldn't, you know, be part of this network which is intended to provide scale, you know, opportunities for people to reach new audiences or access new tools either for free or at a discount. So there are sort of some benefits that were created regardless of the fact that this is also an incentive for people to want to be part of this group. Nicole: 09:39 Um, that, that people have some consequences in addition to whatever sort of perceived, um, kind of slap that this comes as, um, from a public perspective, from public relations perspective. Um, there was an actual tangible way for people who disagree with some or all of what a newsroom presents about itself and its mission. [inaudible; This just] have a very concrete and meaningful way to do something about that disagreement. Um,

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now that said, if you go into any of the comment boards, um, for these newsrooms and you look at, um, so if you go inside of one of the newsroom [inaudible; tasic] and click on any of them and you'll see at the very top, above the our mission, there's a discussions tab. Um, and you'll see that, um, there are some conversations that are very robust. Um, and then there are some conversations that, um, you know, it's, it's basically a case study in media literacy education. Nicole: 10:41 So there are people who say, I'm not sure if this is a newsroom. It seems like that there are things about what you do that is, um, not represented. So for example, this person who challenged or who is commenting on a challenge to the fuller project, which is a very established, um, organization, um, is saying, you know, your, your mission is inspiring, your website is inspiring. Um, and, um, we are concerned that you don't have a privacy, um, data collection clause on your website. If you have one, will you please share it with us? And if you don't have one, can you commit to creating one in order to be in compliance with the civil constitution, which is that high level, um, conversations that are happening that probably historically have only ever happened by invitation only with this sort of heads of department within a news organization, much less someone who doesn't even work there, who's just some person off the street who says, I'm concerned that you haven't told us what you're doing with user data. Nicole: 11:45 Um, and then, you know, um, what's your editorial and you know, corrections policy, um, and there's, right. You know, right now there is no way to, you know, contact them. There is no contact us. So, you know, this is like very much in the gray area of, you know, it's not a clear cut case of plagiarism. It's not a clear cut case of this is a marketing website, you know, posturing itself as a news organization. But the fact that there are people who are raising these, um, questions and they're disputing the boundary between a philanthropic organization that's producing content that happens to be about women who are journalists is the news itself. Journalism and like these are conceptual, um, debates that I have not seen. The, you know, collected under one umbrella. I'm not familiar with this kind of, um, reward consequence and debate kind of as messy and as uninformed and as, as still in process as it is. I haven't really seen that somewhere. Um, and, and there very well may be other places where this is going on. Um, and I know that there are, you know, community run forums, um, but I'm not sure if the mandate of those community run forums is to debate what is journalism. Tanja: 13:10 Yeah. So, um, that also kind of raises the question who, um, journalists should feel accountable to now. I feel like, is it the public or the community or is it more the profession and also how does that change through, um, such a system as you just described? Nicole: 13:33 I think that's a great question. I think, um, my experience with journalism is one prism through which to look at this, but my experience is, um, everything is a little bit of paradox and everything is a little bit of um, sometimes it's this way and sometimes it's that way. So I don't go in for a lot of absolutes. But what I would say about that is in general the give the

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people what they want at all costs and go for clicks no matter what, even if it's maybe not what you would choose to do. I think we've seen what that kind of reporting and writing looks like. And I think we've, we've got a pretty clear use case of um if all people eat for dinner is, um, is ice cream. We know kind of what that looks like. If, if by the opposite extreme, if all media ever offers people is Broccoli, then we also know that that maybe not always work out well for their subscription rates or their, you know, um, uh, or their reach. Nicole: 14:39 So, somewhere in between is this historic, elusive, sweet spot of how do you give people engaging and meaningful content that keeps them coming back. And who decides is it if you're, if you're all your journalists think they're doing a great job, but nobody reads it, does it matter? Um, and if everybody reads it, but it's Clickbait, does it matter? So I think that there's a happy medium in there somewhere. Um, and I think ideally, you know, when you said is the audience the readers or is the audience the journalists? Um, ideally I think it's both because in a world where it's really hard to make a lifelong career in journalism where news organizations are barely able to sustain themselves, much less a very experienced and probably highly paid person who's very good at what they do and has a lot of institutional memory, that institutional memory gets hemorrhaged in a pretty devastating way to the, to the young reporters who are coming up, who don't have the experienced editors to lean on perhaps in a way that they did just, you know, just 15 years ago. Um, and it's a very rare place. I think where there are people at all stages of their career who can contribute to a really, um, robust, um, growth, energy and institutional memory kind of an environment. Um, and so I think in an ideal world, people are coaching each other up and holding each other accountable and having and having, um, a little bit of a, a confrontational, ideally constructively critical, um, debate over what someone says versus what they do. Um, in a, in a respectful dialogue kind of away. Tanja: 16:43 Sounds very good. Nicole: 16:44 In a, in an utopian world. Tanja: 16:47 Exactly yeah. But you can still strive for something. Um, and if you can, is there one factor or indicators that you would say is the most important one to establish accountability? Nicole: 17:07 I'm choosing my words carefully on this. Is there one factor to establish accountability? I think most busy, um, time strapped humans who are flawed and pulled in a million different directions and have a lot of pressure on them. I think the factor to me that makes something go from sounding like a really nice idea to being put into practice is meaningful resources and meaningful, um, consequences. Not as a punitive thing, but as a, it, it doesn't mean anything. If you break the rules, then it doesn't really matter. You know, if the laws aren't upheld, then it doesn't really matter that there are laws. Um, and so I think having some expectations that are understood on both sides of what accountability actually means in practice and who will actually be the one to uphold it. That to me is really meaningful because I

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think there are a lot of very good suggestions that are made about the ways in which organizations can be accountable to their readers. But if there isn't a mechanism through which to actually perform on that, then it is very possible that things can become, um, lip service more than a practical, um, exchange. Tanja: 18:38 Yeah. But um in, um in a community, like civil is as far as I understood, it's basically... The journalists mostly account to the whole community. Um, so, but the one important thing for that is also that the community has all of the access to judge. So um, I feel like in civil, from what I read from, uh, the constitution and the white paper, um, also has established an amount of transparency that's also very unusual. Um, so, um, how, how big of a factor is transparency or how much, um, how much would you say does that also influence the whole process? Nicole: 19:27 I think people, um, I think people have taken us seriously when we say we intend to be transparent. Um, and I think we have given them the resources to be able to do what they need to do, to talk to each other, to form coalitions of, um, you know, as this person wrote. Um, I, you know, I am part of a small group of people who are exploring questions of compliance for applicant newsrooms. That's a completely self formed group of people, so that, that is not in any way sanctioned by controlled, by in conjunction with anything to do with civil or the organization. So the amount of ownership that it seems in just this short amount of time that people feel over a shared platform and that they're actually doing things with that. Um, with that, um, power that they feel and with that en, empowerment that they are given access to I think is pretty remarkable given how easy it is to feel like you don't have any influence whatsoever on a tech platform or in a world where the algorithms aren't necessarily public and you don't really know what goes where and what's making, um, anything, you know, show up on your, your search, you know, when you're, when you're searching anything on the Internet that people will feel motivated enough to come together, have a shared goal that no one is necessarily paying them to do or are asking them to do or telling them to do. And then doing it in a, in a real meaningful way and having the potential to really influence the outcome of something. To me that feels, um, like they do feel that they have that, um, that they have that power in their own hands. Um, I'm not sure that's exactly answering the question, but... Tanja: 21:29 Yeah, I think I will, I will also follow up on that actually. Um, because I'm also, um, uh, kind of confused on how exactly the process also works. Um, so basically, um, as far as I understood is, um, the community has a power with the tokens. So that's how everything works, right? You can punish someone if you, or if you, how do you punish someone? Do you take away their tokens? Um, or do you just... Nicole: 22:04 I'll tell you a little bit about the sort of process and then it'll hopefully make it a little clear of kind of how it works. So when a newsroom first wants to join the registry is what you call it. So basically to appear to have your newsroom, your newsrooms name, its picture and a description of it appear

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on the civil registry. You first have to apply. So if you're a newsroom, you have to put up $1,000 worth of tokens. Um, you have to fill out an application form and then your newsroom, um, goes into a queue that is basically uh, I forget if it's 10 days or 14 days, I think it's 10 days during which time the community has a chance to look you over, evaluate you and decide whether you should be allowed to just continue on and get on by default or whether anyone should challenge you, um, for a vote on whether or not there are concerns about your newsrooms that should be addressed. Nicole: 23:00 Um, and so there are newsrooms that have gone straight through without challenge and then they can be challenged at any time along the future. And then there are newsrooms that have been challenged and they have been voted off in a subsequent vote by the community. Um, but the first sort of initiating step is a newsroom applying. And then the second initiating step is if someone chooses to challenge that newsroom, which requires in order to ff.., to launch the challenge, the challenger has to put up $1,000 worth of tokens to match. So both the newsroom and the challenger both have $1,000 at stake. Um, and then depending on the outcome of the vote, one of them gets 500 of the other person's dollars and the rest of the money goes to the voters that voted with the winning side. Tanja: 23:46 Ya. Okay. And, um, is there also a higher, um, a higher power, um, after, for example, what if what if the whole, um, uh, all of the readers of one newsroom decide to join the community to just vote for this one newsroom and then they vote it in, even though it doesn't really comply with the rules of the platform? Nicole: 24:11 So, um, in order to prevent that kind of mob rule that you're describing where people, they're not voting right, or they're, um, you know, they're just voting out of power, but they're not necessarily voting out of principal. Um, the, uh, civil council exists at the second level, so let's say one of the newsrooms that's currently under challenge, um, is being challenged unfairly. Um, and then uh successfully voted off the platform. They have, I think 10 days to appeal to the civil counsel. And the appeal also costs money. So the newsroom have then have to pay 10,000 to appeal their, um, uh, their newsroom. I'm sorry, 1000 worth of tokens to appeal their newsroom to, uh, the civil counsel. And then the civil counsel has to decide whether or not they agree, kind of like the court system, whether they agree with the lower court's decision or whether they want to overturn it. So either way, the council has to give an explanation for their decision, um, and then they have to give their decision publicly. And if they decide to reinstate the newsroom onto the registry, they have to say why. And if they decide to support the, um, existing vote, then they just declined to hear the appeal. Tanja: 25:23 Ah, okay. Yeah. And the same goes for say, an article or a journalist inside a newsroom is challenged? Nicole: 25:32 Good question. So at this point, the atomic unit of the platform is the newsroom itself. We don't at this time recognize individuals within a newsroom. So, for example, um, anything that happens within that newsroom, regardless of who the writer is or whether they're staff or

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whether they're freelance or whether they're an editor, whether they're reporter, that all... The only venue through which to, um, to bring that up is through the newsroom itself. There's no smaller unit at this time, um, to just say, I like this news organization, but I just don't like this one person that works for it. Um, so we don't have that at this time. Tanja: 26:11 Okay. Um, and how is blockchain technology, um, or what blockchain technology actually providing for this process? Nicole: 26:23 So there's two answers. One is that the tokens themselves, the votes are, um, part and parcel of a blockchain, um, process. So the entire idea of being able to vote on, uh, um, challenge the way in which you vote isn't your typical sort of submit your votes and they'll be tallied by a human. It's all, um, blockchain based, um, the, the people doing the voting and the, and us running the registry, we have no idea what the vote outcome is as it's coming in because it's all through the blockchain. So it's all secret until people come back and reveal their votes. So there's no chance of anybody kind of internally or externally who happened to get access. No one can see which way the vote is going and then decide to vote with the winning authority. Um, there's no swaying the vote, you know, through, through that strategy. Nicole: 27:25 And then, um, and then everyone goes back and reveals their votes, which is also happening through the blockchain, which is basically, you know, everybody turns their cards face up and then you see, you know, who won. Um, and, um, and then the other piece about this that the blockchain enables is some of the actual day to day of the newsroom. So the way in which the newsrooms are going to archive their stories, um, permanently, the way in which newsrooms are gonna potentially, you know, accept micro tips. All of that is all blockchain specific. Um, some of which is just blockchain as archive and some of which are blockchain as form of, of, um, compensation. But, um, but I would say if you're just talking about sort of accountability and the registry, that's how blockchain is specifically applied. Um, with the caveat that there is a section of the constitution that mentions a newsroom being responsible to, um, preserve some kind of an archive of their content and make it available to the public. Nicole: 28:29 And one of the ways in which, um, we're encouraging newsrooms to do that is however, is good for their newsrooms or whether it's just a central server, um, or, um, getting their stories picked up by, um, you know, archiving organizations like LexisNexis or you know, things like that. Or in addition to that, having a redundancy layer of archiving them to the blockchain so that they are permanently permanent for the duration of however long the blockchain exists. So those are some of the, and also using, um, I don't know if you're familiar with IPFS, but also having a link back through IPFS that, um, you know, has a record of the story. Tanja: 29:10 Okay. Okay. And can you already assess how this is going? Um, or also how, um, journalist might have, have to change their day to day practice? Um, because of this new process?

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Nicole: 29:28 Mhm, it's still very early. Um, any amount of data that's come in is pretty, um, probably not statistically, um, scientific. But I would say that, um, there are already a lot of things that journalists have to do every day and anytime you add something on top of that, something's going to have to give. So, um, I think part of what I'm excited about, um, to the extent that I've been able to contribute anything here is the perspective of the one more itis. It really kills journalists because, um, there was a time when reporters reported, writers wrote and photographers took pictures and editors wrote the headlines and you know, people would distribute distributing your, you know, news meant delivering a paper to somebody's front door. So now those are all the responsibility of every single journalist plus, you know, plus marketing, plus branding plus, um, you know, video plus.. Nicole: 30:38 So, I mean there are so many things that one person has to do inside of their own daily operations that um adding things on top of that. Like now you have to permanently archive your stories. Um, it should be done really sparingly and really respectfully, um, because journalists have a lot to contend with already. And, um, and that said, it's also a privilege to be able to take responsibility for something that had been in the hands of people who maybe didn't have journalism as their top priority. They had bottom line and making the board happy. And, and so I think there's also power in it, um, to, to give the option of how are we going to fulfill our mandate to our readers and what do we think profit should look like and how do we think we should respond when the community has concerns is also empowering as it is, um, time consuming. Tanja: 31:37 Yup. Yup. And also the same goes for the community, right? Cause they don't, they are not just a passive consumer anymore, but they also have to take an active part. Um, is, is that, is that working out? Like, can you, can we see that they are actually, so yeah, ... Nicole: 31:57 Yeah again, it's very small and very early days, but we have seen, um, kind of coalitions of many people who are not journalists, but who are avid news consumers joining forces with people who are journalists who feel very, very strongly about the way that they want this to turn out. Um, and creating these, um, kind of teams of people who feel a shared mission of high quality news and, and that to them it's not just words, they really, really mean it and they're really, it's taking a ton of work, to investigate a newsroom, to look up their website, to find old stories, to look at them against other versions of that same news event to see if they are, um, if they're accurate or if they, I mean that's a level of scrutiny that normally maybe copy editors would, you know, be responsible for. And that is a highly trained, highly professionalized position. Nicole: 33:07 Um, and, and these are volunteers doing this. So, um, it is encouraging because there's been a lot said and written about the, um, shrinking media literacy space and that people struggle to know the distinction between news and opinion and they struggle to know the difference between original reporting and aggregation. And so there's, there's been a lot made about media literacy and how do you actually allow for that. And I'm certain that

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there are many, many ways to accomplish that and very good work is being done in that space. And if, if any part of this also can contribute into a practical, meaningful education for people on, when you say good reporting, what do you mean by that? What do I mean by that? And what does the other person mean by that? And each of us may have very different definitions of what we think, even even within journalism and then journalism to tech and tech to, um, you know, um, audience. And I think people have very different definitions of what it is they think is good. Tanja: 34:16 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's why it' also so interesting that it's all happening through this discourse that you mentioned through all these different parties. Um, I was also wondering whether this discourse, um, has also enforced kind of a decentralization of accountability? Nicole: 34:39 That's a really good question. I, I think right now it's been highly decentralized because at this time the moderation has been very, um, very light. Um, and most of it has been self guided by the community with some code of conduct and some, you know, expectations and the policies about, you know, harassment and um, and hateful speech and things like that. Um, that really, this is very much a community driven. Tanja: 35:10 Hmm. Hmm. So, um, overall would you say that um a journalism based on blockchain is a feasible mechanism to contribute to this kind of accountability now? Nicole: 35:29 I think it's a tool. I don't know if blockchain itself drives the accountability or whether blockchain is the, um, infrastructure through which you could exact that accountability. I think it would be possible that I will, I will say that I think one thing that blockchain enables in terms of accountability is the record. It's the record of either the stories themselves or it's the record of the vote or it's the record of the ways in which these newsrooms have changed their charters or their descriptions of themselves over time. It's the foundational principle that I think, um, you know, this sort of Satoshi white paper that the idea is everything has to be in writing in the public permanently so that you don't just have to take someone's word for a thing, you can see it for yourself. And that does dovetail, I think very well with some of the principles of journalism and the principles of accountability, which is if a community can see what a newsroom said then and what they say now and what they say in the future, um, then they're empowered to act on that information in whatever form that takes. Nicole: 36:54 Whether it's, um, just communicating with the people that work there or whether it's bringing up concerns or, or more severe. Um, and so I think that having a groundwork of, uh, of the principle of the idea that, um, even though there's some elements of vetting happening on the registry, that the vetting isn't being done by a centralized institution that's doing what they're doing behind closed doors and that everyone else just has to sort of guess at what is making their decisions, but that it's actually kind of all out in plain view and, um, uh, you know, and that the vote tallies are there for each, each decision. And, um, I think it's certainly goes a long way toward the goal of, um, accountability and, and giving people tools through which to

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express that accountability. But at the end of the day, the accountability is, it comes down to the, the infrastructure itself and whether, you know, people are motivated to change in response to it. Tanja: 38:03 Yeah. That makes sense. Um, all right, well, thank you very much. I think, um, we basically covered all of my questions I had. Um, is there anything you want to add or deem as important that I might've forgotten? Nicole: 38:19 No, I think you have asked really great questions and I look forward to your summary. Tanja: 38:24 All right. Thank you very much. Oh, and um, one last question. Um, can I use your name in my research or should I make you anonymous? Nicole: 38:33 Good question. Um, I don't have a problem with you using my name in your research. Tanja: 38:38 Okay. All right. Um, thank you. And do you have any questions for me before? Nicole: 38:44 Where will the finished article or the finished research paper be distributed do you think? Tanja: 38:51 Um, well first I will, uh, if it's going to be published, it's going to be published at the University of Amsterdam. Um, as a research work. And then I will also write um a journalistic product about it, um, later on. Um, but in case any of this gets published, I can send you a link if you want to. Nicole: 39:15 That'd be great. So both, you will probably do a research paper and an article about your research. Tanja: 39:20 Uh, some uh, I'm not sure if it's going to be an article. It's going to be some kind of journalistic product. Um, but this will follow later after my thesis has been, uh, whatever happened to it. Nicole: 39:32 Sounds great. Well, good luck to you. Tanja: 39:34 Well, thank you very much and good luck with civil and am looking forward to reading a lot more about it. Nicole: 39:40 Thanks so much. Tanja: 39:41 Okay, bye. Nicole: 39:42 Bye bye

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Transcript E3

Interview investigative journalist

Transcript Fredrik Laurin, 19 April 2019

[Not in audio: Tanja: Before we start, is it ok if I record this interview? Fredrik: Yes. ] Fredrik: 00:00:00 If we do get to a point where you ask me something that I want to talk to you about that I don't want to be quoted up, I'll say so. Tanja: 00:00:08 Okay, perfect. That sounds very okay. Yes. Well thank you again that you found the time to talk to me about this. Um, I, as far as I understood, you are an investigative journalist from Sweden and you just did like a fellowship and studied blockchain journalism there. Um, can you just maybe elaborate a bit on what you've found in that field? Fredrik: 00:00:38 I'm, I'm uh, uh, investigative journalist since 20 years in Sweden, it's a very unusual to have worked in only one field too, so long and I don't think it's a good thing, but, but it's true. And excuse me if I'm um are you going to use the interview for radio or something? Because I'm, I have an allergy thing, so I'm doing this all the time. But Tanja: 00:01:06 Ah that's no problem. No Fredrik: 00:01:08 You're only using it for, for, to, to write it down or to listen to it often for yourself. Tanja: 00:01:14 Yes, it's, it's also, it's just gonna be academic research. So I would just use it like this. So not even audio will be used for or published. Fredrik: 00:01:23 Okay, good. Well I've been doing it for 25 years and I have one can say that I have a lot of experience in, in deep diving and very little experience in this any longer of sort of day to day reporting. I did that for five years of the Swedish news agency and then I got an apprenticeship at the investigative newsroom in Sweden. Now since then I've been doing this kind of thing. So I'm sort of used to the problems and the challenges of fake news or propaganda. And a company's trying to say that, no, no, no, no. We didn't bribe. No, no, no, no, no. I don't have any offshore accounts. And I mean that's just sort of my bread and butter. So then my family thinks that I'm the, uh, chairman of the cynicist's society. I don't know if that's the correct wording but I think you understand what I'm saying. And I, and I, in a sense, I am, uh, I don't, and that's bad, but it's also good. And I was the editor for Swedish politifact. You know what politifact is? Tanja: 00:02:39 Yeah, yeah. Fredrik: 00:02:41 I was the... We had elections in September, 2018 and before that we, at Swedish television we created a copycat of politifakt. And I did that for nine months, something like that. Six, eight, nine months. And that's also a very interesting sort of different, uh, look at things because then you don't deep

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dive into trying to find a corporate bribery or something. You, you the green say, oh uh, the polar bears are, are dying because of climate change. And then they show a bear that's really starved and everybody goes crying. And then you check out that bear and it turns out that the bear is living in an area where the bears, the bears are fine and the bear is starving because of something else that I don't remember anymore. And this is different kind of uh a challenge, but the same kind of thing that I think this is what journalism is all about. Trying to challenge uh big and small lies and getting the facts right, the report, what's relevant. And this is something that I uh I'm thinking a lot about and I'm seeing that how we have a crisis in journalism that's a financial crisis. But that crisis is not really ours. We identify with it because our employers are not paying our wages anymore. But it's really not our product that has any problem with it. Quite the opposite. What we can see is that other uh the ones who took over from our publishers, they are, they are making a lot of money from exactly the same thing, selling ads and it's just a question on but uh they have, they are getting into the same problem as our publishers had: how to define what's right and wrong. How did they find what's good or not good? And this, I mean, they are good at technology, but they are super, super naive at what it means to handle techno.... Uh sorry, content. So they get into a lot of trouble. Uh, increasingly they tried to automate it, but they can't, for example, Facebook automated, uh, nipples, female nipples, they told uh the algorithm to remove those. And it did also when the Norwegian Aftenposten did a special on photos that changed the world, and they showed the picture of, I forget her name and I can't pronounce it, it's a Vietnamese girl that now lives in Canada and she is running down the street and there is, she has her clothes burned by napalm and the algorithm and Zuckerberg can't distinguish between those nipples and pornographically shown nipples. So it was censored. And the interesting thing is that ok, so they tried with an algorithm but then after Boston protested of course, and then a person, a person that Facebook has to employ is starting to, this is what he looks at it and, and not only bans the picture but also bans all of aftenposten. And this is so interesting because it really shows how naive they are and what an uphill battle they have and I think that they are what they're going to do because they are business oriented and smart, is that they are going to identify this problem. I mean, it's not like they haven't identified it. They are. And what they will do is they will replace the, the uh, Springers and the, uh Balmeers in Sweden and the Sulzbergers uh, in America with Google and Facebook. And then we need to be very careful because who are they? Et Cetera, et cetera. And to get to blockchain: in a sense, we could, we are growing apples in our garden. We are, we have an idea about how to grow apples. We know that it's a bad idea to go to market with rotten apples at the bottom of the cage. You only sell apples once if you put nice ones on top, but you have rotten once in the bottom. We know that. And we know a little bit about putting them in the box so that they don't rott, yadayadayada. Uh, and the question is, could we sell our apples without the Springers and the Sulzbergers and the Zuckerbergs. And that's where blockchain comes in. Because if I can, if I can produce the kind of content that my employers

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have been very grateful for me and my colleagues producing for the last 25 years, uh, and deliver it to the audience who is the real customer? Well then there's, we might never get rid of the middleman, but the middle of the, the, the strength of the middlemen. The clients. So that's what I, that's what that was my sort of take on this blockchain idea. Uh, yeah. I should stop so that you can also ask a question now and then. Tanja: 00:08:33 Um, but, how have you already worked with blockchain or are you just looking into the concept? Fredrik: 00:08:41 I'm just looking into the concept, but I've done it for nine months. On and off. Tanja: 00:08:48 Oh wow Fredrik: 00:08:48 Follow, No, no, no, no, no. Come on. Not, not, I mean, I worked daily for a month on my report. Did you look at my report? Tanja: 00:08:55 No, I didn't get a chance yet. Is it online? Fredrik: 00:08:59 Oh, I thought I sent you a link. Sorry, I might have fallen asleep and I published my report the other day as our, what do you call it, graduation or whatever. We sort of hand in a report to the fellowship uh, but don't worry, it's a, it's there and it's, it is understatement. Dot. Laurin dot x, Y, z. Fredrik: 00:09:30 So basically what I did over these nine months is that I've read what I've come across when it comes to blockchain journalism and media critic because it fairly quickly dawned on me when I got my head around what, you know, Bitcoin, the blockchain. I know a little bit about it because I, I bought some bitcoins 2015 and I've not played a lot with it, but also tried to build a bitcoin miner. And, uh, I've done some research on ransomware, uh, where, where they were using bitcoins, et cetera. So I have a fair understanding of how cryptocurrencies work so that I didn't really need to practice so much. It was more the technology wise I needed to understand, what is civil, you know, civil, right? Tanja: 00:10:25 Yes, yes. Fredrik: 00:10:25 what are they trying to do? What is poet? Do you know poet? Tanja: 00:10:31 Yea yea, also. Fredrik: 00:10:31 What are they trying to do and how do they do it? So I had to learn these things about their file system ifps and, and a few other issues. And that when I, when I had gotten my head around that, it sort of dawned on me that the issue is not a technological, it's, it's, it's, it is a technological issue, but that's sort of, they have invented the wheel. The wheel might not be perfect. Definitely. It's not easy to put on and take off the car, but it's roundish and it's sort of working. Uh, so that's just a question of refining the technology, getting the user experience right, getting some standards set and what blockchain. And yada yada. That's not so interesting. The much more interesting part is what are we gonna use it for? Because if I, if I, if you and I started club like Civil does and say, uh, I'm a good journalist and it's Tanja, right? Tanja is a good journalist. We know each other, we like each other.

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So we're gonna stamp each other's work. That is in a sense a good idea because then we'd build a web of trust around us and then we can continue that web of trust and you, you let your friend, uh whatever John apply and uh and you vouch for him and I will then say, okay if Tanja vouches for John, then I'll accept him in. Great. That's like, you know what PGP is, right? Tanja: 00:12:28 Uh no. Fredrik: 00:12:28 Uh, it's pretty good privacy. It's encryption program for email, Internet standard since 20 years. And that's, that's what, how old are you? Tanja: 00:12:43 Uh I'm 28. Fredrik: 00:12:43 Yeah. Okay. 28, so 30. So yeah, it was, became internet standard in err 99 or something like that. It was invented by a guy called Phillip Zimmerman in the late eighties. And it is the, the, the, the de facto standard for email encryption. But it has like many things online. It has, uh, has sort of handling issues. It's, you know, if you are, if you're going to have a big gun, it's, there are many things that you need with a big gun. You need ammunition, you need to know how to handle it. You need the safety catch a, you don't need to know that you don't bring it into the bar, you know, when you're drunk, et cetera. So there are many things with PGP that makes it less usable, not because it's bad, but because it is, I mean, if you just hand the gun to everybody, sure, that's an idea, but then people are gonna kill each other and men are gonna shoot their wives and kids are gonna kill themselves. So you have to start regulating it and getting things in order. And that's what's very difficult to do on the Internet. But anyway, PGP is, uh, what was it I was talking about when I said PGP? Civil? Yes. They, they're uh because PGP has a similar, very interesting concept, which is the web of trust. Uh, and I won't get into that because you can just look into it if you're interested in, but that is way of certifying that Fred is really Fred. Um, and it's sort of similar to the concept to what Civil and poet does. But it's, it's more, it's better. It is much better. It's much more, it goes to much further lengths, PGP does. Anyway, that's just technology and that, that shows that these issues can be solved. But then John, that you brought in and then I vouch for vouched for, then he becomes, then he is offered a job at Siemens and they say can't you write some PR stuff for us because we have this bribery problem and uh, and now the press is gonna write about it. So can't you just write some stories saying that we are not bribing, that is nice [?] And then you and I get into a problem because how do we, how do we deal with that? And that's what civil is trying to deal with and poet is not trying to deal with. Poet just says we are certifying that Fred, someone called Fred, put this content on the blockchain at three o'clock today. Period. Civil says someone that we know is uh, Fredrik Laurin because he have, has identified himself to us and has gone through a number of checks and balances. Are you a civil member? Tanja: 00:16:10 Uhm, yes. I just became one actually. Fredrik: 00:16:15 Yeah, me too. It took a, it only took nine months, right?

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Tanja: 00:16:22 Yeah. It's not that easy. Fredrik: 00:16:23 Yea, terrible. Terrible, terrible. So, but uh, so they will say, we don't only know this, we don't, it's not only so that this guy called himself Fred is Fred according to his ID and Yada Yada, Yada, Yada. And when Fred or John starts doing stuff for Siemens and are no longer adhering to civil's constitution, then we all get together and I'm angry with John, so I say, let's throw him out and we vote and he gets thrown out. Hope hopefully. But that's, that is interesting. But I met Vivian Schiller. You know who she is? Tanja: 00:17:10 Yea yea yea. Speaker 1: 00:17:13 I met her at a conference in August, September sometime. It was at ONA in Austin and they were lauded as the future of journalism on the Internet by Amy Webb. You know who Amy is? Tanja: 00:17:30 Yeah. Fredrik: 00:17:31 Yea. It was really, you know, Amy Webb had this big keynote speech and she was telling us everything about what's going to happen tomorrow in her crystal ball. And then she brought up Vivian Schiller to, on the stage and said, applaud this woman because she's saving journalism. That it was really that way. Then there was sort of a conference and we have, we could ask questions and I think they were presenting the idea well and I, I totally understand what it's all about. But then I asked, well what do we do when Steve Bannon applies and they, they dodged the question and that, it sort of proves, that doesn't prove anything other than them not wanting to answer or them didn't understanding or whatever. So we shouldn't give them too much shit for that. But yeah, I think it's, it's sort of, it sort of pinpoints the problem because Steve is uh, you know, if he says he's gonna be a journalist and he's gonna abide by the civil constitution, there's no way we can say no to him. Huh? Tanja: 00:18:48 Yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Yup. Fredrik: 00:18:51 We can only say no when he starts running stories on, on what, what was it? It was called his site. Tanja: 00:19:01 Yeah Breitbart. Fredrik: 00:19:03 Breitbart, yeah. We can only only throw him out when he has started publishing stories on Breitbart that says that Muslims are bad or whatever. Tanja: 00:19:14 That actually um also relates to, um, my topic very well because I wanna specifically look how, um, accountability, you know, as, as the process of how you can measure how well the media are doing, how accountability can be achieved through blockchain technology and also on civil. Um. So, um, I th I think first, I think you already mentioned a few things. Um, what is wrong now because, um, I think my question would be how, how do you see accountability pre blockchain implemented in reality? Like in terms of, I don't know, transparency and uhm, ... Fredrik: 00:20:04 I write about that in the uh in the report. So, read that please. This sounds like this report written basically for you. And that's, that makes me very

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happy because I was wondering a lot during the month and I spent writing it. Why am I writing this? Who is ever going to read this? Who is faintly interested? So...but it sounds like you, you are really, you, you could, uh, you know, maybe you'll, you'll pick up something that you haven't thought about there, but what I'm thinking is that my analysis is that basically the, the, uh, the New York Times and uh, whatever Springers papers are, Tageszeitung or whatever, I don't know anyway, uh, they are the blockchains because if you apply for a job, if your name is Janet Cook and you apply for a job at the New York Times, you there? Tanja: 00:21:12 yes, yes. Fredrik: 00:21:12 Yup. Then they were gonna say, okay, great. You have this education and you worked in this, uh, uh, paper in Oregon and a Yada, Yada, Yada. And you seem to know your shit. So welcome, here is your, your pass to get into the building and you start on Monday and you could use sort of Monday and then, sorry. That was a bad uh. that was uh about uh, your name was Jason Blair, not Janet Cook. You started Monday and you start delivering like hell. You use, you, you write better stories than anybody and you've been everywhere. Uh, you know exactly out in the country who among the real Americans that the New York Time so dearly wants to say that they represent. So it's fantastic. And the editor, so super happy and you, I think you even win some prizes and then as your fame grows, someone in Oregon reads about you and your fantastic journalism. Yada yada yada. And how you learned that in Oregon, but the guy works at the paper and he know, he knows you've never worked there. He doesn't, he doesn't know anybody about that name. So he starts asking questions and the whole thing blows up. You just made it all up. You know about Jason Blair's story? Tanja: 00:22:43 Yeah, I've read about it. Fredrik: 00:22:45 Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Hmm. And his, there wasn't, there was another person called Janet Cook that was 10 years before him. She was at the Washington Post. It was exactly the same thing. She made it, she made up a drug addict. The story about a 10 year old heroinist, living a block or two from the White House. Tanja: 00:23:09 Ah. Okay. Yeah. We also had recently that case in Germany from the guy from Spiegel. Relotius? Fredrik: 00:23:18 Yeah Relotius yeah, yeah, yeah. Claus. Claus and Jason and Janet are all in my report. So what happens then? Well, then the editors of, of the New York Times, they get very upset. And the chief editor having, is having trouble at the Pulitzer prize dinner because everybody's laughing at him and Yada, Yada, Yada. And they have a crisis meeting. So what do they, do they, of course fire, uh, uh, Jason, he gets fired, but they also fire the, his closest editor, and the head editor is also being questioned. The owners, the Sulzbergers are protecting their property by thinking about firing the head editor, chief editor. But the chief editor still has a lot of power and whatever. So he manages to cling on, but if not, I think two or three other editors are getting fired for not doing their job in checking what the journalist is doing.

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The fact checking. Yeah. So this is the blockchain, but in a sort of a social web of trust. And I think that's, and that has been working with fairly well at least as long as the printing press was, was an asset that the Springers or, or, or the Sulzbergers or covered it that they really wanted to keep because it was producing a lot of money for that. That's why they paid attention. But I think part of the crisis in the media is because a lot of media companies are owned by families and they have had a uh a succession of generation, you know, the [inaudible]. They have, they have not promoted their leaders through merit, our merits. They have promoted them on blood. Tanja: 00:25:34 Okay, okay. Yeah. So you, so you would say that the biggest struggles of online accountability or in our age is basically that everything is in this web of trust that's just based on connection and family and yeah. Fredrik: 00:25:55 No, that's not the only thing, but it is an important thing. It's, no, no, actually you got me wrong there. I'm, I'm saying that that's, I'm describing the old way that accountability was done uh in the media. Today uh, accountability is done the same way at the New York Times. I mean look Relotius. He happens. You have those 2018 or 19. And [inaudible] is considering themselves and or others by others considered to be the inventors of factchecking? Basically. And no one, no one did their job. So that's best describing the old model. But the new model is what we talked about before, what I talked about: Facebook trying to, to sort of uh, get the rule of the right kind of nipples to stay and the wrong, the wrong kind of nipples to go. Tanja: 00:27:03 Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Fredrik: 00:27:05 They are just, but they are like newborn babies. They are doing all the mistakes and they are putting their... Tanja: 00:27:14 Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. So in your personal opinion, who do you feel or who should journalist feel most accountable to today? Is it the state or the public or the profession? Fredrik: 00:27:33 We uh we only have one, one accountability. What do you say? We only have one. There's only one thing. Our assets. The only thing that separates me from the average Joe on the street is that I have a professional training to claim some kind of trust with the audience. Not the government, I don't work for the government. I don't work for Springer. I don't work for Sulzbergers. They might pay my wages. As they do in Sweden. I worked for the public service, you know? NDR or something. Uhm. So they are paying my wage and they are supplying the, the transmitter in my case or the printing press, but they are not the people that I work for. And that also, uh makes my position very, uh, strange in a sense, if you compare our, or my position to someone who works in a factory or in the shop or in a company of general, you know, making cars. If you work at Ford, you work for Ford. Your job is to sell more Fords. Uh, not to make the cheapest and safest car for, for the general public. That's, that's the decision of the owner of Ford. Tanja: 00:29:09 Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I understand. Yeah.

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Fredrik: 00:29:13 So I only work for them for the public of the [inaudible]. Sounds very prestigious. But, but that's, that's who I work for. That's who I'm getting my, uh, what's the word? Mandate from, yeah, the public. And that's why, that's why blockchain is interesting. If you can implement this so that it doesn't take nine months to get, get on board with civil. And so that when you click on a, see if you click on my web page, you will see that I am, I have stamped my stories with uh certified by poet. Uh, uh, that will take you to a site, poet's, site poets explorer and that will show you my content stored on their server. And if you click on that on the bitcoin uh image there, you will be taken to uh bit the bitcoin chain where the hash of that content is stored. And I mean that's ridiculous. Uh, that's, that is a proof of concept. But it's ridiculous in the sense of think about my mother or your mother, our audience. If she is reading a story like the one I've been describing in the piece there, the story of the defecating in the church. That is a story that was widely spread on Facebook and it could well have showed up in my mother or your mother's feed. Tanja: 00:30:52 Mhmm. Fredrik: 00:30:54 And my thought is that if they, they are probably, you know my mother is smart, but sometimes under informed. I mean if she sees some, that's something about someone shitting in the church, she would get upset and she will say, this is too much. I'm all, no, I'm, I'm spreading this to my friends. But now she knows that that story was not true because the story that she got was a story about Muslim refugees shitting in a Christian Church. But that's not true. It was drug addicts that were in a drug clinic across the street and they were Swedish. So next time she might think twice before sharing that story and if she can, if since she's smart but under informed, if she could, you know, say to herself, oh oh wait a minute, maybe this is also fake news. Like the last one. Uh, oh, let's see. Here it says certified by poet. If she, if she would click there and in the foot of a one click thing could have a stamp that persuaded her to, ah this actually comes from a real journalist who has profession, who has a web of trust around him. He's a member of Swedish journalists society or whatever. That's what I'm, yeah. See that's the possible outcome of this. Tanja: 00:32:41 So...if you... Fredrik: 00:32:44 But today, it's ridiculous. Today it's just a proof of concept. Tanja: 00:32:47 Yeah. So if you had to name one factor, like what would be the most important factor for you to establish accountability? Fredrik: 00:33:02 For whom? Tanja: 00:33:05 Um, for, for, um, to hold the journalist accountable basically. So is it what you just mentioned? Is it the trust factor? Um, or is it more that, um, your mother or anyone can see that, uh, where everything comes from? So that there's like this whole line of transparency. Um, or is there one or is there even one factor that is, would you,

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Fredrik: 00:33:40 No I think there are a number of factors, but what, what was the first factor you have mentioned? Tanja: 00:33:48 Um trust, um, meaning, um, this, for example, the certified stamp or also what civil does that when a newsroom is, um, on uh, is part of the civil fleet. Then they also get this little sign on their webpage. It says, okay, this newsroom runs in civil. And so, you know, okay, I can trust them. Um, they will be held accountable by the civil um constitution or something. Fredrik: 00:34:20 Yeah, no, no, I think that's, that's, that's important. The trust is important and the transparency is important because, uh, like Relotius or, or, or, or Janet Cooke or something... They were part of the civil, they had, you know, signed the civil constitution. They were part of the civil newsroom. They were held accountable. Not. But they were supposed to be held accountable by the editors of their papers. But it worked. So I think the trust, yes, but then transparency and with transparency, I think blockchain is very important. I mentioned two, two uh sort of the in the, in my, in my, in the paper in front of you, there are two little examples of that. One is how a Swedish outlet, a news outlet, published a story about a little boy who disappeared in Tennessee and then was found. At least the guy claimed that he was the little boy and then what they did without any real, more, more effort is that they found the police reports, uh, where uh of the two police men who found the guy who claimed he was the boy and they put that police report on document cloud. You know what document cloud is? Tanja: 00:35:53 Yes, yes. Fredrik: 00:35:54 And then they linked to that in their story. Okay so you read this news story saying the police in Tennessee have found a boy who says, here, this is seven year gone, Timothy, whatever the case is being investigated and here's the link to the police report. Well that gives credibility because that that will get, that showed us, not the truth, but it showed us that there was a police report what the police, the district boss, there was the name of the police officers and such [inaudible] But it basically just said the same thing, that the story said. But if, if you had some thoughts, if you had some ideas, if you didn't think that that this was true, well you could at least read the police report. That could of course be found falsify, but still it's taking it one step further. And then there's another example, which I think is very interesting. That uh the a British documentary maker made a film basically based on the statements of two two witnesses or not witnesses two two victims. They, they were both victims of Michael Jackson and his child abuse. And he has been accused of that many times, but he's always either sort of been acquitted by, by the judicial authorities, police, et Cetera, or at least in one case he's made a deal with the boy's family and everything went away. But now this documentary filmer does the story where two of Michael Jackson's, uh, child friends, you know, spoiled boys at the time and now all grown ups sit in front of the camera and give detailed witness about how they were abused again and again and again during x years at Neverland farm. And of course that blows up and gets very sort of, uh, get a lot of attention. But then Michael Jackson's biographer who has written a

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book about Michael Jackson and who is sort of, I think it doesn't really matter who he is, but I think he's supportive of Michael Jackson, I think so. It doesn't matter. But what he does is that he's, he sees that one of the boys says, I was abused, Eh, over two years. It was two years that I went to, to, to Neverland. And he abused me every time and he always did it on in the attic of the train station and it was in the years x and the years y. So he's very definitive. He says it was abused during a certain time and then it stopped at a certain time and it always happened there on the, in the attic of the train station. And then the biographer, he knows the story of Michael Jackson so well, but he, he realizes that there's a problem here and he goes to the Santa Barbara Department of buildings and he gets the building permit for, uh, the, the, the actual train station of Neverland. And that place got the building permit two years after the boys said that the abuse stopped. Tanja: 00:39:24 Oh, okay. Yeah. Fredrik: 00:39:27 And that's a fantastic example of how putting something on document cloud, uh certifying, you know, I had been in the situation that this documentary filmer is in. Uh, no, I actually shouldn't have said that but I've done many such documentaries talking to witnesses, uh, getting a lot of documentary evidence for stuff then I put out 60 minutes of all the people talking and myself talking. And maybe I show a few documents online. But basically it's just the people. And then you run it and then you get upset. Then my mother gets upset and everybody's upset then and and someone has to go. But very very seldom do I get to put the, the actual material online. Tanja: 00:40:18 Mhmm, mhmm. Yeah. Fredrik: 00:40:20 We have tried to do that. We have taken selected parts, uh, put it online. You know whole interviews, not just the edited parts to prove that we didn't edit it in a, in a bad way or something. So we've done that when we've been challenged. We've never done it with everything as as a rule. And I always thought, you know, I have my whole office at home. I have a whole wall full of uh it's also on paper unfortunately. So I'm going to scan it someday and put it in the computer and then throw the paper away, but I can't, I can't throw these things away. They're, you know, 20 years worth of investigative work. In the early days I might have five binders of papers for one story. Tanja: 00:41:07 MMM hmm. Fredrik: 00:41:09 And those binders are full of information and stuff. And that could be shared with the public. Most of it, 95% of it could be shared with the public. Tanja: 00:41:19 Yup. Yup. Fredrik: 00:41:20 And it could be cert... I could put it on document cloud. I could put a poet uh stamp on it and on document cloud it would be OCRed and searchable. And if you hear about a story I've done, you could verify the story but also find the documents. You know, I get run over by a car or, or whatever. You could still go and find the actual documentation for what I did.

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Tanja: 00:41:51 Yeah. So that, that also means that the community or the readers basically plays such a bigger role than just passive news consumption in this kind of concept. Um, but that also kind of leads me to the next question. Um, how much is the readership now also accountable because they are, they are now part of the process because for them, sometimes they have to or they are able to verify. They're able to see the mistakes. And also when it comes to a platform like civil, they can even, they even have, um, the opportunity to take active part in the process by buying the tokens. And it's someth... uh... Fredrik: 00:42:42 They can go in and say Fred is bad. Uh, I don't want him. Yeah, sure. But I don't think, I don't think that's ever gonna happen to any large extent. My mother is a teacher, she's not a journalist, she's a consumer of news. She wants to have the relevant true information presented to her in a, in a way that's easily consumable. Uh, you know, she, she votes in the parliamentary elections because she's a good citizen. But she, I don't, I mean she's also a member of the local coop, you know, the, the, the, the shop, the local grocery shop. That uh corporate, but I don't think that she goes to the annual meetings and votes for more green apples. I think she'd leave that to them. But she wants to support them because she thinks it's a good idea with the coop. She might by into civil to support it. But to have her vote yes or no to Steve Bannon or to Fred, it's gotta take a lot of energy. Tanja: 00:43:53 Ah ok. So you think such an active news consumption is not realistic basically? Fredrik: 00:44:01 Sorry, say again. Tanja: 00:44:03 So in your opinion, such an active news consumption is not really feasible or realistic? Fredrik: 00:44:11 I don't, I never think the public is going to, to be, you know, they might well have the right to do it. I don't have any problem with my mother owning part of the system being, having a vote of the system of whether you and I should be allowed to be journalists or be allowed to be in the civil newsroom. I don't have a problem with that. That's fine. But I don't think we should count on them to be active members. I think we, the professionals have to be the ones who look out for Steve Bannon. Tanja: 00:44:48 Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But do you think that, um, even if they now have the right and the possibility to be active also in this process, do you think that somehow changes the responsibilities of the journalist? Fredrik: 00:45:11 Uh in theory no. That's because it's the same responsibilities that we always had. Get the facts, report uh I mean persuade the, the, the guy, the witness to tell, tell you the story and, and check out the story that that he is correct. And then report it in a relevant way for my mother so she can read it at her, you know, morning paper. But so those things aren't, haven't changed. But if the accountability becomes uh more present, like uh, for example, if make it a routine to throw all your documents into document cloud and poets stamps and, and make a one click link for my mother to click on it, well then it starts getting interesting because then it will be much harder for relotius or, or, or even Bannon uh, to fake a story.

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Tanja: 00:46:13 Yeah. Yeah. Fredrik: 00:46:14 And if you, if prior to that, I put up all my stuff on, on, on document cloud and I stamp it with a blockchain, et cetera. But you don't, well I think in the end you're gonna lose. And I gonna win because if we get into a debate and you say, oh, Siemens is fantastic. And I say, no, no, Siemens is bribing. And look here what I reported and here are all the documents, but you are just writing a story quoting some Siemens executive who says, no, no, we're nice guys. I mean we have a lot of stories like that that the business, uh, papers, Siemens guys saying that, uh saying that they are nice guys and they don't bribe. But that's just bullshit. I mean that's, we know that now with hindsight, we know that the Siemens guys were lying. So if you do a story for a German business paper interviewing the CEO of Siemens because of these accusations from Fred and other journalists and he says, oh no, no, no, no, no, no. That's not us. If you walk away as journalist with those quotes, but didn't ask the question of, well, can you show me your, your company records? And if he doesn't do that, well then you need to report that and then, then, then you have done your part of the job. But if you report that, and you say, oh, he showed me the records, but you don't show them to me? The audience? I think that that is my, my whole takeaway from this nine months of studying this. That we, I am hoping that accountability through technology can help force journalists to professionalize. Tanja: 00:48:23 Mm hmm. Yeah. Do you think that um, this would be realistic or have you spoken to other journalists because that also means that a lot of them will have to adapt their practices they've been used to for a long time, um. Fredrik: 00:48:45 I'm writing in my piece that I think we should put Bob Woodward on the garbage heap and go forward with, with the civil [inaudible] and other initiatives. We have to move forward to have someone who did the Washin... who did the the Pentagon no, no, no, no. Watergate. Fantastic job that has taught us all so much. But since then he has basically been meeting with secret sources in the US government, telling him how it is and him writing in books how it is. And we are all full of [awe?] because oh, this guy has such connections and his sources are so good. And most of the time it's all correct. It's, it works. It works fine. So I'm not saying that he is making it up. That's not at all my point. I don't think he does, but I think his very cozy connection with power is potentially potentially corrupting him. Maybe he chooses to publish what is good for his source, but not what is not good for his source. But I'm not, I had no proof, but just the, just the thought, just the thought ... makes it less interesting than journalists whose name I don't even need to know. But who will put raw material on the blockchain proving that it belongs to him and that he posted it, et cetera. And that this document says that. And the the interview with, with Tanja said that and she had the interview actually at, at three 30 with Fred and the therefore we can say that, uh, two 30, she didn't know what he was gonna say, et Cetera, et cetera. You know, this kind of accountability. Tanja: 00:50:50 Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Um, do you also think...

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Fredrik: 00:50:55 Yeah I have to go away to the shop. Uh, do you want to come with me on the phone or is that gonna, it might be a bit uh, you might be listening to my car a little bit. Is that ok? Tanja: 00:51:07 That is okay. That is okay. I think also, I only have two more questions and then, um, Fredrik: 00:51:13 Okay, cool. But I'll, I'll get into the car now and we keep talking and I'll, uh, yeah, I'll just keep answering and you tell me where you can't hear my Tanja: 00:51:23 Ok. Sounds perfect. Um, I was also wondering because a big part of, um, all these platforms that are using blockchain is also audience participation. So basically a lot of them try it. Fredrik: 00:51:39 What are they doing? Tanja: 00:51:41 Uh, they, they try to, um, make a connection between the journalist and the reader somehow. And also, for example, um, making journalists more accountable so that they read online comments and respond to comments from users or that they respond to errors they made, um, online. Fredrik: 00:52:04 That's part of the constitution there etc. One moment, [talks in Swedish with someone else...] I'm with you, Tanja Tanja: 00:52:37 Alright, ok. Fredrik: 00:52:39 Well, you know what, what I should do, we are now, I'm now leaving the Wifi. I'm going on 4G, so I should I should disconnect to Wifi and connect on 4G because otherwise that's gonna happen when I drive, hang on. I'm, I'm, I'm hanging up on you, but I'll call you back. Tanja: 00:52:59 All right, cool. Fredrik: 00:53:02 Bye. Tanja: 00:53:41 Hello? Fredrik: 00:53:43 Yes, hello, Tanja. Tanja: 00:53:44 Okay, perfect. Good. Fredrik: 00:53:48 So, uh, where were we? You had a question. Tanja: 00:53:53 Oh yeah, I was, I was asking about the uhm audience participation, like how journalists, um, especially when it comes to blockchain applications are, um, or should basically interact more with the readers, like by responding to the comments or also they kind of have to, when they make an error, they also have to publish it afterwards again, because as far as I understood, you can't alter anything that you added to the blockchain. So all you can do, if an error occurred, you have to publish it again and say, sorry. Fredrik: 00:54:35 Yeah, exactly. Tanja: 00:54:38 Okay. But I can also imagine that a lot of journalists might not want to participate more with their readership. Fredrik: 00:54:47 Why not? Why don't you think so? Tanja: 00:54:49 Um, mostly because of other studies I read, um, that it's,

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Fredrik: 00:54:56 That we want to do that. Aha. Interesting. Tanja: 00:54:59 Or that, that it could be a problem. Um, and I mean it's not, it's not fact because obviously you can't measure it, but I was just wondering what your opinion on that was, whether you think it's actually whether you think it was a good idea to participate more with the audience or whether you think that, um, in general that's something that journalists probably still won't do unless they have to or, yeah,... Fredrik: 00:55:28 I think they are, I have some experience of that. And I think they are, I'm not interested in talking to uh, to everybody in the audience. I, when I get, when I, when we run the story, we have a lot of interaction with the audience. Now we go online, we have chats, we have facebook and we have emails and yada yada yada. Uh, and that is very important. So I, I like interacting. But, it is important. I often get new tips about the next story. Uh, and I also see if we have any errors or I see the debate, where the debate is going, et cetera. So that's important, but it's also very important that I can say to the caller well, thank you very much. I'm done. Thank you for calling. Now have to take the next call, uh, that, uh, that you think that the Martians are coming and the, that is really the, the reason for this problem. I find it very interesting. Thank you so much. Goodbye. There are many people who think that we shouldn't take vaccines that, uh, you know, Muslims are defecating in the church or whatever and that might like, I don't, I'm not interested in a system where I have to, uh, talk to everybody who wants to talk to me about Muslims defecating in the church. Tanja: 00:57:03 Okay. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Fredrik: 00:57:06 That's very important, so I can't be held accountable in the sense that I need to talk to everybody about everything because my job is, is knowing that no, chemtrails are not existing and no, vaccine has proven to save millions. It is not, et Cetera, et cetera. So that's my job. And therefore I can't be accountable to everybody every second. But if you contact me in some way and say that the story is wrong, then I must be accountable. Tanja: 00:57:46 Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense. Fredrik: 00:57:48 So yeah, it's very important because it's so easy to say that everybody must be accountable to everything. And then it's also the whole decision that the whole question about this, uh very important position of journalists that's protected at least. But in Swedish constitution, if I, if this was an interview, if you were a journalist in Sweden and this was an interview and I now said this information that I'm now telling you is meant for publication, but I request anononym an an anonymity, you would be bound by Swedish law to protect that anonymity whether you like it or not. Tanja: 00:58:30 Okay. Yea, yea. Fredrik: 00:58:32 Uh, that's not the same thing as me talking to you as as an academic et cetera, so I'm not, but I'm just, and that is super important and that, that anomity anonymity belongs to the source. It's not negotiable and it's my job to... If you are my source and I publish a story on what you have said and

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you have requested anonymity. Okay. So I don't write that it's Tanja. But I also are under obligation of the law and ethics to not write well this female academic from Holland or sorry from Germany who, who is investigating blockchain but who doesn't want her name put forward. See what I'm saying? But that's basically giving you your, your name away. So, I have to be, the journalist has to be the, uh, the person, turns all kind of documentation and the dense interviews can be shared. And everybody's going to be very angry with that because they're gonna say, well then there's no accountability that you just choose what you like and yada yada yada. But that I think is wrong because, uh, there's, there have been technical limitations for me to share those five binders of research that are in my bookshelf, with you. There's only one binder that's full of the secret interviews, the anonymous sources of the four other binders I could have copied and sent to you. But it was too complicated and costly. Tanja: 01:00:22 Yeah, yeah. Fredrik: 01:00:24 But today I can just put them in the scanner, stamp them, link them to me and put them on the document cloud. And let's, and I just say, well, if you don't believe me, just go in and read the interview. Here's the link. And that would make me more, much more accountable than than the journalist who says, no, no, I don't want to share material. Ah bla bla bla. Tanja: 01:00:46 Yeah. I think that that's a very nice example of where the fine line also is. Because for me, when I was, um, when I was reading about civil especially and how they do it, I was also wondering how, whether, because they promote their decentralization. It's like one of their main selling points is that it's a decentralized marketplace. Um, but when, when I'm, when I read all about how it worked, I was also wondering whether that would also mean that it's a decentralization of accountability itself. Because then if everybody's involved somehow and everybody's the judge of something, like who in the end can be held accountable if there are so many cooks cooking one recipe basically. And then it goes wrong. Who's to blame? So I think that was one of the or that is still one of the, uh, issues in my head that I have with this concept that they do. And um, yeah, I dunno... Fredrik: 01:01:56 [Did not want to be quoted on] Tanja: 01:05:33 Yup. Yup. So what would you say could be, or do you have any idea how a future model could look like? Um, ... Fredrik: 01:05:46 I think it's going to look like, like something in the middle. I think that Facebook is going to uh, employ journalists because they realize that it's a profession that has professional sort of advantages, there's a, there's a reason to employ Fred because Fred has, he's building, he's educated in journalism that's building on 500 years of experience. I'm doing exactly what we want him to have done and Fred is asking slightly more than than the the, the person in Manila. Uh, if we're gonna keep our business then we have to pay for it. Fred has competence. We pay for competence in the market in the marketplace. So that's what I think is going to happen. They are going to gradually move towards journalism, uh, and employ those, that

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professionalism and I think that journalism is going to move more towards Facebook in the sense that they are going to say, well of course we would put all material... The rule is that everything goes on document cloud and it's stamped by poet first. And that's basically what the kind of stuff that Facebook is very good at: automating these things and and uh. So I think that's where we going. The the media that are going to survive are the ones who can be transparent in an economically efficient way. Tanja: 01:07:26 Mhm Yeah. So the, so the blockchain will somehow find its way in journalism? Fredrik: 01:07:36 Yeah. But if we have, it's going to be the blockchain and with which blockchain, I have no idea. Uh you know, is it gonna be civil or poet or DNA or whatever. I don't know. Uh, but I think the technology definitely because, yeah. Yeah. In some way or other someone, and if I, if I start a company employing that and your company doesn't have that, I'm gonna win the real company. Tanja: 01:08:05 Ya, ya. So there's no way he rounded basically? Fredrik: 01:08:08 No, I don't think so. If you wanna survive, you have to, you have to, uh, um, employ transparency and... Well, basically journalism, you know? There's nothing new under the sun. Okay. I'm at the shop. Tanja: 01:08:27 Alright, well I'm, I'm also ready and done basically. Um...Is there anything you want to add or if you have questions for me, um... Fredrik: 01:08:40 I would like to ask a favor. That, is that when you read my report? Which I think you should because you are like the perfect reader. Tanja: 01:08:47 Yes. I would very much like it. Fredrik: 01:08:50 Can you please do me the favor? Because I, I was in a sense of course answering the questions that we have been talking about but I was also practicing in editing word press, getting my head around the poet and blockchain, and technology. So and the report is not, I mean I put it out because I think someone might be interested somewhere, but I'm sure it's full of of problems. Tanja: 01:09:22 Yea, I very much like to read it very much. Yes. Fredrik: 01:09:26 Tell me, tell me when you don't understand. Tell me when you think it's wrong. Tell me what you know it's wrong. Tanja: 01:09:34 All right. Would you be able to send it to me? Do you have it as a pdf? Fredrik: 01:09:39 Yeah. Yeah. Look at the, it is uh you can get it as a Ebook, as PDF, as word. It's all over there, it's all there on the page. Tanja: 01:09:49 Alright, if I don't find it i'll contact you again. Fredrik: 01:09:54 [inaudible] Tanja: 01:09:57 Okay. Okay. In case I won't find it, I will contact you again. Fredrik: 01:10:02 Well, yeah, but you got the, you know, I gave you the Url, right?

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Tanja: 01:10:06 Yes. I just wrote it down, I haven't checked it yet. Because my laptop is too slow. It doesn't do two things at once, so... Fredrik: 01:10:13 Okay. That's cool. Okay, just drop me an email if [inaudible] Tanja: 01:10:17 Okay. Okay. Thank you so much for the time and um, yes, I will read your report. I look forward to it. Fredrik: 01:10:27 Great. Thanks Bye.