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###KWANTA ONLINE APP

Objective: Develop a dapp that maintains a list of media urls using ERC tokens to manage, track and verify sources, References, likes, and comments on Ethereum testnet network. The dap continuously verifies credibility of sources and rewards author if its credible or deducts author for any Disinformation.

1. Create a Reactjs app to register media urls that are accessible publicly via URL
2. Connect user to Ethereum network using Metamask
3. Create an account where Ethereum user can seed any amount to one/many MediaUrls or withdraw ERC tokens in future but with a minimal network charges
4. Store media urls and link them to Wallet
5. Create a nodejs daemon that checks and verifies media content sources using a [private owned] cloud service that checks document credibility
6. Reward tokens to mediaUrls that have credible sources
7. Deduct tokens to MediaURls that have unverifiable sources

Quoting Walter Benjamin "The value of information does not survive the moment in which it was new. It lives only at that moment; it has to surrender to it completely and explain itself to it without losing any time. A story is different. It does not expend itself. It preserves and concentrates its strength and is capable of releasing it even after a long time."

Humans have sought to store information persistently so that it does not loose this transient value. We had success with hardcopy publications and for a millenia, books were credible source of information. Then Internet(World wide Web) happened and the status quo changed completely. The cost of publishing and maintaining libraries diminished to almost zero.

This goes much deeper than that and the reason why, contrary to World Wide Web success, there is an increase in fake news. For now we should be interested with the value of information in any publication whether, youtube video, instagram photo, Facebook post, New York Times article, tweet, novel, magazine, math book, drawing book etc.

If indeed a publication has a value, then it can be measured, managed and stored. B4 anything else lets separate the value of information from the benefit a reader gets by consuming the content. I will liken the former with photons(packet of light) that carries energy from sun while the latter can be likened to glucose(final product) plants gets after photosynthesis or Vitamin D for animals, after the energy has been transmuted. We are interested with the former, which is the value of information Mr. Walter . And now i hope we are in same page.

Mr Walter Benjamin was an idealist author, who foresaw the peril to the end of credible source of news/stories. We have been accustomed to associate any publication with wisdom but im afraid todays its hard to make such claim. His ideals preluded a solution to disinformation problem faced in this age of information which can be solved using a distributed network. To grasp what i am implementing, try to widen the scope and focus on different forms information media.

The problem is how to reverse the rate at which disinformation information reaches mainstream while still encouraging creative authors to publish more on the World Wide Web. Fake News/Misinformation is information that cannot be verified, is without sources and is possibly untrue. This problem is growing across all cultures and accelerated by Social Media. Example is the African cultures who were made up of story tellers in every community that passed wisdom through generations through story telling. We cant ignore this fact, even though they were not techies like todays culture, they managed to survive upto this age. Hence the challenge is we can do much better by pushing the limits. Wikipedia is not source of truth since it's core content policies is that it works towards “verifiability, not truth.

To test the functionality we require to media urls that loads a blog content, where one is a proven credible content with verifiable sources and another loads an intentionally misleading information. The test determine if the media with credible information is rewarded with tokens and the disinformation is deducted. The aim is not to discredit an information but to mark it potentially Fake and alert readers to consume it with some degree of doubt.

1. ContentInsight - Decoding the news: understanding the authenticity of what you read online
2. Brainpickings - Walter Benjamin on Information vs. Wisdom and Storytelling as the Antidote to Death by News
3. FACTCHECK.ORG