Poland-based startup Userfeeds has a project in the works that will combat the proliferation of fake news using the blockchain called the Userfeeds Engine.

To do this, Userfeeds means to use a ranking reputation framework that uses a blockchain, a distributed cryptographic ledger, to produce reputation tokens, provide secure and decentralized voting system and a method to curate social media destinations such as Twitter, Facebook and Reddit.

The company, according to Techcrunch, has been the recipient of $800,000 in seed funding from BlueYard Capital, Fred Ehrsamh, co-founder of Coinbase, and Piotr Smolen, general partner at Data Ventures.

Fake news, a type of yellow journalism involving the distribution of false or misleading claims through traditional and non-traditional news sources, has become a massive burden on modern readers. Although fake news has been a problem as old as print media, or even older, its use for political gain has become a mainstay of recent media discussion and greatly amplified by social media.

Even Internet- and social media-savvy readers may find it difficult to sift through numerous sources to determine which are being truthful and which are not. Users tend to circle around particular news sources — such as the New York Times, CNN and local newspapers — but also tend to defer to familiarity and rumor, such as tends to percolate through social networks and between friends.

“The New York Times competes for your attention on Facebook with your uncle’s alternative news blog,” Userfeeds founder and Chief Executive Officer Maciej Olpinski wrote in a blog post. “On YouTube, it doesn’t matter whether you are CNN or a 15-year-old vlogger. You get the same treatment by the [YouTube ranking] algorithm.”

With this in mind, Userfeeds is developing the Userfeeds Engine, a platform designed to allow users, developers and publishers to develop their own ranking and curation systems that can be used to produce search results, recommendations and ranked lists.

The foundation of the platform seeks to use an incentive-based system that allows users to exchange tokens in order to back content – for example, news articles, YouTube Videos and blog posts – or to back other curators. These transfers on the blockchain produce a time-stamped transaction that can be viewed historically as a link between the curator and what they backed. These backing actions are publicly visible to everyone involved.

This creates a sort of voting system where curators are able to show confidence in content or other curators. The company also expects that the reputation tokens will gain value within their particular category or application – and, as a type of blockchain token, they will be tradable for other currencies giving a mechanism by which curators can make money by being well-backed.

The company hopes this will incentivize curators to back trustworthy sources as that will draw attention to their own activity and bring in more backing.

Userfeeds upcoming product follows a trend of blockchain startups seeking to apply the technology to publishing and distribution networks in order to provide transparency and trust.

Startups MetaX, developer of the adChain advertisement blockchain platform, and CyGuard Inc. both have begun to build systems designed to aid advertisers and networks to better control the source and attribution of ads. This is done by applying accountability to ads published on networks by tracking their publication and distribution on blockchains.

Image: Pixabay