
Show HN: I made a platform for journalists to “open source” their fact checking - YazIAm
https://sourcedfact.com
======
mikedilger
I appreciate the recognition that there is a problem in journalism. But I'm
afraid that the fundamental problems are problems in the nature of humans and
aren't ameniable to this sort of solution. Those problems include:

1) Many people choose to believe what feels right to them, rather than
dispassionately seeing things for what they are. Unfortunately there are a
great many of people that do this regularly, and they have practiced this
their entire lives. Richard Feynman cautioned us in saying that "The first
principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person
to fool." That caution was aimed at scientists who are already among the most
objective of us, yet they can still suffer from this ailment.

2) When people talk about the facts, they rarely just lay out the facts
dispassionately and without judgement. Humans need a motivation to tell a
story, and most people's motivations include convincing other people to
support their ideology, or else berating those who dont. Facts are organized
within a mental framework of the ideology of the teller, wrapped up in
beliefs, desires, and biases andcarry additional information about which
ideological position you ought to hold -- sometimes they are even intended to
mislead and manipulate the listener.

The modern news media is composed of businesses in search of profits. That
goal is often not aligned with a straight reporting of facts. By pandering to
an audiences ideology they increase ratings. By reporting on salacious and
exciting news, even if incorrect, they get ratings. Buyer beware.

~~~
admax88q
> Unfortunately there are a great many of people that do this regularly, and
> they have practiced this their entire lives.

A certain percentage of the population does not have critical thinking skills
and never will. However a project like this is useful for those of us who do.
If journalists don't disclose their data and reasoning its hard even for those
of us inclined to verify or fact check anything, leaving us susceptible to
propaganda.

~~~
oaf357
False. Trust in journalism is built by proving reporting to be of quality over
time. Not by providing a bibliography before the report ever dries.

~~~
nerdponx
Even if that were true, I don't see why providing a bibliography would be a
bad thing.

------
beat
Awkward question here... can anyone cite an example of a major-media news
story that was actually factually wrong in a way that "open source fact
checking" could have detected it?

Just because a bunch of people believe it's a problem doesn't mean it's a
problem. I find the bias, when it exists, is in the presentation, not the
facts themselves. And mainstream journalism is really committed to getting the
facts right.

~~~
paulsutter
Paul Graham: "If a journalist describes you as "embattled," they're saying
you're guilty as charged. The word basically doesn't exist in spoken English.
Its only use, except among castle nerds, is as a (seemingly neutral and
presumably also libel-proof) press code word."

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1111602566536810497)

~~~
carrier_lost
Paul Graham is entitled to his opinion. I am a professional journalist and I
disagree.

Journalists use the word "embattled" the way Merriam-Webster defines it:
"characterized by conflict or controversy."

Typically it applies to a person who has been heavily criticized, or accused
of wrongdoing at length or by many people.

Accurately describing a person as such is not at all the same as the
journalist declaring a person guilty, and it's certainly not a "press code
word."

He is seeing bias that isn't there.

~~~
jdminhbg
You're not engaging with the actual criticism at all. Nobody is disputing that
"embattled" is in the dictionary; instead, he's saying that it's journalism
jargon that is not actually used in real life.

~~~
beat
No, no, no. pg is _claiming_ that "embattled" is a journalistic euphemism for
"guilty as charged". Sure, it's jargon and rarely used in "real life", but
it's generally not inaccurate or deliberately misleading.

Someone who is accused yet innocent is still "embattled". Readers assuming
guilt is not a problem of fact. It may not even be the journalistic intent.

~~~
ghaff
For that matter, embattled is often used in a context where there's no crime
at all involved. A CEO may be embattled because he hasn't been able to turn a
company around and the shareholders and board are being restless. In that
case, in a sense it's code for on the way out, but only because by the time
you get to that point, the handwriting is probably on the wall.

~~~
beat
I tried the word "embattled" in Google News. One of the articles that came up
was about an embattled tree. Which I'm sure is every bit as guilty as the
media suggests.

------
rootusrootus
Great project, but this seems like a classic example of a programmer naively
assuming a technical solution can solve a social problem.

~~~
snarf21
Agreed, it is also a question of goals. Journalists can bend "facts" to
support the argument they want. Title are 99% click-bait anymore. Sure there
are some people who want to present fair and balanced view points but that
takes a ton of work and time. Most "journalism" these days is get likes and
move on.

~~~
weberc2
Right. Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to
avoid.

Still, it seems valuable to make it easy for readers to view the supporting or
contradictory evidence. That might’ve stymied many notable media hit-pieces.
Of course, many newsrooms wouldn’t want this (at least I can’t imagine The
Guardian and it’s ilk would want to draw attention to their own impoverished
fact:BS ratios), so it would have to be a browser plugin or similar.

~~~
smacktoward
_> Many prominent newsrooms seem to regard fact checking as an obstacle to
avoid._

Or they simply can't afford to employ fact checkers anymore, now that people
refuse to pay for news.

~~~
dragonwriter
> now that people refuse to pay for news

People (the audience, that is) have historically refused to pay a significant
share of the cost for news, what has changed is that _advertisers_ have
stopped paying as much for news (because the share of people's attention
debited to news, and therefore which news outlets have to sell access to, has
dropped.)

Paid circulation used to often be important not so much because of direct
revenue but because advertisers looked to it as an important measure of reach.

~~~
smacktoward
That's true as well. The effect is the same either way, though -- news
organizations aren't exactly swimming in money these days. They have trouble
just paying journalists, much less support staff for those journalists like
fact-checkers.

------
ahnick
IMHO reputation is important to build into the base level for a platform like
this. Allowing anon registrations and commenting will eventually lead to a lot
of noise and abuse of the platform for misinformation. I think some sort of
verification of a person's qualifications on particular subject areas and then
allowing them to only "fact check" on those qualified areas is required here
to have an effective platform that will scale well.

~~~
Fiahil
Equally important : Don't display reputation to users other than themselves.
Humans will attributes higher trust level to individuals with higher
reputation, despite them occasionally dropping false claims.

~~~
CoryG89
Does it really make sense to call it "reputation" if you're the only one that
can see it?

~~~
all2
I think so. You could probably pick something better.

Its more of a Pavlovian reinforcement than reputation. You see what got you
lots of points (what people liked) and you're more apt to do that in the
future.

By keeping everyone else blind to someone's scores, you don't have as much
popularity bias creeping in.

~~~
microcolonel
I think it is better to record the facts about people's opinions, than to
count reputation points on identities.

For example, as ternary predicates:

1: water is wet

2: identity_1 corroborates 1

3: 2 by_way_of blind_faith

4: identity_2 denies 1

5: 4 by_way_of blind_faith

etc.

You can go as far with this as you want, and the consumer gets to decide what
establishes or hurts credibility, and which statements of fact corroborated by
what methods and by whom will either count toward or against the credibility
of a specific form of statement on a specific topic by a specific set of
identities.

For example, you could have predicates describing conflicts of interest, and
identify the relevant conflicts of interest by querying for interests in the
predicate in question to find what people you trust will say about the
interest of individuals and organizations in corroborating or denying a
particular claim.

You could also have predicates which show ways in which a statement is
controversial in its general form, but is uncontroversial when refined. For
example: liquid water can not be wetted with liquid water.

------
IronWolve
Wikipedia talk pages are a perfect example of facts ignored and removed from
articles to push an agenda. You can see how a narrative can be pushed with
half-truths and selective editing. Same thing is happening in News, its agenda
driven, not truth driven. Entertainment opinion pieces that pretends to be
news. People are just bending the facts to support their personal politics.

If Wikipedia can't be factually accurate due to editors personal politics, how
do you keep those personal politics out of a fact checker?

~~~
YazIAm
You're 100% correct in that one can cite completely valid facts and still push
an agenda by omitting other facts. I'm actually working on a "fact comment
section" feature where any reader can pin facts to an article (facts that
still go through the same rigorous and open fact checking process as
everything else). Facts which readers deem are important extra context.

However, I'd argue that even without such a feature, having an open standard
for facts openly verified from primary sources will add a lot of value to
current public discourse.

------
idlewords
What problem does this solve that existing reputation systems don't? When I
read a New Yorker article, for example, part of what my subscription is paying
for is considerable skilled labor by a group of in-house fact checkers. How
does moving this work to an outside free platform improve the situation?

Moreover, how do you replicate work like calling sources to verify statements
before publication?

I wrote a short piece for Wired once and had to go back and forth with their
fact checker on the most picayune details. In an article about balancing
online work and travel I had mentioned in passing searching under a hotel bed
for an outlet, and she wanted to know what hotel it was, what country it was
in, when I stayed there, etc. The process was exhaustive and not something I
would go through with a bunch of Internet randos. It was also done before
publication and involved a fairly high level of trust.

~~~
delish
> What problem does this solve that existing reputation systems don't?

To turn its slogan into an analogy: the New Yorker is high quality closed
source software. If you disagree with the New Yorker, you can't file a bug
report.

You might say, "I wouldn't want to," either because of something on your end,
or something on the New Yorker's end. Continuing the analogy, there are
closed-source models, open-source-but-closed-development models, and open-
source-community-driven models.

I'm typing this because the problem this solves for me is I often disagree
with the news, and I would like to fact check them. Perhaps not--as you
mention--by calling sources, but by citing other evidence.

~~~
idlewords
If the New Yorker makes a factual error, you will get a lot of public
attention for correcting them, and it will be a big deal.

~~~
YazIAm
I truly believe that post-publication fact checking is a losing battle. If you
take a sampling of redaction tweets by media outlets and compare their retweet
counts to the retweet counts of the original posting you'll see that that is
very much the case.

------
jellicle
So, your examples are all "reporting about court cases" and you use court
documents as your citations for facts.

Court cases are as good as we have for determining facts, I suppose. (Though
the error rate in court cases is quite high!) But 99.9999% of reporting isn't
about court cases. Most reporting isn't about issues that will ever be
litigated, and even those things that will be litigated, haven't been at the
time of the reporting.

"Mitch McConnell had oatmeal for breakfast this morning, according to
sources."

There, that's a fact. Now, tell me which court case I can refer to in order to
verify that fact?

Fact-checking is an impossible endeavor. The essence of journalism is
reporting things no one knows. That's what news is! This is completely at odds
with "fact-checking". A good news story CANNOT be fact-checked by the public
because if the public knew it, it wouldn't be news. There is an extremely
limited genre of "news by trawling public but little-known documents", such as
reporting on old court cases. Almost zero news fits into that category.

~~~
jpttsn
Call me a pedant, but I'd say OP is enabling "consensus checking"

I find the present day's _fact checking_ wave is a misnomer. In a world where
something is false, but sourced, most of what we call fact-checking would only
reinforce mistruths.

e.g.

    
    
      The ratio of circumference to diameter is exactly three to one [1][2][3]
      
      [1]: the Bible.
      [2]: pious scholars.
      [3]: low-tech experiments.
    

Would be cool to see someone think carefully about what "real" "fact checking"
would be. First-hand sources? Links to instructions for replicating findings?

Consensus checking is of course also an interesting problem, albeit a pretty
different one.

~~~
NateEag
Offtopic, but the Bible does not actually use a value of 3 for pi:

[https://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm](https://www.purplemath.com/modules/bibleval.htm)

------
teleclimber
Nice to see more work in this area.

However as others have said a reputation system for participants is absolutely
key. Any platform like this has to assume it is going to be flooded by bots
trying to influence opinion on behalf of corporations, foreign governments and
activists.

A reputation where users gain reputation slowly (through work, by verifying
sources, etc..) become more able to influence opinion, but the reputation
drops quickly if they are found to be misleading people. How this actually
works is harder than it seems if you want a truly robust system.

When I think of platforms like this I think of Galileo[0]. He was perceived as
a troll or heretic in his time, but of course he was right. How do you create
a platform that allows correct ideas to flourish even when they go against
conventional wisdom?

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei)

~~~
YazIAm
I 100% agree that the reputation system will be they key to scaling this. I'm
currently seeing promise with my experiments with reputation scoring.

As for "How do you create a platform that allows correct ideas to flourish
even when they go against conventional wisdom?" Great question, however my
goal here is a bit more modest, it's to create a platform that allows facts
which are provable by public primary sources to stand out from everything
else. I think a platform that focuses on simply that can add a lot of value to
political discourse.

~~~
SamBam
The bots would be a serious issue if this ever became big enough, since they
can add to each other's reputation. Reddit probably has thousands of code-
hours devoted to this, and bots are still a problem.

There is also the problem that humans will probably tend to upvote "facts"
that they agree with, and visa-versa. I'm not sure that reputation is the
solution.

And yet "expert" verification introduces trust. I'm not sure what the solution
is.

~~~
teleclimber
Yes it's a super tough problem, not to be underestimated by anybody working on
such a platform.

If there is any easily automatable way gaining reputation, then the bots will
use that, and if you can easily pass reputation too, then the rep system won't
hold.

> I'm not sure what the solution is.

Ditto, and I've ben pondering this on and off for years :/

------
YazIAm
Been experimenting with building tools to make fact checking more transparent
and reusable for a few years now, this is the latest iteration of that
project. Feedback appreciated!

~~~
scott_s
For this to be useful at scale, you will need to not just design this _for_
good-faith users, but also _against_ bad-faith actors. If this catches on, it
will become a target of coordinated disinformation campaigns. Have you been
thinking about what to do against that?

~~~
YazIAm
Indeed, currently all "verified" reviewers are manually vetted.

Long term the goal is to have an open reputation score for every fact checker.
I'm currently experimenting with different implementations of this, and seeing
good promise.

~~~
scott_s
How would the open reputation score mitigate bad-faith actors trying to
exploit the system?

For example, I believe HN has a vote-ring detector, but I think there's also a
decent amount of manual intervention from the mods. Amazon's reputation system
is under constant attack through a variety of means (paying teams of people
for fake reviews, going to the length of having real transactions on Amazon
between fake-reviewer and the seller buying the review).

------
dsjoerg
YazIAm, you should check out [https://www.kialo.com](https://www.kialo.com)
and [https://web.hypothes.is/journalism/](https://web.hypothes.is/journalism/)
and [https://www.procon.org/](https://www.procon.org/)

------
thebeefytaco
This is pretty awesome. Any time I open any article, the first thing I do is
try to follow the trail of links/sources back to the primary sources and read
that instead. If I can't find one, I don't trust the article.

~~~
YazIAm
I'm the exact same way, that's why I built this :)

------
devinplatt
Hey everybody, I just want to point out that I'm working on a similar project
to document evidence for and against claims:
[https://www.wikiclaim.org](https://www.wikiclaim.org)

The tech is dumb (MediaWiki on Heroku), but it's been sufficient to allow me
to spend several hundred hours creating probably about 200 hundred wiki pages
so far.

~~~
smenis
Thanks for posting this, I really enjoyed browsing Wikiclaim and it feels to
me like I've never seen anywhere on the Internet that centralises this kind of
content (commonly heard claims with info for/against)...

Having said that, the usual strategy when I hear a new claim I'm not sure
about is to google it; so is the Google search engine itself the competition
for this site? It does try to give an "answer" at the top of search results
these days. Then there is Quora.

The main advantage Wikiclaim has is that, like Wikipedia, the info can be
moderated and updated, and hopefully can become an improving source of truth.
Godspeed, devinplatt!

~~~
devinplatt
Thanks Smenis!

In time I hope that Google will surface Wikiclaim higher in its search results
(whether URL or even answer box), so in my mind the competitor is also the
ally :)

I don't think the strong suit of Quora (information based personal
experiences) overlaps with what I'm trying to do with Wikiclaim (information
from numerous reliable sources, editable by anyone), so no issues there
either.

------
jshowa3
While I like how the software ties together the sourcing, I feel like the
following is lacking (and I realize this is an alpha, but its things to
consider)

1\. Anyone who answers a question regarding whether the claim is "fully"
proven by a source or whether the source is valid for the claim must or should
(debatable) provide proof of their own interpretation by citing either
specific instances in the source in question supporting it. For example, in
the Net Neutrality article, Yatz states this: _The adopted principles in this
statement are at the top of page 3_ in a response to does the source fully
prove the claim. It would be nice if that was linked to the actual location in
the document or identified through highlighting or some other mechanism to get
full context for the response. There also should be uses for outside sources
to be attached when evaluating these questions that are suppose to validate a
source. This is because someone could submit a response to these source
validity questions and cite an external source or internal quote of the source
in question for their reasoning that doesn't support their answer.

2\. Having some sort of expertise verification is extremely important and
should be weighted either separately as in _Experts: Yes_ _Experts: No_
category and should be more important. It distinguishes this from random anon
answers that have no training in how the source should be interpreted.

3\. Having anonymous people do this seems rather dubious and the current
platform seems like it would make it prone to Youtube comment syndrome. Maybe
have some reputation system to gate keep like StackOverflow?

4\. Sources usually require appropriate interpretation in order to be taken in
the right context and be considered correct. Sometimes there's no single
source or any source, philosophically, that fully proves a claim. I'm guessing
that's what supporting documents are for?

5\. Why is the original articles claim allowed to be edited?

------
vonnik
This is really interesting. It reminds me a bit of peer-reviewing journalism
via Web annotation: [https://web.hypothes.is/](https://web.hypothes.is/)

I have a couple comments to make as a former newspaper reporter:

* Many important stories use anonymous sources that are impossible to verify via crowd-sourcing or by linking to official documents. Much of what happens in the world is not publicly documented nor is it widely known (until a reporter publishes a story). That gap between events and any record of those events is one of the structural problems that allow "fake news" to occur.

* Timing matters. Reporters working for the dwindling number of publications that employ fact-checkers or editors have their facts checked before they publish. For that small group of outlets, this diminishes the number of falsehoods they are responsible for unleashing online. Fact-checking a story _after_ its release is useful, but the cat's already out of the bag. The lie is already speeding around the world at the speed of viral outrage.

* As with any platform where better information leads people to make different choices, there are lots of incentives for publications _not_ engage in crowd-sourced fact-checking. Why do people lie or distort the facts on their dating profiles and job applications? Why do companies put forward their most utopian face? They are trying to shape the world with information. And so are media outlets such as Fox News, to name just the most egregious.

* Fact-checking is a lot of work, and can descend into epistemological quibbles. Most people don't have time do engage in it, or even to understand the debate around a given fact. This is why, in the past, we outsourced this work to the editorial staff of the fourth estate. While this would bring more transparency to the process, I am not sure who would have time to take advantage of that transparency, anymore than the normal reader will closely follow the "talk" tab on a Wikipedia article.

------
rfeather
I like the idea and genuinely hope that fact checking becomes more mainstream.
Seriously, kudos to the author for building something. But what I'm not
getting is why a news platform would use this, unless this is intending on
becoming a news platform itself?

I think there is an underlying assumption that the general world cares about
things like "primary sources" and "logical fallacies" enough to bother
hovering over the text or viewing the content, and that there isn't an
intentional manipulation of these things by media organizations to fit a
narrative. Maybe if this was a browser plugin that came with <major browser>
by default and automatically highlighted fact checked statements in exiting
articles. That way folks wouldn't have to opt in, but as it is, whats the
incentive for either the populace or the media to participate? Think of it
this way- how did the fact checking in the examples get done? Someone spent 2
minutes on their favorite search engine. People willing to do that will do it
if they have the time, and people not willing probably aren't interested in
information that would contradict their opinions anyway - unless it comes from
a source they already trust, like someone in their bubble. My own experience
with this is that the folks who will care exist but are rare. Others, you can
literally watch their eyes glaze over the moment you introduce a little
cognitive dissonance.

------
jasonlotito
How does this handle anonymous sources?

Not only do you have to account for what those sources say, but also, a
reporter reporting what an anonymous source said can be 100% factual (Yes, the
anonymous, valid source was indeed reported accurately), but maybe the
anonymous source is incorrect. The reporting is accurate. The source is not.

Basically, a lot of grey area. And with that comes the issue of anything not
"fact checked" by a service like this could be dismissed. What harm does that
do?

Not a dismissal of a service like this. Rather, just open questions.

~~~
YazIAm
Only public primary sources are allowed as evidence on SourcedFact.

Anonymous sources certainly have value within journalism, but the goal of
SourcedFact is to make facts that can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt with
public primary sources stand out from everything else.

~~~
jasonlotito
Okay. I think as long as that distinction is clear, sounds good!

------
aleister_777
The main fault I see is how do we augment your "facts" with other "facts".

For instance, I clicked on Net Neutrality. It's tough to truly appreciate the
"net neutrality" dynamic of the past few years without understanding the
backstory of Reed Hastings battling the ILECs
([https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Netflix-CEO-Comcast-
Want...](https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Netflix-CEO-Comcast-Wants-Whole-
Internet-to-Pay-Them-129154)), buddying up to Obama
([https://www.businessinsider.com/house-of-cards-
obama-2013-12](https://www.businessinsider.com/house-of-cards-obama-2013-12)),
getting the law changed in his favor
([https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-
releases-n...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/13/technology/fcc-releases-net-
neutrality-rules.html)), and now rewarding Obama in kind:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/us/politics/barack-
obama-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/21/us/politics/barack-obama-
netflix-show.html).

It's almost as if it had nothing to with actual "net neutrality" at all since
none of the horrible things have come to pass that were predicted.

Broadband isn't as good as it could or should be, but it isn't getting worse.

------
abathur
Interesting work, YazIAm. Conceptually this reminds me a little bit of the
idea behind Kialo. Down the road, there might be some interesting synergy
potential between fact attestation and debate.

I've had a few related thoughts, on the off chance you find them useful:

1\. It would be interesting, variously for journalists and the reading public,
if it was possible for journalists to generate, disclose, and research
cryptographic sourcing identifiers that enable them to figure out when they
share a source. This could, critically, help journalists identify sources with
a record of feeding other journalists bad information.

It'd be nice if the same work could help the rest of us unravel citation
chains based on a small number of unique sources, but I'm not sure there's a
way to achieve that without it being fairly simple to re-identify sources via
brute-force.

2\. If we can drill enough to find some bedrock, I think it might be useful to
have virtuous-cycle user tools, like browser extensions that warn users when
visiting an article by writers/publications (and potentially even sources, per
above) with repeated sourcing/attestation problems. I don't think of this as
purely a journalistic thing. In the sciences it could apply to methodology,
data-collection/statistical integrity. With some bedrock, tooling in place,
and established trust/community practice in place here, it might also be
possible to expand the scope a little and address things like headlines that
aren't at all moored to evidence.

------
chw9e
Would be nice to avoid having to open another tab to do fact checking - having
some kind of a summary or something beyond "10 verifications" would at least
let me know if opening the new tab is really worth it. Ideally the article and
all verifications would live in one tab.

~~~
zachguo
Also, instead of a dedicated site, a browser extension allowing you to select
text then right-click to get facts would work better.

[https://web.hypothes.is/journalism/](https://web.hypothes.is/journalism/)

------
JoelMcCracken
This reminds me a bit of an application I wanted to build many years ago: A
platform for collections of arguments. For example, the question "are humans
contributing to global warming?" Allow crowd-submitted answers. Collect
information about facts cited (similar to how this works).

Mostly-rational people can be swayed by evidence and arguments, yet often
disagree with each other because they doubt the truth of the other side's
statements (fact checking), they believe the other side has missed important
context in their argument, the other side has implicit assumptions that they
disagree with (this is something that should be explored as a sub issue,
then).

I'm very happy to see this. I'd love to see more of this kind of thing in the
future.

~~~
devinplatt
Hi Joel. In case you didn't see my top level comment (it's buried quite low),
I'm working on a similar project to document evidence for and against claims:
[https://www.wikiclaim.org](https://www.wikiclaim.org)

The tech is dumb (just MediaWiki on Heroku), but it's been sufficient to allow
me to spend several hundred hours creating about 200 wiki pages so far.

------
enriquto
But journalism is not only stating true facts, but choosing a limited set of
facts to present.

You can pretty well do fake news by stating a list of true facts (and omitting
a few other, fundamental, true facts).

Example:

Published news : person A killed person B by pushing a knife on his stomach,
at a time when person B was unarmed.

Non-published statements : just before being killed, person B and a group of
three friends armed with knifes attacked person A, which was unarmed at the
time, and started cutting him. During the struggle, person A managed to get
hold of B's knife and fought back, harming B. The friends of B were scared and
ran away. Person A finally survived his injuries, but person B didn't.

I suppose everybody agrees that publishing the first statement alone is a
clear example of fake news.

------
hoaxcracker
I have been thinking about something similar but stuck on a different project.
Great work!

------
iandanforth
This is reminiscent of how some scientific papers are written. You might be
able to pick up some tips from those processes as well. For example:

\- Write each sentence on a different line.

This allows for better change tracking, commentary etc in a number of tools
including github.

\- Inline sources and compile into a references section.

I want to see that a claim is backed by more than one piece of supporting work
whenever possible.

\- Have a compiled / formatted version for holistic evaluation.

After you've done the hard work of writing factual statements the piece also
needs to be readable. This is an orthogonal view into the same information
however and should be presented as such.

------
VvR-Ox
This is a very good idea but I'm afraid it won't play along the human
condition.

People construct reality with things they want to believe. Most people aren't
interested and/or skilled enough to be reasonable and think logically.

How could someone like that orange ape become POTUS???? This is just one major
indicator for the fall of reason.

The enlightenment has failed and instead of a mass of mature citizens who are
able to govern the world via consensus like the democratic system needs it to
be we are driven by emotions.

Keep on doing this and I hope it may still have some impact.

------
GistNoesis
Little feedback : Nice. Please add a vertical splitter in the verify page so
that the verification is not constrained to a small margin on the right, which
make it not easily readable.

It would also be nice to have some color coding when reading articles, so you
can know what's the majority opinion on the validity of the piece.

Hopefully once you have gathered enough data, you can get one of these NLP
bots to check the fact in an even more neutral way.

------
johnm
How are you going to deal with underlying "sources" where the content
disappears or is changed out from under the fact checkers?

~~~
YazIAm
Every source document submitted to the platform is automatically saved to the
webarchive, and the webarchive snapshot is used :)

~~~
7373737373
Definitely have a look at [https://tlsnotary.org/](https://tlsnotary.org/) !

------
_mitch
Just a couple quick feedback points:

I'd prefer if the currently selected fact text remained highlighted when the
mouse is not hovered over it. That way you know what the active "Investigate
>" link is referring to.

Also, for accessibility and convenience, it would be nice if you could tab
through the instances of the fact text blocks.

~~~
YazIAm
Thanks for the feedback, the second (accessibility) should be a quick fix.

I definitely also want to address the first issue, the tricky part is coming
up with a solution that also works when there are multiple assertions on one
line, but I'll give it more thought.

------
snambi
This is really great idea. Today I don't trust the journalists, but if they
provide references atleast there is a bit a scope for trusting a particular
article. ofcourse, provided the references can stand the scrutiny.

------
jaredwiener
How would a reporter use this? Do you need to have an article already
written/published? Does it have to be on your site?

It seems like its less for fact checking, which would happen prior to
publication, than for fact proof?

~~~
YazIAm
I'm happy to provide any journalist/blogger who wants to include this style of
annotation on their site a js plug-in to do just that.

The whole fact checking process actually happens within the system, the facts
you see on there were collaboratively fact checked by a team of 7 to 11 vetted
fact checkers. So that may also provide an incentive for journalists.

------
queercode
The hover state reminds me of the lyric annotation system Genius
([https://genius.com/](https://genius.com/)) has, which is a good thing.

------
Swquenzer
Cool platform. One suggestion - create a unique url/route for each article. I
wanted to send a particular article to a friend, but realized there's no way
to provide a unique link.

~~~
YazIAm
Thanks :) Indeed they have unique urls, I'll see if I can make that clearer on
the landing page:

Net Neutrality - [https://sourcedfact.com/a/net-neutrality-how-we-got-
here](https://sourcedfact.com/a/net-neutrality-how-we-got-here)

Cell Phone Privacy - [https://sourcedfact.com/a/cell-location-data-without-
warrant](https://sourcedfact.com/a/cell-location-data-without-warrant)

Israel Boycotts - [https://sourcedfact.com/a/government-measures-against-
israel...](https://sourcedfact.com/a/government-measures-against-israel-
boycotts)

------
indymike
First, love the project. Hope it works and makes journalism better. Even if it
doesn't it will be interesting to see how much the news industry sees value in
crowd-sourced fact-checking.

Good luck!

------
elliekelly
This reminds me of Grasswire:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7954327)

------
eeZah7Ux
"open source" is not the right term and also is not a verb.

"transparency" is the word you are looking for. It's more general and predates
"open source" by far.

~~~
0xffff2
"Open source" is absolutely a verb. "I open sourced my latest work project
this month".

It's also a term that seems to be used similarly to the post title in contexts
outside of software. For example, I subscribe to a podcast that covers arms
control, where they frequently use the term "open source" to describe analysis
derived publicly available sources and methods.

------
m-i-l
See also [https://fullfact.org](https://fullfact.org) which sponsored an
Apache Solr hackathon a couple of years back.

------
jammygit
What would you say if a well known, analytical journalist approached you to be
able to perform fact checking, but you knew they were openly biased on many
topics?

------
alvalentini
I think that the primary value of this platform would reside on making the
fact-checking available and shareable to non-journalists.

------
hkdobrev
Is this pravduh? :D

Source threads:

\-
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000072092769964033](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000072092769964033)
\-
[https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000080833678528512](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1000080833678528512)

[https://pravduh.com](https://pravduh.com)

~~~
YazIAm
I actually got a friend who works at Tesla to email Musk about SourcedFact
when he was tweeting about that haha, busy guy though ;)

------
nahimn
Finally something viable to combat fake news

~~~
murph-almighty
I'm cautiously optimistic. I like that this emphasizes use of primary sources,
but

1) Some primary sources are dubious, or manipulated. See the multiple versions
of Acosta getting kicked out of a White House press briefing.

2) What happens when you have an article that repeatedly cites dubious
secondary opinion pieces, but the reader accepts these pieces as fact?

~~~
YazIAm
1) Now that video deepfake is a thing, I currently only allow videos as
primary sources in rare circumstances (such as the video being published by a
verified account of the subject). 2) Only primary sources are accepted.
Currently anyone can start contributing, but every claim is still reviewed by
a team of verified fact checkers. I hope to scale this long term with a fact
checking reputation score.

~~~
Vinnl
Aren't text and images _more_ easily manipulated than videos?

~~~
YazIAm
Haha indeed, but you can't just submit any document and have it considered a
primary source on the site. For example, if you're making an assertion about a
piece of legislation, the primary source is that legislation _hosted on that
government 's website_. If your assertion is about a regulatory action, the
primary source is that action _hosted on that regulatory agency 's website_,
etc.

------
fabiandesimone
Very interesting and very well done!

------
catchmeifyoucan
For Mobile, I didn’t know what I was looking for. The Navigation bar should be
fixed to the top.

------
Siira
The site doesn’t work in iOS safari? I can’t get sources for the claims.

------
sidhantgandhi
By the way, clicking on a fact on Chrome iOS is not loading anything.

~~~
YazIAm
Will investigate, thanks for letting me know!

------
Zoo3y
Where are you pulling the PDFs of FCC documents from?

------
uberdru
Coz that's what we hire journalists for. . . .

------
amirouche
well done, thanks for sharing.

------
rohan1024
We need this decentralised

~~~
YazIAm
That's the long term goal!

------
yantra_ml
This is really cool!!

------
vegangaijin
I <3 this.

------
anigbrowl
Promising!

------
geekfreakdev
give beer to this guy!

------
cphoover
Love it... Good job.

------
volt4ire
Sadly this "platform to open source factchecking" is not itself open source,
as the site's source code is not available and the user content license
restricts commercial use (see point 3
[https://sourcedfact.com/terms_of_service](https://sourcedfact.com/terms_of_service)
and [https://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/24/why-share-alike-licenses-
ar...](https://blog.okfn.org/2010/06/24/why-share-alike-licenses-are-open-but-
non-commercial-ones-arent/))

~~~
vortico
That's fine with me. The two concepts of "open-source" at hand are drastically
different. The lack of ability to verify the website's source code doesn't
prevent me in any way from seeing its content which helps me verify journalist
claims.

I hope the author is able to grow their service through marketing, licensing,
and contracts with media agencies. Open-sourcing the service's software would
be a distraction from that goal and would create fragmentation of its database
when clones of the service are created. What's important for a service like
this is open data, not necessarily an open-source stack.

~~~
nautilus12
Except we are talking about journalism which is prone to things like
censorship, shadow banning and the like which would defeat the purpose of it
being open. The source code would reveal if there were such a functionality.

~~~
YazIAm
I intend to move user contributed fact verifications to some sort of
distributed ledger model to ensure transparency. Still in alpha though, so
lots of work ahead.

------
nilskidoo
How we've existed for so long without this is beyond me. _Thank you_ , to the
creators of this.

------
deepstream
I'm surprised that FAGAM haven't got into the crowd-sourced fact checking
space. Seems like a great way to build a knowledge engine / AI, by getting
humans to "connect the facts" while motivating (herding) them with the idea
they are doing it to "preserve truth in an era of fake narratives", when
actually they are just helping build an AI.

