Factland is a nonprofit Web3 DAO with a mission to slow the spread of misinformation online. Factland makes it easy for anyone to flag untrustworthy claims and have them promptly adjudicated by a decentralized community of fact checkers rewarded in crypto, and distributed as contextual labels anywhere via an open public API.
Our Vision
A Web3 community building decentralized trust in the age of misinformation
The Problem
The rapid spread of false information online is a serious threat to social stability around the world and a threat to democracy. A recent Pew poll ranked it just behind climate change as the top global threat as reported by 19 countries.
Our Solution
WHAT IS FACTLAND
Factland is a nonprofit Web3 DAO created by Evan Hansen, Pam Statz, John Plevyak and Keith Axline. Our mission is to slow the spread of misinformation online by making it easy for anyone to flag untrustworthy claims and have them promptly adjudicated by a decentralized community of fact checkers paid in crypto. Our code will be fully open sourced and documented, and verdicts will be made available via an open API for any platform connected to the Internet to use as contextual labels on their content.
Beyond reviewing facts, Factland offers a new paradigm for achieving consensus, by inviting everyone to participate, encouraging active listening, and adversarial debate. All three have been shown in research to increase trust via inclusion, which traditional fact checking methods have either passively or actively undermined by creating the perception of bias.
The jury decisions delivered by Factland reflect not the opinion of elites, but the provable consensus view of society as a whole.
Factland solves the unspoken gripe of the Internet: Why was I not consulted?
Using the Factland Dapp, people can upload claims for community review and comment, and stake FACT tokens to vote on whether they are true or false. Cases are decided by anonymous juries drawn randomly from the community to weigh the evidence and issue a verdict. Stakes are split between the winners, jurors and community investigators who contributed the best evidence.
All jury selection data and verdicts are stored on the blockchain where anyone can check for tampering and get a verification.
HOW FACTLAND WORKS
We intend to use decentralized blockchain technology and the wisdom of the crowd to build the most complete, nonpartisan and up-to-date misinformation database in the world and limit the damage done by extremists poisoning public discourse.
Report Fake News: When you see dubious social media posts, photos, videos, conspiracy theories or other suspected misinformation, submit the link to Factland.org with a clear title and description of the claim to be decided. The community will do the rest.
Choose Sides: Stake FACT tokens on claims to create an incentive pool to pay investigators, jurors and the winning side.
Get Paid to Collect Evidence: Receive FACT tokens for discussing and sharing information about submitted claims. Investigators who provide the most convincing evidence get the biggest share.
Help Decide the Truth: From time to time you will be invited to serve on an anonymous random sample jury to review evidence and issue a verdict. Jurors receive FACT tokens for their service.
OUR MISSION
Factland promises to increase the scope, speed and reliability of fact-checking by using crowdsourcing and “trustless” verification to decentralize the normally costly and time intensive job of weighing evidence.
OUR AUDIENCE
Web sites which display information e.g. Twitter, Google News can use the Factland case history to present fact-checking results. People interested in checking a fact directly e.g. Snopes can use Factland or Factland derived data. Individuals interested in staking a Claim can use Factland to do so. Individuals interested in researching a Claim can post comments and evidence as to the authenticity of a Claim. Finally individuals interested in participating in juries can help adjudicate claims.
Validation / Traction / Progress so far
We have a working beta https://demo.factland.org/. Nearly 100 invited participants have shared and adjudicated dozens of claims, and collected tens of thousands of points rewards. This has been sufficient to test the system end to end and know that it works. We are now ready to begin fine tuning the UX and rewards mechanisms to make the experience delightful and engaging.
We received a $25,000 developer grant from Dfinity in November 2022 to build an integration with the Internet Computer. We’ve successfully completed our milestones and the Factland dApp can now accept wallet site registrations on the ICP and write key data to a live blockchain for public inspection.
With a Web3 wallet sign on integration and true token rewards to distribute, we are ready to take Factland from a small test group to general release.
Team
Factland is a nonprofit Web3 DAO created by Pam Staz, Evan Hansen, John Plevyak and Keith Axline. Our team is based in San Francisco and Portland, OR. Thus far we’ve contributed our personal time and resources to develop, design and promote the Factland demo.
Pam Statz is a creative technologist with 25+ years experience in UX and UI design, story telling, digital strategy, and product management. She has led large scale digital projects for Lucasfilm, WIRED, Wieden+Kennedy, and NIKE. She is a Founding Board Member, Secretary and Chief of Strategy and Operations at FactlandDAO.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamstatz/
Evan Hansen is a 30 year news veteran, who’s served as the top editor at Wired.com, Medium and Periscope and was most recently director of curation at Twitter. He’s collected numerous industry awards for journalism excellence and innovation. He is a Founding Board Member, President and CEO of FactlandDAO.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-hansen-1342146/
John Plevyak, PhD is a Director of Engineering at DFINITY with more than 30 years of experience at companies large and small, including Google, Cray, and Inktomi specializing in large systems, Web2 and Web3. He is a Founding Board Member, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of FactlandDAO.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-plevyak-004737/
Keith Axline is a full-stack mobile and web developer living in Portland, OR. He had a previous career in media as an editor and photo editor at Wired.com and Medium. He is a Founding Board Member, Treasurer and Chief Product Officer of FactlandDAO.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithaxline/
Grant Amount Requested $10,000 USD
How we’ll utilize the funds
The funds raised from this grant will go towards the following items that are currently slowing down executing on the vision and product:
- Marketing and community growth. Getting the word out through marketing campaigns and referral rewards.
- We will recruit diverse community members to find and submit claims and evidence. $5000
- Accelerated development.
- Contracting with developers, potentially via bounties, to iterate quickly through our roadmap. $5000
Resources
Youtube channel: Factland - YouTube
How did you hear about MGD’s Funding program?
Through a Google search for Web3 public goods grants we discovered this fine resource which lists MGD’s program.