Blockchain can help publishers increase audience trust

Readers want their news content to be reliable and trustworthy, but many people are skeptical. Readers cite unchecked sources, print too fast, careless reports, and deliberately misleading news sites, and other issues that can weaken their trust in published content. However, readers seek—even willing to pay—for credible, true, and objective news. Increased trust will come from providing greater transparency for the reporting and writing process, and the news website’s solution will come from an unusual source: blockchain technology.

The state of trust in the publishing industry today

We recently conducted a report called “Trust Digital Publishing” to try to reveal how readers are currently feel About the news sites they follow, the stories they see, and the credibility of these sites they think. We found that 61% of respondents want better fact-checking of news sites they follow and pay more attention to accuracy. They believe that inaccurate information published by news websites is due to inexperienced reporters or bad practices. 35% of people believe that news organizations do not consider the best interests of readers. At the same time, 42% of people have stopped reading news sites they had read, and 51% have given up news sites just because of an article they thought was inaccurate.

But readers are indeed looking for good, real news: 46% of respondents said they are willing to pay for accurate news. They say that better fact-checking, focusing on accuracy rather than speed, increasing the transparency of the editorial process, and admitting mistakes when news organizations make mistakes can help increase trust.When it comes to the transparency of the editorial process, some news sites have begun to “show off their work”-such as Washington post Reporter David Fallenhold Post Photos of research notes he gave his followers on Twitter. This process allows readers to see how stories are researched and put together.

But I think organizations can go a step further and use blockchain timestamps to increase trust with readers.

related: In the trustless world of cryptocurrency, trust is still necessary

How blockchain can increase trust

Blockchain technology did not start with cryptocurrency.it is create As early as 1991, researchers Stuart Haber and W. Scott Stornetta published a white paper entitled “How to Time Stamp Digital Documents”. They anticipate problems in the digital world surrounding the author and authenticity of documents. “They want to know how we can know exactly the truth of the past,” wrote Amy Whitaker in Wall Street Journal“What can prevent tampering with historical records-is it possible to protect this information for future generations?” Haber and Stornetta’s solution: time stamp data.

Haber and Stornetta recommend using a unique identifier or hash attached to the data to tag data, rather than sending documents and data to a timestamp service for safe storage—where they can still be tampered with.Then send the unique hash value to the service storage -Just like “old school copyright”-is associated with a specific version of a document or data and stored on a decentralized public ledger. This is the working principle of the blockchain. The first thing is to recognize the need to protect the accuracy of the content.

related: Back to the original intention of the blockchain: timestamp

The same use cases proposed by Haber and Stornetta can be applied today: time-stamping inventions or ideas to show who created them first or time-stamping company files to prove whether they have been tampered with. But today’s biggest use case is where most of us get most of the information: the Internet.

Timestamps can be a way to prove the identity of the author, expose unauthorized content changes, and provide more transparency and trust in the articles someone reads. After creating a piece of content, the news source timestamps it with a unique hash, and then adds it to the public blockchain for everyone to view. That unique hash value—consisting of input from the title, date, and writing itself—will correspond to that particular content. Once the hash is added to the blockchain, it cannot be changed. If the content of the fragment is updated or changed, a new hash needs to be created with a different timestamp. Essentially, each piece of content produced by a news organization creates a separate fingerprint to prove its integrity in an open source way.

It also prevents intermediaries from “stamping” content and excludes biased and error-prone third parties that may damage or change data (some news organizations propose solutions today, and this is what Haber and Stornetta want to avoid ).An article in wired It also pointed out that we paid a large amount of funds to third-party intermediaries for many different services, many of which can be insteadThey pointed out: “Ten years from now, it will be like the Internet: we will want to know how society works without it. The Internet has changed the way we share information and connect; the blockchain will change the way we exchange value. And people we trust.”

Timestamps can increase the trust of readers because they will know that they are reading unedited articles or news stories. Once the timestamp is widely adopted, readers will better trust the news organizations that use it, and not trust the news organizations that they do not trust.

related: Is encryption approaching its “Netscape moment”?

Tomorrow’s timestamp

Today, reader loyalty cannot be guaranteed. More and more readers are switching news websites, looking for websites that provide truthful, objective and accurate information. They also hope to increase transparency in the writing, research, and editing process. Timestamps are a way to help readers understand when content was created, and to ensure that they are reading the original version of the story, not the modified version. Increased confidence will increase loyalty, which will also increase readers and paying subscribers.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are only those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.