Designing for Trust in the Post-Truth Era

A wide variety of journalistic stakeholders are attempting to establish digital designs that combat ‘Fake News’. Most are attempting to Fact Check claims to reduce misinformation. These attempts are misguided and have not reflected on the fundamental desirability question: “do people trust news because it is factual?”

Rational fact is not compelling enough to demand our attention. Americans no longer share objective standards for truth, but they do share an objective standard for trust: the source. Americans tend to trust information that comes from a trustworthy source, regardless of the truthiness of the facts.

Noosphere is inventing an extensible system and method for cryptographically assuring that 1) the information comes from the stated source, and 2) the information has not been tampered with since publication. This system will allow Americans to develop trust in their news sources.

Also, we are provisioning a variety of reference applications to extend this core feature… for example the ability to discover the root source of a fact or concept within a news story.