Last year, a conference held by Russia Today brought together the world’s most prominent journalists to exchange ideas on shape-shifting powers. There, Arnab Goswami from India raised an important issue – about hegemony of western media. He stated that the US and the UK together contributes to the 70% of the source of global news; that the global narrative in terms of news is hugely controlled.
This is definitely not the first — and the last — discussion that raises the issue of the dominance over information. The governments all across the world — including the ones that claim to represent powerful democracies — want to control the ways through which information is produced and distributed.
At the same time, we can also say that media censorship is flourishing only in response to internet-based technological disruptions. Strong laws against disruptive media houses are introduced only when something “classified” or blaspheming is published on open forums; while organisations that are willing to be whipped or regulated flourish without breaking a sweat.
Control is real — and scary!
VERITAS: A Crucial Step towards Dismantling Media Censorship
How would a government approach a disruptive media channel which has no central authority? How will they persecute masses for supporting content that goes against popular propagandas? It is impossible to do so, believes the backers of VERITAS, a Swiss-based decentralised platform for journalists.
The term ‘decentralisation’ stands for the distribution of authority/power. Its very first technological use-case is Bitcoin, a payment network which is free from governments and other central authorities, and runs on the support of users all across the world. The technology which makes Bitcoin’s power distribution possible is called blockchain which, without needing a middleman, settles and records transactions in an encrypted fashion.
VERITAS aims to harness blockchain’s revolutionary features for its community-based content platform. The project instantly dismantles media censorship by transferring control to the community, through a powerful validation system.
“No third party will ever have the control on what can or not be published,” ensures VERITAS in its white paper. “All the decision to publish any content is democratically made by the community by using a powerful validation system. All single member will have exactly the same opportunity to progress based on their work. No privileged, not even member of the team.”
Profitability
To ensure that only serious writers and readers become the part of VERITAS platform, its developers has come up with a vote-based payment system. “Every article,” according to the white paper, “needs 1000 votes to be validated and every vote is worth a set amount of money. depending on how much your personal vote is worth (max: x20) you will get the money you deserve. “
“To be sure that anonymity is safeguarded and that payments are fairly distributed all payments are going to be totally automated.”
Coin Distribution
VERITAS aims to kickstart its campaigning with an ICO. The project will create a total of 150,000,000 coins, out of which 100,000,000 coins will be allocated for the crowd sale. Excerpt from the white paper:
“10,000,000 coins are going to be used as a reward to our local member of the team and external people that wish to help. The other 40,000,000 coins will be locked for 1 year (the estimated time of development) and are going to be distributed as the reward in the next years with a maximum of 4,000,000 per year. The coins that are not distributed during the ICO are going to be used to pay validators and writers.”
The VERITAS ICO starts December 6th 2016, 00:00 UTC. For more information, please visit http://www.veritasplatform.net.