Creating a torrent with a feed for updates [1] would also provide distributed storage and hashing of the content with the ability to publish updates.
Or they could create a git repo and encourage others to mirror the git repo, such that they couldn't rebase away history without those mirrors noticing.
Or, and here's a radical idea, they could physically print and deliver papers to people, which means any updates would have to be included as noted amendments in future delivered papers.
However, why would any business want to do this? News sites these days are built on complex dynamic content and ads, which is antithetical to distributing the content in any such ways. If you can download just the text of the article, they're losing ad views. If you download the ads too, it now changes each time a new person purchases an ad on their ad network.
This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have.
If they did have that problem, a git repo would be the most mature and simple way to implement it, not "blockchain" which includes nothing as mature as git under its umbrella.
This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have.
Fair enough, it was just an example... maybe a bad example of when public trust is needed for something.
But, that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news. I remember watching CNN on 9/11 and they reported that Flight 93 was shot down over Pensylvania. Maybe that was bad reporting, maybe it was accurate. But, now I can't find that footage anywhere.
I would love to find that footage now. Find out exactly what they said. Find out who their source was. Find out if it was bad reporting with bad sources, or find out if it was something more. Without that footage, it's just hearse and I'm sure we'll never know the truth about it now.
If only there was a group of people dedicated to archiving content... I dunno, maybe archive.org (aka "The Internet Archive")?
They even have a CNN section including a full recording of their broadcast on the morning of 9/11 [0]. I'm not going to waste the time watching this to see if they miss-reported some detail or not because I've got better things to do.
I don't see how blockchain helps here still; the problem with storing video is that copyright is complicated and there's a lot of it which costs a lot to store, not that we don't have the means to store and audit it.
that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news
Being able to see changes to articles doesn't actually help with those problems. Better journalistic practices help. People thinking critically helps. Removing the absurd click-bait headlines we've ended up on might help. Making news not be for-profit might help (related to the former). Changing the format of the fake news doesn't make it any less fake.
It seems like blockchain is being used as this idealistic thing which surely, if implemented, would not suffer from as many or more flaws than the status quo, when in reality no blockchain based thing has reached mainstream usability or mainstream users yet (arguably excepting bitcoin).
Comments
Why a blockchain?
ipfs [0] already provides persistent immutable links.
Creating a torrent with a feed for updates [1] would also provide distributed storage and hashing of the content with the ability to publish updates.
Or they could create a git repo and encourage others to mirror the git repo, such that they couldn't rebase away history without those mirrors noticing.
Or, and here's a radical idea, they could physically print and deliver papers to people, which means any updates would have to be included as noted amendments in future delivered papers.
However, why would any business want to do this? News sites these days are built on complex dynamic content and ads, which is antithetical to distributing the content in any such ways. If you can download just the text of the article, they're losing ad views. If you download the ads too, it now changes each time a new person purchases an ad on their ad network.
This is blockchain trying to dream up a problem for publishers which those publishers don't think they have. If they did have that problem, a git repo would be the most mature and simple way to implement it, not "blockchain" which includes nothing as mature as git under its umbrella.
[0]: https://ipfs.io/#uses
[1]: http://www.bittorrent.org/beps/bep_0039.html
Fair enough, it was just an example... maybe a bad example of when public trust is needed for something.
But, that level of trust and audibility would be nice in this era of conspiracies and fake news. I remember watching CNN on 9/11 and they reported that Flight 93 was shot down over Pensylvania. Maybe that was bad reporting, maybe it was accurate. But, now I can't find that footage anywhere.
I would love to find that footage now. Find out exactly what they said. Find out who their source was. Find out if it was bad reporting with bad sources, or find out if it was something more. Without that footage, it's just hearse and I'm sure we'll never know the truth about it now.
If only there was a group of people dedicated to archiving content... I dunno, maybe archive.org (aka "The Internet Archive")?
They even have a CNN section including a full recording of their broadcast on the morning of 9/11 [0]. I'm not going to waste the time watching this to see if they miss-reported some detail or not because I've got better things to do.
I don't see how blockchain helps here still; the problem with storing video is that copyright is complicated and there's a lot of it which costs a lot to store, not that we don't have the means to store and audit it.
Being able to see changes to articles doesn't actually help with those problems. Better journalistic practices help. People thinking critically helps. Removing the absurd click-bait headlines we've ended up on might help. Making news not be for-profit might help (related to the former). Changing the format of the fake news doesn't make it any less fake.
It seems like blockchain is being used as this idealistic thing which surely, if implemented, would not suffer from as many or more flaws than the status quo, when in reality no blockchain based thing has reached mainstream usability or mainstream users yet (arguably excepting bitcoin).
[0]: https://archive.org/details/CNN_20010911_130000_CNN_Live_Thi...