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Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns. The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom foll

Hello! I'm an engineer at Civil, happy to discuss some of your concerns. The CVL token is used to vote on whether or not the community believes a newsroom follows well understood journalistic standards (more information about these standards can be found in our "constitution" - https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460a181e08 https://blog.joincivil.com/the-civil-constitution-beta-64460...). We use a system known as a Token Curated Registry (https://medium.com/@ilovebagels/token-curated-registries-1-0-61a232f8dac7 https://medium.com/@ilovebagels/token-curated-registries-1-0...) that incentivizes people to vote judiciously according to a shared understanding of values and not simply according to their own political leanings. TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. We've further refined this idea by creating an independent non-profit body known as the Civil Council made up of well respected journalists and academics that can step in in situations where a vote was clearly motivated by political bias and not made in good faith. We are also working very hard to ensure that our tokens are distributed to parties that are going to use them in good faith. We'll have more to announce on that front soon! Being "whitelisted" or not on our TCR does not determine whether or not a newsroom is able to publish. Newsrooms are independent and have full editorial control of their content. Being on the TCR is a (we hope valuable) credibility indicator for newsrooms. The idea is that when you see an article by a newsroom that is on the TCR, you'll know that they have been vetted by the community and are very likely a trustworthy source. TCRs are a new and experimental system, and we don't claim that our first implementation will be flawless and fix all the issues in the news media landscape. But we will iterate and improve it and firmly believe that some form of TCR can be used to help people understand their news sources better, increasing media literacy and trust, in a way that can scale worldwide. -- Nick Reynolds

lgregg 8y ago
> TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. Can you give any examples you can share? You have state/non-state actors which have mass resources to use to their advantage directly or indirectly (e.g. troll farms). What prevents people from buying these CVL tokens and/or creating multiple accounts to bias your ledger? It's not like they really are taking a hit on these transactions unless they're above $5-$10. The Internet Research Agency had a small budget compared to other actors which were in the millions. It also could go the other way for voting against reputable journalism. Is there prevention in this area as well? It seems like the Vote Quorum could be abused in this area. It seems like it might be much easier to challenge your system around voting with an algorithm rather than the social engineering that occurs on social platforms. Though I might come off critical, I'm excited to see how this turns out. I'm pretty new to blockchain and don't understand it all. Though, I did see the "Attacks against token-curated registries and mitigations" in your whitepaper. How expensive are these coins?
- okay_nick 8y ago
  First, acquiring enough tokens to singlehandedly determine outcomes of votes is incredibly expensive. The simple act of buying tokens increases demand on the tokens (which have a fixed supply) thus increasing the market price. By the time a bad actor has acquired 51% (or close to it) of the tokens, they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. Second, even if they are able to acquire some huge percentage of the tokens, the public nature of the blockchain means we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors (if not by name, at least by account). The community can then decide to "fork" the bad actors out of the system (Essentially the community can deploy a new token that is identical to the old token except the bad actors' account balances are zeroed out. If everyone decides to switch to using the new token, the bad actors' old tokens become worthless and they just spent millions of dollars to slightly inconvenience people). Specific details of our initial token distribution (how many tokens does 1 ETH buy, etc) are forthcoming, but after that initial distribution, the price of the tokens is determined by the market forces. It's those market forces that (theoretically) make the TCR actually "work" as token holders are incentivized to make the registry as "good" as possible and increase demand for the token (because people want to be on the registry). -- Nick Reynolds
  - creyes 8y ago
    I'm not sure this guy has heard of the Koch brothers
  - shepardrtc 8y ago
    > they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars To control a central hub of communication for society, that's pocket change. > we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors If you're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, gaming the process properly won't cost much more.
unclebucknasty 8y ago
Nick, it sounds like you mean-well, but it is very difficult to imagine how linking what is essentially the right to make a moral judgment to one's ability to pay for that right will turn out well. >We are also working very hard to ensure that our tokens are distributed to parties that are going to use them in good faith If you have the ability to determine who would use them in good faith, then why do they need to pay for the privilege? Also, this implies that those who would explicitly use them in bad faith may still obtain influence. And, where does this leave the people who would use them in good faith but cannot afford to buy them? In general and in spite of precautions you describe, it has the distinct feel of buying access, which is not something of which the world, and certainly journalism, is in short supply.
- walkerfly 8y ago
  Hi, I'm also an engineer at Civil. I would describe it more as staking access, it's a way to ensure that all those who play have skin in the game. I don't believe that bias is something you either have or don't or that bad outcomes always come from bad intentions. Bias is endemic of the system itself and I don't believe through any effort you could remove it. We are working hard to ensure that those who initially own CVL have the best intentions, but intentions are not a perfect guard against bad outcomes. The purpose of using TCR and tieing votes to a token is to align the rules of the system to the behaviors we hope to promote. Token holders participate in an economically incentivized game where they are rewarded for predicting whether the rest of the community will find the listing to be inside the guidelines of the civil constitution. While these ideas are not entirely new, they have not been well tested in this application. I'm sure that there will be aspects of the system that will need refinement as we learn more, but my hope is that, despite the system's shortcomings, it will represent a dramatic improvement over the status quo. There can be no question that this is a difficult problem to solve, and likely one that has no perfect solution. I like our solution because it does not intentionally privilege the opinion of the "blue-chip" institutions over new or small operations as many other companies in the space are doing. -- Walker Flynn

lgregg 8y ago

> TCRs also have built in mechanisms that reduce the ability of wealthy individuals/parties to unilaterally attack the integrity of the registry, as well as mechanisms to recover from such attacks if they do occur. Can you give any examples you can share? You have state/non-state actors which have mass resources to use to their advantage directly or indirectly (e.g. troll farms). What prevents people from buying these CVL tokens and/or creating multiple accounts to bias your ledger? It's not like they really are taking a hit on these transactions unless they're above $5-$10. The Internet Research Agency had a small budget compared to other actors which were in the millions. It also could go the other way for voting against reputable journalism. Is there prevention in this area as well? It seems like the Vote Quorum could be abused in this area. It seems like it might be much easier to challenge your system around voting with an algorithm rather than the social engineering that occurs on social platforms. Though I might come off critical, I'm excited to see how this turns out. I'm pretty new to blockchain and don't understand it all. Though, I did see the "Attacks against token-curated registries and mitigations" in your whitepaper. How expensive are these coins?

okay_nick 8y ago
First, acquiring enough tokens to singlehandedly determine outcomes of votes is incredibly expensive. The simple act of buying tokens increases demand on the tokens (which have a fixed supply) thus increasing the market price. By the time a bad actor has acquired 51% (or close to it) of the tokens, they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars. Second, even if they are able to acquire some huge percentage of the tokens, the public nature of the blockchain means we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors (if not by name, at least by account). The community can then decide to "fork" the bad actors out of the system (Essentially the community can deploy a new token that is identical to the old token except the bad actors' account balances are zeroed out. If everyone decides to switch to using the new token, the bad actors' old tokens become worthless and they just spent millions of dollars to slightly inconvenience people). Specific details of our initial token distribution (how many tokens does 1 ETH buy, etc) are forthcoming, but after that initial distribution, the price of the tokens is determined by the market forces. It's those market forces that (theoretically) make the TCR actually "work" as token holders are incentivized to make the registry as "good" as possible and increase demand for the token (because people want to be on the registry). -- Nick Reynolds
- creyes 8y ago
  I'm not sure this guy has heard of the Koch brothers
- shepardrtc 8y ago
  > they will likely have spent the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars To control a central hub of communication for society, that's pocket change. > we (the public) can actually do some pretty fancy analytics to determine if there's collusion between accounts and identify bad actors If you're going to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, gaming the process properly won't cost much more.

unclebucknasty 8y ago

Nick, it sounds like you mean-well, but it is very difficult to imagine how linking what is essentially the right to make a moral judgment to one's ability to pay for that right will turn out well. >We are also working very hard to ensure that our tokens are distributed to parties that are going to use them in good faith If you have the ability to determine who would use them in good faith, then why do they need to pay for the privilege? Also, this implies that those who would explicitly use them in bad faith may still obtain influence. And, where does this leave the people who would use them in good faith but cannot afford to buy them? In general and in spite of precautions you describe, it has the distinct feel of buying access, which is not something of which the world, and certainly journalism, is in short supply.

walkerfly 8y ago
Hi, I'm also an engineer at Civil. I would describe it more as staking access, it's a way to ensure that all those who play have skin in the game. I don't believe that bias is something you either have or don't or that bad outcomes always come from bad intentions. Bias is endemic of the system itself and I don't believe through any effort you could remove it. We are working hard to ensure that those who initially own CVL have the best intentions, but intentions are not a perfect guard against bad outcomes. The purpose of using TCR and tieing votes to a token is to align the rules of the system to the behaviors we hope to promote. Token holders participate in an economically incentivized game where they are rewarded for predicting whether the rest of the community will find the listing to be inside the guidelines of the civil constitution. While these ideas are not entirely new, they have not been well tested in this application. I'm sure that there will be aspects of the system that will need refinement as we learn more, but my hope is that, despite the system's shortcomings, it will represent a dramatic improvement over the status quo. There can be no question that this is a difficult problem to solve, and likely one that has no perfect solution. I like our solution because it does not intentionally privilege the opinion of the "blue-chip" institutions over new or small operations as many other companies in the space are doing. -- Walker Flynn