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Hi! Thanks for the question. DIRT works well for objective information. In the cryptocurrency use case, this could be the ERC-20 smart contract address for a to

Hi! Thanks for the question. DIRT works well for objective information. In the cryptocurrency use case, this could be the ERC-20 smart contract address for a token or a list of investors for a project. To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized. We are planning to publish our protocol design in a few weeks with more details.

fake-name 8y ago
This doesn't answer the more important question. The issue isn't how do you handle "incorrect" information, it's how do you REMOVE information. Basically, when someone doxxes someone, and dumps the result onto your system, how to you remove it? If you don't have a facility for rendering intentionally malicious information impossible to access, your system is fundamentally broken.
- yinyinwu 8y ago
  I think the tough part is deciding who should be the arbiter or whether information is intentionally malicious. Censorship can be a real issue. For the DIRT protocol, if want to remove information, you also need to deposit tokens and put forth evidence to convince voters in the network to side with you. If you lose the vote, then you would also lose tokens. We put forth an economic penalty for being inaccurate.
  - mcny 8y ago
    Firstly, congratulations on launching! > For the DIRT protocol, if want to remove information, you also need to deposit tokens and put forth evidence to convince voters in the network to side with you. If you lose the vote, then you would also tokens. We put forth an economic for being malicious. Sorry if this is a stupid question but if I lose a vote, can I bring it up for a vote again? I think that should be ok, right? Even if I get some fact removed by some kind of trickery where I sneak in a vote it should be OK because if the fact belongs there, maybe someone else can add it again? I think this works well for facts like Robert Kennedy as a matter of fact did NOT kill John F Kennedy. However, some things are not objectively clear. What happens when people keep adding "fake news" that is not obviously/patently false? Does someone need to pay to have it removed? How often do I do that? Every time someone adds it? Now again the flip side is troublesome. We can't require identification for anyone to post facts, right? I mean I think that would be unthinkable, right? As such, how do we "rate limit" "fake news"? Sorry if all of these have obvious answers. I just couldn't think of it...
    - yinyinwu 8y ago
      Thanks! Great question. 1. Repeat votes - If you lose the vote, you can vote again. DIRT works not only for correcting intentionally misleading data, but also for fixing out of data information. It's similar to a bug bounty for data. 2. Cycle of challenges - Each time misinformation re-surfaces, you would have to challenge and vote down the data. However, every time you are successful in your challenge, you earn tokens for your efforts. 3. Fake news - Subjective information can be harder to adjudicate with DIRT and that will not be our initial market. As an engineer, I would love to believe that the blockchain can solve fake news. However, a lot of research shows it is not the lack of data that the issue, but rather perspective. People believe what they want to believe.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    I think the EU is going to put forth an economic penalty for the network to retain personal information when someone doesn't want it to. Just because everyone else on the network votes that it should stay there doesn't mean the law agrees.
  - fake-name 8y ago
    A.K.A. A abusers paradise. You HAVE to have moderation facilities.
otoburb 8y ago
>>To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized. You're right this only works well for objective information or facts. Hence, any articles that hint of an opinion (i.e. pick any Wikipedia editing war topic) would result in a mono-culture dominated by those with the most tokens. I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Best of luck.
- yinyinwu 8y ago
  Thanks! What we have for v1 of the protocol is really the starting point. There are also other extensions that could support subjective information. For example, it could be similar to Reddit's upvoting system. You can stake 100 tokens to say Domino's has the best pizza, and I can counter with 200 tokens to say Papa John's is better. Items are ranked on the list based on the token stake. There would be no challenges or voting in this model.
  - abcc8 8y ago
    What prevents entities who can afford to lose the most tokens from establishing what is listed as 'correct'? What mechanisms are there to prevent those with the greatest token number from establishing what is accurate?
    - yinyinwu 8y ago
      Two parts: 1. Economic - you stand to lose the tokens. Similar to mining on bitcoin, the cost to spam the network is proportional to the value of the network. If there are a lot of users, the value of the token is higher and it will be more expensive to acquire the tokens needed to game the system. Even if you are well funded, this will hurt. 2. Reader disinterest - There is the negative feedback loop where users of the information will stop using the information, and the incentive to game the system will drop.
juancampa 8y ago
Interesting. It's similar to how Stack Overflow's reputation system incentivizes quality questions and answers, except that in DIRT you use tokens, and tokens cost money (correct me if I'm wrong). Unsolicited startup idea: build a more accurate Stack Overflow with DIRT.
- yinyinwu 8y ago
  Yes - That's a great analogy. On the moderation side similar to Stack Overflow, Reddit, HackerNews with reputation and points. On the writing side, we put a higher bar on data accuracy and deposits to share data.
jesseb 8y ago
What systems are in place to prevent a malicious actor who is well funded from spreading disinformation and/or discrediting factual data?
- fleitz 8y ago
  The fact that there is currency involved means that those without money are the malicious actors spreading false data, after all the blockchain said it was true. There is no such thing as a well funded malicious actor in this protocol, only unfunded malicious actors.
Karrot_Kream 8y ago
Do you have any quadratic voting scheme where one can cast larger votes but have to stake a quadratic amount of ERC20 tokens for the vote? Also, do y'all have a Telegram room?
VectorLock 8y ago
So the 'truth' is whichever way the majority votes? Putting side the obvious issues with that, what prevents someone who has the largest warchest from sweeping everything or is it just an assumption that no-one will have a 51% share blockchains are largely based on?

fake-name 8y ago

This doesn't answer the more important question. The issue isn't how do you handle "incorrect" information, it's how do you REMOVE information. Basically, when someone doxxes someone, and dumps the result onto your system, how to you remove it? If you don't have a facility for rendering intentionally malicious information impossible to access, your system is fundamentally broken.

yinyinwu 8y ago
I think the tough part is deciding who should be the arbiter or whether information is intentionally malicious. Censorship can be a real issue. For the DIRT protocol, if want to remove information, you also need to deposit tokens and put forth evidence to convince voters in the network to side with you. If you lose the vote, then you would also lose tokens. We put forth an economic penalty for being inaccurate.
- mcny 8y ago
  Firstly, congratulations on launching! > For the DIRT protocol, if want to remove information, you also need to deposit tokens and put forth evidence to convince voters in the network to side with you. If you lose the vote, then you would also tokens. We put forth an economic for being malicious. Sorry if this is a stupid question but if I lose a vote, can I bring it up for a vote again? I think that should be ok, right? Even if I get some fact removed by some kind of trickery where I sneak in a vote it should be OK because if the fact belongs there, maybe someone else can add it again? I think this works well for facts like Robert Kennedy as a matter of fact did NOT kill John F Kennedy. However, some things are not objectively clear. What happens when people keep adding "fake news" that is not obviously/patently false? Does someone need to pay to have it removed? How often do I do that? Every time someone adds it? Now again the flip side is troublesome. We can't require identification for anyone to post facts, right? I mean I think that would be unthinkable, right? As such, how do we "rate limit" "fake news"? Sorry if all of these have obvious answers. I just couldn't think of it...
  - yinyinwu 8y ago
    Thanks! Great question. 1. Repeat votes - If you lose the vote, you can vote again. DIRT works not only for correcting intentionally misleading data, but also for fixing out of data information. It's similar to a bug bounty for data. 2. Cycle of challenges - Each time misinformation re-surfaces, you would have to challenge and vote down the data. However, every time you are successful in your challenge, you earn tokens for your efforts. 3. Fake news - Subjective information can be harder to adjudicate with DIRT and that will not be our initial market. As an engineer, I would love to believe that the blockchain can solve fake news. However, a lot of research shows it is not the lack of data that the issue, but rather perspective. People believe what they want to believe.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
- Aeolun 8y ago
  I think the EU is going to put forth an economic penalty for the network to retain personal information when someone doesn't want it to. Just because everyone else on the network votes that it should stay there doesn't mean the law agrees.
- fake-name 8y ago
  A.K.A. A abusers paradise. You HAVE to have moderation facilities.

otoburb 8y ago

>>To flag information as incorrect, you need to take tokens and challenge the data. A challenge starts a vote and anyone in the DIRT network can vote with their tokens on what information is correct. The vote winner and majority voters earn tokens. The vote loser and minority voters are penalized. You're right this only works well for objective information or facts. Hence, any articles that hint of an opinion (i.e. pick any Wikipedia editing war topic) would result in a mono-culture dominated by those with the most tokens. I'm really curious to see how this plays out. Best of luck.

yinyinwu 8y ago
Thanks! What we have for v1 of the protocol is really the starting point. There are also other extensions that could support subjective information. For example, it could be similar to Reddit's upvoting system. You can stake 100 tokens to say Domino's has the best pizza, and I can counter with 200 tokens to say Papa John's is better. Items are ranked on the list based on the token stake. There would be no challenges or voting in this model.
- abcc8 8y ago
  What prevents entities who can afford to lose the most tokens from establishing what is listed as 'correct'? What mechanisms are there to prevent those with the greatest token number from establishing what is accurate?
  - yinyinwu 8y ago
    Two parts: 1. Economic - you stand to lose the tokens. Similar to mining on bitcoin, the cost to spam the network is proportional to the value of the network. If there are a lot of users, the value of the token is higher and it will be more expensive to acquire the tokens needed to game the system. Even if you are well funded, this will hurt. 2. Reader disinterest - There is the negative feedback loop where users of the information will stop using the information, and the incentive to game the system will drop.

juancampa 8y ago

Interesting. It's similar to how Stack Overflow's reputation system incentivizes quality questions and answers, except that in DIRT you use tokens, and tokens cost money (correct me if I'm wrong). Unsolicited startup idea: build a more accurate Stack Overflow with DIRT.

yinyinwu 8y ago
Yes - That's a great analogy. On the moderation side similar to Stack Overflow, Reddit, HackerNews with reputation and points. On the writing side, we put a higher bar on data accuracy and deposits to share data.

jesseb 8y ago

What systems are in place to prevent a malicious actor who is well funded from spreading disinformation and/or discrediting factual data?

fleitz 8y ago
The fact that there is currency involved means that those without money are the malicious actors spreading false data, after all the blockchain said it was true. There is no such thing as a well funded malicious actor in this protocol, only unfunded malicious actors.

Karrot_Kream 8y ago

Do you have any quadratic voting scheme where one can cast larger votes but have to stake a quadratic amount of ERC20 tokens for the vote? Also, do y'all have a Telegram room?

VectorLock 8y ago

So the 'truth' is whichever way the majority votes? Putting side the obvious issues with that, what prevents someone who has the largest warchest from sweeping everything or is it just an assumption that no-one will have a 51% share blockchains are largely based on?