5 ms·

Blockchain + version control for news?

jjakque 6y ago
I felt your comment off topic. But I do somewhat agree with sentiment of having immutable news archive as the present Internet is more 'what we can see' oppose to 'what we can know'.
andrewflnr 6y ago
Not really. The problem isn't that we don't have a record of past news, it's that we're not critically reading the records we have. IMO it's fundamentally a social issue between journalists and readers.
jacobush 6y ago
Yes, good candidates. Come back to "block chain" and "version control" every other year, that would be just about right.
smt88 6y ago
I suspect your downvotes are due to HN being tired of people proposing blockchain for problems it wouldn't solve. Assuming your comment was sincere, I'll engage with your content instead of downvoting: 1. You don't need a distributed, P2P database to archive news. Archive.org already does it, for example. So do some libraries. 2. Saving things in immutable, distributed databases does not require a blockchain. BitTorrent has been mostly successful at this for decades, for example. 3. It's common for stories like this to be covered in thousands of reputable and unreputable publications. The reputable ones already have policies against changing old stories, though none seem to do routinely change stories in practice. Either way, to update a story like this, you only need one example of the coverage.
- downshun 6y ago
  Thanks! I was wondering. Didn't have a clear idea of what the implementation details would have to be so I just named the two closest concepts that came to mind.
  - smt88 6y ago
    There was an article (and accompanying thread) a few years ago that I sent to everyone who didn't understand why blockchain was a hype bubble[1]. It may be informative for you, too. At this point, the word blockchain itself is very stigmatized. It doesn't help that a lot of the pro-blockchain social media world (reddit, Twitter, and Instagram) is populated by nutjobs and scammers. Side note: I recommend you think of downvotes as "this isn't the most informative comment and should be lower" rather than "I hate you as a person". It's almost always the former rather than the latter. The latter is usually flagged instead of downvoted. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571
  - andrewflnr 6y ago
    > so I just named the two closest concepts that came to mind. To be quite blunt, this is a recipe for downvotable comments.
    - downshun 6y ago
      https://mobile.twitter.com/dorrismccomics/status/862765335258079232 https://mobile.twitter.com/dorrismccomics/status/86276533525... I'm not very excellous at the englishingn. Woe is my karma.

I felt your comment off topic. But I do somewhat agree with sentiment of having immutable news archive as the present Internet is more 'what we can see' oppose to 'what we can know'.

andrewflnr 6y ago

Not really. The problem isn't that we don't have a record of past news, it's that we're not critically reading the records we have. IMO it's fundamentally a social issue between journalists and readers.

jacobush 6y ago

Yes, good candidates. Come back to "block chain" and "version control" every other year, that would be just about right.

smt88 6y ago

I suspect your downvotes are due to HN being tired of people proposing blockchain for problems it wouldn't solve. Assuming your comment was sincere, I'll engage with your content instead of downvoting: 1. You don't need a distributed, P2P database to archive news. Archive.org already does it, for example. So do some libraries. 2. Saving things in immutable, distributed databases does not require a blockchain. BitTorrent has been mostly successful at this for decades, for example. 3. It's common for stories like this to be covered in thousands of reputable and unreputable publications. The reputable ones already have policies against changing old stories, though none seem to do routinely change stories in practice. Either way, to update a story like this, you only need one example of the coverage.

downshun 6y ago
Thanks! I was wondering. Didn't have a clear idea of what the implementation details would have to be so I just named the two closest concepts that came to mind.
- smt88 6y ago
  There was an article (and accompanying thread) a few years ago that I sent to everyone who didn't understand why blockchain was a hype bubble[1]. It may be informative for you, too. At this point, the word blockchain itself is very stigmatized. It doesn't help that a lot of the pro-blockchain social media world (reddit, Twitter, and Instagram) is populated by nutjobs and scammers. Side note: I recommend you think of downvotes as "this isn't the most informative comment and should be lower" rather than "I hate you as a person". It's almost always the former rather than the latter. The latter is usually flagged instead of downvoted. 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15994571
- andrewflnr 6y ago
  > so I just named the two closest concepts that came to mind. To be quite blunt, this is a recipe for downvotable comments.
  - downshun 6y ago
    https://mobile.twitter.com/dorrismccomics/status/862765335258079232 https://mobile.twitter.com/dorrismccomics/status/86276533525... I'm not very excellous at the englishingn. Woe is my karma.