We’ve all seen the power of open source information to solve a mystery. Crowdsourced investigations like anons do are often faster than traditional news in getting to the latest stories and gathering evidence. Even the news relies combs through social media for its sources — but only when the source fits their agenda.
What about everything that the news doesn’t show you? Or that the social media feeds aren’t currently covering? It’s time the crowd has the ability to see for itself, to self-coordinate and become its own reporters.
Even if you’re in lockdown, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to explore what’s happening in another city by linking up with someone willing to livestream exactly what you want to see, without having to wait for the news media gatekeepers to serve it up for you at their leisure.
I'm building a platform to allow curious citizens to crowdfund bounties anywhere on a map, that other users can capture by starting a public livestream there. Users who are near enough to collect these bounties get paid, kind of like uber, but for livestreaming. Streamers will earn tips for realtime requests during streaming too. And we are going to try to maximize the earnings you can make with the video you collect.
This isn’t just a tool to build a utility to facilitate public collaborative research, we think this has real potential to help lots of underemployed people make income on the side.
Currently, we are just about to launch our alpha version, but we need some feedback from people willing to try it and give feedback.
In particular, I’m looking for people who A) want to help disrupt the fake news media machine, B) people who are currently in the gig economy, or C) people who have been financially displaced by covid and looking to make money by using their cell phone.
If this sounds like you, or if you are simply interesting in making money by catching video bounties near you, let’s talk.
To join our alpha group, you can drop your email (burner is recommended - we don't want your PII!) here: www.vidi.world
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[–] 25715558? ago
I feel that your concept is great and I should tell you about a concept I wrote up a couple years back. My guess is you haven't explored this OTHER opportunity that could dovetail perfectly with your concept.
Imagine a news story about a mass shooting at a library hits at 4:00pm. An CBS affiliate and some left wing outlet break the story. That is seen by a "scout" within your system. Scouts are a curated group of users who've shown aptitude for spotting "fishy" news.
The scout posts in your system an link to the sources, a brief statement and answers a few multiple choice questions. That alerts all Scouts who then view the post and rank the news based on bias, accuracy and legitimacy.
Let's say this event seems to be illegitimate. In other words, the elements seem like speculative reporting at best, and convenient lies at worst. If the ranking is beyond a threshold it then gets distributed to all users. This has taken only on hour so far.
Regular users of the system now view a packaged summary and simply rank the news for a number of criteria. Let's use the extreme example that there is overwhelming suspicion that the story is likely a hoax. The user rankings show 80%+ opinion that the reporting is flawed in one or more areas..
After 2 hours of user ranking, at 7:00pm now the system automatically generates a public article on the website including charts and critical info.
THIS is where is gets more interesting. Just as the article is automatically generated, so too are a myriad of reports and emails. For example, a report of the collective findings and opinions are automatically emailed to the reporting sources, their editors and persons within their parent company. Various watchdog orgs will also receive a report. In addition, agencies like the FCC and other gov bodies will receive reports.
Can you see where this can go? This layer of your overall service would be intended to capture, process and publish public opinion. But it also forces the news companies and other orgs to respond, lest they risk exposure by more legitimate news outlets for their compliance it capitulation.
I've drafted the general forms and what info is captured, as well as how the questionnaires will work. I focused on avoiding bias and less useful data. And my concept works without requiring any boots on the ground.
Another benefit will likely be how it fleshes out common reporting tactics and patterns. This can be used for further automation and better identifying of news that is either deceptive, misleading, false or criminal.
Contact me if my off the cuff description isn't making sense or with any questions.
[–] 25715585? [S] ago
I love this! Please join our alpha group, you would be a perfect member of the community I want to seed with this platform. We need creative people thinking hard like this about how to stop the propagandists in their tracks.