As a former director at Twitter and editor-in-chief of Wired's online publication, Evan Hansen had a front-row seat to the information wars. He saw that, even as fact-checking organizations and tools have proliferated, the public's confidence in media has plummeted, especially as the U.S. nears another contentious election. But Hansen believes that an emerging technology could help combat the loss of trust: Blockchain.
Hansen is the cofounder of Factland, a crowdsourced platform that offers users crypto tokens to settle online disputes. He envisions the service, which is built on Dfinity's Internet Computer blockchain, as a competitor to X's Community Notes feature, which lets those on X add context to false or unreliable posts. In the case of Factland, the service is designed to live under posts and articles across different social media sites and publications, which can adopt it as a third-party verification tool.
While Factland is still in beta testing mode, Hansen told Fortune in an interview that he hopes to launch its native token next year and begin working on partnerships to trial the technology. "Our big bet has been that there's a crowd-sourced opportunity where you can recruit internet open intel groups and get these people to combine forces to investigate," he said. "With blockchain, you can actually create more of a transparent path for people to see how those decisions get made."
Fact-checking 2.0
Hansen held high-level positions at publications including Wired and Medium before joining Twitter as an editorial director, leaving a few months after Elon Musk took over the company. He has worked on fact-checking initiatives in the past and says the most persistent challenges come in the form of media outlets' prioritizing buzzy framing—as well as readers' skepticism about who is conducting fact-checking, especially if it's concentrated in a small group of people.
Factland leverages two core elements of crypto: the decentralized nature of blockchain to settle contracts without human intervention, along with the ability to grant tokens based on activity. Here's how it works: Anyone who signs up for an account on Factland will be granted a set amount of tokens. They can stake them on either side of different claims that arise in a dispute—such as whether schools and hospitals are "overwhelmed" because of "illegal immigrants," or whether Doland Trump wants to cut social security. Meanwhile, users can post evidence to back up their position.
Once a topic reaches a certain threshold of staked tokens, a "jury summons" goes out inviting a random sample of participants to vote. The staking pool is divided among the winning side, with jurors also earning a reward. Topics can also be re-opened for more evidence and further debate. "That's one of our fundamental principles," Hansen said. "This idea of the revisibility of the truth."
Factland is still working out its so-called tokenomics system, and Hansen admits that certain elements of the process could be gamed. Exxon, for example, could buy tokens and vote on debates around sustainability that back up its positions. Similar to the prediction platform Polymarket, however, it would then become profitable for users to take the other side of the dispute, and Hansen said that Factland is working on mechanics that would ensure that the jury pool represents a diverse sample.
Factland's main obstacle is the regulatory uncertainty facing crypto in the U.S. The Securities and Exchange Commission's campaign of enforcement actions against blockchain companies has made a token launch risky, and Factland's similarity to derivatives contracts would likely mean that it would have to register with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has tried to stop electoral betting. Hansen said that Factland has struggled to attract venture funding, though it is operating with grant money from Dfinity.
Still, Hansen believes that the best way to address disinformation and waning confidence is an external system that is separated from media outlets and social media owners. "The problem with fact-checking in general is that everybody already has decided what the truth is, and the fact checks come in and they don't care," he told Fortune. "So to try to build it into the fabric of the way we consume information would be a big win."
