This is part 5 of CCN’s series, “Peace & Stability Through The Blockchain.”
For part 1, click here .
For part 2, click here .
For part 3, click here .
For part 4, click here .
In part 5, we look at how information might be shared on a blockchain system. Journalism and Information Sharing
The WikiLeaks example demonstrates the issues facing sources for information. When major payment providers blocked WikiLeaks’ accounts, the site adopted Bitcoin. Could an information provider such as a news journal, website, newsletter or whistleblowing be distributed?
In such an example, suppose that people are incentivized to subscribe and host a node for the information source – say, The New York Times. It’s unclear how to incentivize individuals to do this.Twister might give thought experimenters a way forward on the topic. So far, Twister is a free software for peer-to-peer microblogging. As blockchainers contend, “Being completely decentralized means that no one is able to shut it down.” The project is based on both BitTorrent and Bitcoin-like protocols. It’s possibly most accurately describes as a distributed Twitter. The project is very crude to date. It was developed under the Linux Environment but has since integrated Android and OSX.In the instance this was applied to a news journal, I assume a “subscriber” or node would constantly be connected to the distributed application. The app could feature any variety of long form journalism, op-eds, breaking news, microblogging and so on. Ensuring quality content is of the utmost importance to such an operation. In order to govern content, a distributed news and information application could enforce a fee to upload content. Content creators will have to invest in themselves to write for the distributed application.A fee market will quickly develop where content creators will charge others to create content on the application. […]