WHAT IS FACTLAND

Factland is a nonprofit Web3 DAO created by Evan Hansen, Pam Statz, John Plevyak and Keith Axline. Our mission is to slow the spread of misinformation online by making it easy for anyone to flag untrustworthy claims and have them promptly adjudicated by a decentralized community of fact checkers reward in tokens. Our verdicts will be made available via an open API for any platform connected to the Internet to use as contextual labels on their content.

Beyond reviewing facts, Factland offers a new paradigm for achieving consensus, by inviting everyone to participate, encouraging active listening, and adversarial debate. All three have been shown in research to increase trust via inclusion, which traditional fact checking methods have either or actively undermined by creating the perception of bias.

Factland solves the unspoken gripe of the Internet: Why was I not consulted?

Last, the jury decisions delivered by Factland reflect not the opinion of elites, but the provable consensus view of society as a whole.

Using the Factland Dapp, people can upload claims for community review and comment, and stake FACT tokens to vote on whether they are true or false. Cases are decided by anonymous juries drawn randomly from the community to weigh the evidence and issue a verdict. Stakes are split between the winners, jurors and community investigators who contributed the best evidence.

All jury selection data and verdicts are stored on the blockchain where anyone can check for tampering and get a verification.

HOW FACTLAND WORKS

Report Fake News: When you see dubious social media posts, photos, videos, conspiracy theories or other suspected misinformation, submit the link to Factland.org with a clear title and description of the claim to be decided. The community will do the rest.

Choose Sides: Stake FACT tokens on claims to create an incentive pool to pay investigators, jurors and the winning side.

Be Rewarded for Collecting Evidence: Receive FACT tokens for discussing and sharing information about submitted claims. Investigators who provide the most convincing evidence get the biggest share.

Help Decide the Truth: From time to time you will be invited to serve on an anonymous random sample jury to review evidence and issue a verdict. Jurors receive FACT tokens for their service.

OUR MISSION

Factland promises to increase the scope, speed and reliability of fact-checking by using crowdsourcing and "trustless" verification to decentralize the normally costly and time intensive job of weighing evidence.

OUR AUDIENCE

Web sites which display information e.g. Twitter, Google News can use the Factland case history to present fact-checking results. People interested in checking a fact directly e.g. Snopes can use Factland or Factland derived data. Individuals interested in staking a Claim can use Factland to do so. Individuals interested in researching a Claim can post comments and evidence as to the authenticity of a Claim. Finally individuals interested in participating in juries can help adjudicate claims.

WHAT YOUR FUNDING MAKES POSSIBLE

The funds raised from this grant will go towards the following items that are currently slowing down executing on the vision and product:

• Branding and UI upgrades. The core team does not include a designer so we'll be contracting with one to elevate our branding and UI.

• Non-profit legal work. We'll be hiring a lawyer to get us in compliance with our 501(c)(3) status and approve our roadmap to decentralized governance.

• Marketing and community growth. Getting the word out through marketing campaigns and referral rewards.

• Accelerated development. Contracting with developers, potentially via bounties, to iterate quickly through our roadmap.

• Surplus funds will go into a treasury for future expenses. The treasury will eventually be controlled by the community through DAO governance. Founders will not draw a salary until the product and community have sufficient resources.

2022-2023 ACHIEVEMENTS

FACTLAND received a $25,000 Developer Grant from the Dfinity Foundation and completed the following deliverables:

1. IC login (Internet Identity) Integration

• Enable primary login via IC Internet Identity
• Enable associating IC Internet Identity with other login types (e.g. email/password)
• Store user profiles on the IC

2. Store and serve certified fact check and resolution information from the Internet Computer blockchain

• Make the IC the primary data source for outside consumers of Factland claim data
• Provide certified claim data via HTTPS

3. Store and serve certified fact check and resolution information from the Internet Computer blockchain

• Provide certification checkable claim data via an API
• Provide certified provenance and history for fact check and resolution information

TEAM EXPERIENCE

Factland is a nonprofit Web3 DAO created by Evan Hansen, John Plevyak, Keith Axline and Pam Statz. Our team is based in San Francisco and Portland, OR. Thus far we’ve contributed our personal time and resources to develop, design and promote the Factland demo.

Evan Hansen is a 30 year news veteran, who's served as the top editor at Wired.com, Medium and Periscope and was most recently director of curation at Twitter. He's collected numerous industry awards for journalism excellence and innovation. He is a Founding Board Member, President and CEO of FactlandDAO. https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-hansen-1342146/

John Plevyak, PhD is a Director of Engineering at DFINITY with more than 30 years of experience at companies large and small, including Google, Cray, and Inktomi specializing in large systems, Web2 and Web3. He is a Founding Board Member, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of FactlandDAO. https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-plevyak-004737/

Pam Statz is a creative technologist with 25+ years experience in UX and UI design, story telling, digital strategy, and product management. She has led large scale digital projects for Lucasfilm, WIRED, Wieden+Kennedy, and NIKE. She is a Founding Board Member, Secretary and Chief of Strategy and Operations at FactlandDAO. https://www.linkedin.com/in/pamstatz/

Keith Axline is a full-stack mobile and web developer living in Portland, OR. He had a previous career in media as an editor and photo editor at Wired.com and Medium. He is a Founding Board Member, Treasurer and Chief Product Officer of FactlandDAO. https://www.linkedin.com/in/keithaxline/

BECOME A FACTLAND BETA TESTER

• Create an account on https://demo.factland.org/
• You'll get 1000 FACT testing tokens. If you run out of tokens, visit your account profile page and click 'Reset Balance'
• Create claims, add evidence, join juries, and comment

Questions? Check out the Factland FAQ at https://demo.factland.org/faq

SHARE YOUR FEEDBACK

Once you've spent some time creating claims, adding evidence and taking part in juries, we have a few questions for you to help us figure out the next iteration of the product.

You're also welcome to share feedback in our Discord at https://discord.gg/eQ58kxSk8w