Can The Blockchain Kill Fake News?

notebook blockchain fake news

Bloomberg View columnist Megan McArdle has an interesting article on fake news: Fact-Checking’s Infinite Regress Problem. Fake news constitutes blocks of information fabricated either wholly or in part from falsehoods to serve a political end. It is an act of commission, as opposed to a related act of omission: reporting blocks of true information chosen selectively to serve a political end.

A natural response to the problem of fake news is the emergence of fact-checkers. But on what basis are these elected or self-appointed fact-checkers to be trusted? Who will guard the guardians? The solution cannot be to appoint another layer of super-fact-checkers, since this process results in an infinite regress. Ultimately, the solution will have to reside in an answer like: “The guarded must guard the guardians.”

Fake news–or fake history, for that matter–is not something new. Every society is built on a store of publicly accessible information–a shared history–that evolves over time. But who is assigned write-privileges to this public ledger and how can they be trusted? How can we be sure that Caesar, for example, didn’t fabricate much of what is recorded in his Commentaries?

This the problem with public ledgers where everyone has a write-privilege, as we do with the Internet. But the problem is an ancient one. In small social groups, individuals sometimes spread fake news about others or themselves. Whether this information becomes part of the group’s shared history may at times depend more on its truthiness than its truthfulness. And false rumors sometimes do destroy individual reputations. A society that cannot guard against individuals freely rewriting its history for personal/political gain at the expense of the community is almost surely doomed to fail. This is not to say that societies cannot function if they rely on a shared history consisting of fake news. Indeed, they may even flourish if fake news takes the form of (say) nation-founding myths designed to promote social cohesion.

You might be wondering what any of this has to do with blockchain. Well, a blockchain is simply a shared (distributed) database (history) where the database is updated and kept secure through some communal consensus algorithm. In this piece “Why the Blockchain should be familiar to you” I argue that blockchain technology has been around for a long time. Unfortunately, there are limitations to what a distributed network of human brains talking to each other through traditional methods can accomplish as communities grow larger. But recent advancements in our brain power (computers) and communications technologies (Internet) have now made a global blockchain possible. This is exactly what Bitcoin has accomplished.

And so, as 2016 comes to a close, I put forth a whimsical question. Can blockchain (somehow) kill fake news? No, I don’t think so. Well, maybe yes, in some circumstances. (Did I mention that I’m an economist?)

The answer depends on what parts of our shared history we can expect to manage through a computer-based blockchain (and on the details of the consensus protocol). The Bitcoin blockchain appears to have solved the fake news problem for its particular application (essentially, debiting/crediting money accounts–though broader applications appear possible). Might the same principles be used to manage the database at, say, Wikipedia (see How Wikipedia Really Works: An Insider’s Wry, Brave Account)?

Ultimately, I’m afraid that the fundamental problem with fake news is not that we don’t have the technology to prevent it. The problem seems more deeply rooted in the natural (if unbecoming) human trait of preferring truthiness over truth, especially if truthiness salves where the truth might hurt. I’m not sure there’s a solution to this problem apart from trying to instill in ourselves these good Roman virtues (veritas and aequitas, in particular).

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About David Andolfatto 95 Articles

Affiliation: Simon Fraser University and St. Louis Fed

David Andolfatto is a Vice President in the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. He is also a professor of economics at Simon Fraser University.

Professor Andolfatto earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Western Ontario in 1994, M.A. and B.B.A. from Simon Fraser University. He was associate professor at the University of Waterloo before moving to Simon Fraser University in 2000.

His current research is focused on reconciling theories of money and banking. His past research has examined questions relating to the business cycle, contract design, bank-runs, unemployment insurance, monetary policy regimes, endogenous debt constraints, and technology diffusion.

Visit: MacroMania, David Andolfatto's Page

1 Comment on Can The Blockchain Kill Fake News?

  1. Great question about blockchain and fake news. Your assessment of the fundamental problem is close. I have a degree in Economics from MIT and minored in philosophy with particular interest in epistemology. I didn’t pursue an advanced degree, instead being swept up in the computer revolution.

    I became disillusioned by economics because of the two handed economists. Liars and statistics. It’s difficult to create a science without agreement on facts. I was led to the conclusion that reality is a matter of opinion. It depends on your point of view. You can’t have an independent arbiter of truth because truth is beauty, beauty truth, and truth like beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

    In blockchain terms, the first block in the chain, to which all other blocks must be in accord, is subjective.

    Nevertheless, your article is brilliant and far better written than this comment.

    John

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