Don't think this thread will last a long time here. Might be better in the announcement channel

But in any case, token listing and creation is becoming like some standard operating requirement before anything. Hope we can see something new soon that keeps investors and fans here engaged!

I'd say the decentralised part is focused on the verifier role, where verifiers can have their opinions on articles, but only valid when backed by majority. But that is on the later part after this MVP.

I agree with you on the big number of participants, and this is something I hope to achieve at this phase, to lay a foundation with voters. Assuming we get 1000 authentic voters who'd vote actively and contribute articles for voting, we can promote 5-10% of them as verifiers at the end of this current phase, and invite 3rd party fact-checkers out there as verifiers as well. Ultimately, as this platform scales, 90% of normal members, will participate in voting and contribution to earn RNT, RNT can be used to stake on verifiers to do the work. And when revenue starts coming in in future, members who stake on verifiers, and verifiers themselves, can get incentivised. But we're still far away from there so I wouldn't want to say much about this incentivising part now. The normal voters, will not make any decisive impact, but indirectly incentivised by staking, or becoming outstanding enough to become a verifier themselves one day, as the need for verifiers will definitely increase as more members start coming in. Hopefully this would be an indirect way to incentivise normal users to keep up their activity here. We still need a detailed metric for incentivising verifiers, taking into consideration their contribution, activity such as contributing to fact-checking, and backing other fact-checkers, which leads to a potential reputation or credibility rating.

Even though the focus of this platform is mainly on fact-checkers/verifiers working to get the facts out, and debunk fake or misinformed news, but without a base community, it might look like we're having artists(fact-checkers) performing, but without much audience (90% of community). That's why I'm keen to build up a community of performing artists now. Some of them might make it as the first batch of verifiers, some of them might take slightly longer and remain as audience, or even some who'll never be verifiers, but stakes their RNT on verifiers who are active and provides quality fact-checking. But as community grows, more verifiers will be promoted, or even sourced from current 3rd party fact-checkers, which the community can stake their token on as well.

Going back to being decentralised, I think the definition in being a decentralised app is, without the continued effort of founders and devs, the decentralised platform can still run by itself. And in this case, even though normal members do not have much say in deciding if a news is fake or not, but normal members hold the power to stake on verifiers. Verifiers might hold a stronger say if a news is real or fake, but eventually, verifiers not up to standard, will lose relevance over time, and be taken over by others in the community. Every role is fairly important in this role, and I don't think one is more important than the other when it comes to roles in the platform. But as a collective community, the agenda is still the same, which is accurate information delivery. Similarly in any organisation, a manager will suffer when workers are not convinced of the manager's capabilities, a commander might lose his troops, if he makes bad decisions all the time. But it doesn't happen that much in the society, because, workers get paid, regardless working under a incompetent person, or a good manager. Troops who disobey superior, get punished for insubordination. In the case of this platform, normal members have a choice on which verifier to stake on, if verifiers are not performing actively, they lose support of normal members to other fellow verifiers. The challenge here would be, to prevent a small group of verifiers consolidating too much power, when all normal members start staking for a small group of verifiers, but these things can be adjusted by introducing systems where, normal users have to stake their RNT on a few verifiers, instead of 1 sole verifier.

Current MVP development :

- allowing community to vote on news article
- users can send articles for voting within the community (pm news article to bot and submit post function)
- english and bahasa indonesia channel
- RNT rewards for voting and submitting articles for voting


Further MVP development :

- website
- other languages for voting channels


We need this MVP to gain more traction and increase in size of community before we can move on and introduce functions for fact-checkers/verifiers and other more exciting functions!  Without a community, there is no way we can promote verifiers from within the community. We're expecting at least 15 - 20% of community members get promoted to verifiers at the end of the MVP phase. Thus, we will need a community of a few thousand minimum to get a realistic number of verifiers later that can make this project meaningful as it moves forward.

If you like the idea of this, please support us by participating in voting, and sharing of news articles in our MVP bots and channels on Telegram. Thanks!

Yea, still plenty of work to do in the meantime as well for the verifiers/fact-checkers platform. But we'll need more participation at the lower level now with the news voting. Tough days 

It may not be efficient for fact-checkers to provide fact check results. But if there is a need, fact-checkers are encouraged to submit their results of fact check in order to prove another fact checker having inaccurate information, and the remaining fact-checkers can choose to back the respective fact-checkers. A fact-checker can also add on additional results from fact-checking to support existing results from others, like a branch off a tree.



I think in this regard, votes have to be closed anyway, but a new vote can be opened regarding the previous topic, with supporting evidence or update of news, allowing a correction of community opinion. We do not need to cover up mistakes, because the world lacked evidence at one point of time. But when new evidence is present to debunk a previous fact, we give the community another try to correct a previous misconception due to the lack of factual evidence before.

Information travel extremely fast these days as well, if we cannot get a conclusion on a news being real or fake, it might start creating damage to the society if the news is fake, and intent on stirring the negative emotions and reactions of readers, which is something we want to prevent, and see lesser.

From my experience and interaction with people, there is this herd mentality that most people possess, which leads to them believing crypto being banned in China or India, which is not true, but due to misinformed news by a finance sector writer or news anchor in finance channels, the misinformed news becomes a real news, because it was 'reported'. I would love to correct them, but it's going to take a lot of effort, and nobody wants to get brushed off and get told, you don't know what you're talking about. Some would of course, learn from the correction provided, but that's not the case if you ever tried discussing crypto with a guy in finance sector for 20 years. 

With the introduction of verifiers/fact-checkers, who can be any crypto enthusiast, or just a more 'informed' finance guy, or basically any crypto influencer on Twitter, this story can be debunked 'easily', which gives the public a chance to be educated based on facts. This is probably the only application where countries with fake news law can step in and clarify things nicely for the people. With justified evidence provided by fact-checkers, it feeds 'fact' into people, which can make some people feel uneasy. But at the same time, more people get educated indirectly, and the ones who feels uneasy about the facts, are probably the ones who'll react violently, and passing off remarks like bitcoin is dead later, but through this education, chances are, lesser people would be affected by the comment 'bitcoin is dead'. Although this is only one example, but it can be applied widely in many issues if we think about it.

Thank you for the feedback and concern. I hope the introduction of fact-checkers and verifiers will be a solution to the potential problems we're facing these days.

Thank you for proposing the weighing and credibility system. I am keen to add this system for verifiers/fact-checkers and accuracy of such users can be an important factor as proposed by you. However, there are many factors to consider, especially for giving 'credible' users or fact-checkers a bigger weight on their votes.

Instead of adding more weight to their votes, fact-checkers who are based on the country of interest in the article, can place facts, such as photos taken, or evidence known by fact checkers, to convince other fact-checkers to back his opinion. But I feel that, if someday by any chance this platform is up and running, we might need to change the dynamics of this system regularly, as human behavior can change when we introduce systems like weighted votes, and credibility.

Some facts that we believe today, might be debunked in future, from tomorrow till the end of mankind. This platform can be seen as more of a way, for educating people in current times with regards to ridiculous fake news, that can bring inconvenience to major disaster to people. I don't think it is possible to carve anything voted here in a stone, saying it's a fact and it can't be changed.

Thanks again for your input on the credibility system, that is definitely one good way to move forward for this platform.

Within the fact-checkers platform, fact-checkers require the support of other fellow fact-checkers with their response. The possibility is there, where somebody manage to buy off enough 'fact-checkers' to keep quiet, or to behave manipulated. I don't think there is a way to stop this completely, or to prevent this from happening, even though it'll take a long time for tracking 'enough' fact checkers.

Another way fact-checkers can be supported, is by the existing community(non-verifiers/non fact-checkers), as they get to stake their RNT on fact-checkers. If somebody do manage to 'buy off' most or all fact-checkers, and the existing community does not sense the 'buy off', there really isn't much that any of us can do. But, given current social media and online environment, such as platforms and forums like this, everyone have their own opinion on many different topics. I can buy off more than half of bitcointalk users to post good things here, including legendary and hero members like yourself, but it doesn't necessary mean, all users will follow suit and post good things here. So long as there is a voice, and the voice reaches the people, it doesn't really matter what the crowd say sometimes. So, to answer your question, if the unlikely event where fact-checkers are all bought out, I'm confident, somebody will do the right thing, be it fact checkers, or even members who stake their RNT on the fact-checkers, and we can only hope, the minority can make enough noise to change things. One very good example is what we see in Steemit on January and February, and that's why a community is very important, which I'm sure all of us agree here. I think we still have plenty of work to do here in this department.

I do agree that, consensus agreement is not effective, as what people feel in general, may not depict the truth. That is why, we need to have a community of fact-checkers, to debunk news articles which is simply not true. If somehow, this platform appeared a few hundred years earlier, we would be able to study about human thoughts at the point, such as allowing leeches to suck off your 'toxins' as an effective  treatment, and thinking slavery was fine. There might also be a chance where, 20% of the population thought it was fine, but not the remaining, and they just kept quiet without voicing any concerns and follow through with their life. Things might have turned out differently then, or at least now when we're puzzled by people in the past.

A current example would be, social media users debating on these platforms. Sometimes, we read them without commenting, because there is no winning over keyboard battles sometimes, and you have better things to do. But when you look at the comments, it is mostly filled with unconstructive comments, does that mean everyone is stupid just because too little people said something smart over there? However, with this platform, the more 'informed' users can make their votes count, and they have a group of fact-checkers that they can count on, and if that is not the case, they can be a fact-checker themselves to make a difference. But ultimately, it shows numbers in votes, facts and evidence provided by different fact checkers, things can become more transparent in future I believe by showing 2-3 general opinions backed by other fact checkers in an article that was voted in future.

Honestly, I'd like to see someone post an article saying, USD is both safe and stable, fact-checkers from this platform like yourself, putting up evidence and facts stating its a 'fake news', and the general consensus get a jaw drop when they learn of it as a fake news, and more would wake up from their sleep. Even though this period might be a start of a wake-up call as well.

Ultimately, what I want to achieve with this MVP is, for a community to start voting on news article. Without a community who can agree with this act of initial voting, there is no way to effectively introduce fact-checkers within a fair/decentralised environment, and no way for the general public to learn about why certain article is fake or misinformed news.

Thanks for bringing up the flaws here, I believe I have more to work on for the whitepaper moving forward. Have a great day, and keep yourself safe! 

Yes, voting can be manipulated.

On the long run, paid voting will not be feasible for most, when fact-checkers are introduced. The fact-checking community has to be wide, with people of different backgrounds, as it is inevitable that human possess bias as we've seen in the world. If fact checkers debunk it as a fake news in future, even if the community gets paid to vote for certain outcome, in this case, real, or fake news, it is what fact checkers conclude, which counts.

May I direct you to the group, and perhaps you can take a look at some document I've written so far, because it might answer your question. https://telegra.ph/Whitepaper-Realnot-03-25
The document/whitepaper is far from completion. But it might answer some doubts that you have at the moment 

As for fact checkers, the curation platform to be created, will allow fact-checkers to have the platform to agree and disagree with one another. As you mentioned above, if votes can be bought, fact-checkers, might lose integrity in future one day. And I'm not sure if you're aware, but authorised 3rd-party fact-checkers for Facebook, is pretty monopolised across the world. In any case, the curation platform can allow fact-checkers/verifiers to provide research and evidence for articles, and will need to go through the approval of other fact-checkers as well to ensure minimised bias and integrity of the platform.

I'm not saying, current fact-checkers cannot be trusted, but I think there is a need for readers like us, to not develop any trust issues with fact-checkers in future as they become more important 

Hi there,

I have plans to shift it to a standalone blockchain in future if we can get past this MVP and get some good response. This will not be 'decentralised' yet in the near future. Sorry for the misleading subject title. I will change it.

In any case, in future, users will be represented by an identity, like bitcoin address. Voting will then be conducted by users via their identity.

At this moment, there are more question marks than answers for the blockchain deployment, and I'm hoping the MVP phase will get us more answers as we move forward.

A few thoughts I have:

- Users should have only 1 identity, but at this moment, a decentralised environment will not effectively ensure that, not even at current MVP stage, unless we start doing KYC for all users, which shouldn't be the case as well.
- Users with multiple identity can game the system, and even if KYC implemented, there is a possibility of users gaming the system as well with multiple accounts, but it will be slightly more difficult.
- Implementing random polls to random users(different set of voters voting on article A, another set voting on article B), so that gaming of the system is minimised.

Description :

Realnot Platform is a project that allows community to vote, if a news article is real, or fake. The general public can share news articles, where the rest of the community can vote, if the news is a fake news, or a legit news article.

Realnot do not decide, or conclude, if a news article is a fake news, or not. Every result is only based on general consensus of the members in the voting channel of Realnot on Telegram. Users who have doubts over certain news, can take the article into the Realnot platform, and look at what other users think of the news. This can help the community to be aware if a news article is potentially fake or inaccurate, which will greatly reduce the impact of fear, uncertainty and doubt

Aside from this, Realnot hopes to develop further into a news curation platform in future, where active members can become fact-checkers.

Currently, myself, and Nasir is working on this project. With Nasir taking care of development, and my role as founder to continue improving the idea of this project to make it better and more helpful on the long run.


Overview :

At this moment, we have a MVP on Telegram, using voting channels and bots for article submission. The aim of this MVP is to see the viability of this idea, before we move onto further development, such as fact-checker sections, where fact checkers can comment and debunk fake/misinformed news.
During this period of uncertainty, we hope that the MVP can serve some local communities by allowing users to vote on news articles. Perhaps a user can show their friend or family that, they might have shared a fake news online, and Realnot community has voted that it's a fake news.

This can serve as a way to educate the public about fake news, with participation from users for news article submission and voting.

There is also a RNT token in place, to reward users for contributing to the platform. RNT of users will be used to determine if a specific user should be promoted to a fact-checker in future, as we need fact-checkers to be active in platform.

At this moment, both Nasir and myself are stumped with the community building. I've tried writing on medium, steemit, begging Telegram admins to let me post ads on their channels. We have a post in the announcement section, but it's not gaining traction. I think this might be a more appropriate section to post this.


Development timeline :

March 2020 -
- Realnot idea formed and put in writing (idea was around since 2018, but was expecting facebook to do something serious about it)
- RNT token (rewarding community for posting articles, and voting with general consensus)
- Forming of english and bahasa indonesia voting channels
- MVP completed

Future development :

- Fact-checker platform development.
- Mobile app development
- Blockchain integration for voting sessions, and voting details/results. (details can be used for studies in future if anyone is interested in studying the growth of fake news and reactions in different years)
- Promoting fact-checkers within community when necessary development is ready.
- Incentivising fact-checkers through non-disrupting ads revenue  
- Engaging 3rd-party fact checkers to enter and contribute to the community.


Help needed :

Before we can go into future developments, it will be good to have a small community around and gauge the interest of the community before moving ahead.

- a respectable size of voters (with more individual voters, results can be more convincing)
- participation of users, from submitting posts for voting, to voting.
- community supporting more language for voting channels (currently only english and bahasa indonesia)
- website development - potentially building curator platform onto it as well, but more importantly, would love to have a beautiful site some time down the road.


Related links :

As we do not have a site yet, we're more active in telegram community group.

Our bot : @R_N_T_Bot

Users can submit articles via our telegram bot. Articles will go into relevant channel for voting.

Our community: https://t.me/Realnotcommunity

The community is very quiet now, having less than 10 active users. Please feel free to interact there.

Our voting channels : https://t.me/realnotenglish    https://t.me/realnotindonesia

Please feel free to vote on articles that are open for voting. If there is nothing available, feel free to post articles using our bot, and articles will be there for voting.

If you need to know more about this project, feel free to interact at our community listed above, or even via this thread.

Thank you!

This is very helpful. I've always done horrible for marketing. I think this is something I'm lacking, and will take reference here to get my new thread up. I posted a ANN yesterday, but I guess it's more appropriate if I post it here since I'm trying to gather a community here.

I think it's time we do something for the community right now. The past 3 weeks, I have been working on a trial platform on Telegram with a few friends.

We've created a bot, and 2 channels for users to vote, if a news article is fake news, or not.

I guess my other projects won't be able to get funded by VC anytime soon, might not be a bad idea to do something for the community against fake news.


I'll be happy if we can get some participants from here, and maybe we can see what happen from there. Maybe we can work on a site or even a mobile app in the near future if users can benefit from this fake news voting platform.

We have a Pre-ANN on the announcement channel as well for Altcoins.

Tough times don't last, tough men do. Hope everyone make use of their time at home during the lockdown!  

Stay safe!

Well, projects that still has decent runway for development will be lucky, but for those seeking investments for development and so on, tough luck.

But it might be a good time for new bounty hunters to return now with nothing much to do at home. Guess we'll never know till we see more action here

Sad to say that it defeats the purpose, but agree with you that, for this space to grow, we have to play by the rules of the financial industry.

Perhaps we can remove the KYC part, and just use some sort of identity like BTC address in future, when financial regulations get eliminated, hopefully in our lifetime

Anybody interested in taking a look at a new fake news voting platform in Telegram?

Covid19 is already kicking ass all over the world, the last thing mankind needs is probably fake or misinformed news which will get everyone into panic mode, making patients less motivated and more worried. It's crazy out there right now!

Send articles to the bot in Telegram, and get community to start voting, and educate everyone about fake/misinformed news out there, to prevent more unnecessary actions from people and risking themselves getting exposed to virus when they are out there! Debunk fake news, especially the ones trying to create more havoc right now!


https://t.me/R_N_T_Bot (Telegram bot)
https://t.me/Realnotcommunity (community)
https://t.me/realnotindonesia (voting channel for bahasa indonesia)
https://t.me/realnotenglish (voting channel for english)

We have our whitepaper in our telegram channel. However, we believe we still have more things to add on for the whitepaper, and that's why we're not posting it here yet.

Voting and sending articles in for voting is ready and available in Telegram now. Submit articles to our bot, and vote in the voting channels ✅❌🤷🏼‍♀️

RNT earned now, can be used for staking on fact-checkers in future when we're ready for the next phase.

Yea you're right, this is more of a Pre-ANN.

We're hoping to gather more feedback at this moment from the public, before moving ahead to websites and social media presence.

We have some basic information in our telegram channel about this project, and a prototype in the form of Telegram bot and channels for users to try out and interact. Will do our best to tidy things up in telegram, as we're very keen to build up an early phase community there 

I apologise in advance if it ever gets too messy over there 

So true, product potential and capability is very important.