Web Atlas
– The new type of social media
Web Atlas is an upcoming web-app that aims to combat misinformation. It will be a merged version of a social media and forum, to make fact checking easier than ever, to mold it into a habit, rather than a second thought.
It aims to solve one of the most important current problems, that untreated threatens democracy and freedom of speech: the information systems.
As some of you may have seen over the past decades, the mainstream media has become quite polarized, and while the internet has in its infancy to be a highway for science and knowledge, misinformation spreads just as much. The information chaos is bad for everyone individually, but especially for democracy. Information systems world over needs an overhaul, to somehow be fixed.
Journalism used to be the middle man between experts and the general public, but we have seen that news agencies often, on purpose or not, decide public opinion by cherrypicking the right expert to front their own perspective and by choosing to cover or not cover specific topics, constructing a political narrative. Sometimes they take sponsors which want to twist on the news, and sometimes they just straight up lie. They also front the most shocking stories, rather than the ones that could be the most important for democracy, and for societal development.
The solutions to this can be fact checking organizations, but there are doubt cast on them too. Even they can be manipulated dependent on who funds them, and funny enough – some of these organizations are run by the same news agencies they fact check.
Polls shows peoples distrust for fact checking websites:
- Poynter study and Pew Research Center says half Americans think fact checkers are one sided
- Pew Research Center on fact checking:
There is no doubt that people are interested in knowing the truth. Even though some people put a lot of work into researching and fact-checking, some put no work into it, yet are just as confident and convinced as anyone else. Many have tried to stop people from having opinions on complex and difficult topics, and tell them to leave it to the experts. While that obviously makes sense, if everyone followed that it would leave a lot of trust to people we simply don’t know. Democracy needs to have a population that constantly fights for truth, and understands themselves what they are voting for. If not, you will not have a democracy. Instead of stopping people from having conversations and discussions, it should be made easier and done better. The best way for people to learn, if not completely necessary to learn, is to be able to talk about topics and explore it.
We’re convinced that the real solution is a people driven platform, that allows anyone to fact check anything, to let no stone unturned. Collectively, we can figure out who is lying, manipulating the narrative, spreading misinformation, and truly clean the internet from all bullshit.
This requires a very thought out and simple platform. Check out more on our website:
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