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Elon Musk has floated the idea of creating Pravda, a web site that would allow users to rate/review the credibility of media organizations and journalists. Pravda Corp. was formed in Delaware and incorporated in California, according to an October 19, 2017 filing. Jared Birchall, a director at Musk's Boring Company, is President of Pravda Corp., and the addresses are identical:
Musk's idea quickly raised concerns that the reputation of news organizations and reporters could be determined by what could be an easy to manipulate online popular vote.
"Elon's next company: Rate My Professor but for Journalists. What a great idea that won't be gamed immediately in extremely predictable ways," Rene DiResta, who researches computation propaganda and is a policy lead at Data For Democracy, wrote on Twitter.
Siva Vaidhyanathan, a media studies professor at the University of Virginia, told CNN such a service might might make sense if it employed a careful methodology and was overseen by an independent journalism foundation.
"It's not a crackpot idea," he said. "The question is why should Elon Musk be the one running it and how trustworthy would it be if he ran it."
Musk has been criticized a lot lately.
Also at The Verge, New Statesman, and The Washington Post.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday May 28 2018, @05:02PM (1 child)
There is no *possible* way this could be abused, subverted, or in any way shape or form turned into the precise opposite of what it was supposed to be by, e.g., a small team of shadowy hackers receiving money from an interested source. Nope. Noooope.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Touché) by coolgopher on Tuesday May 29 2018, @01:18AM
And then it'll be precisely what it says on the can. Traditional Pravda.