The text version of this story can be found here. Retrievable with CloudBurst with the following CloudBurst ID: CLOUD-56NW-TVKZ-R47V-6R99A. CloudBurst uses the blockchain to upload content in a censor resistant model. Understand that in using methods as described you can preserve your message and it’s meaning.
Censorship and bias can go hand in hand, in this article I hope to point out recent and even other cases of bias leading to some censorship of projects and people.
Trust
We often times will trust a journalist or news publication to some degree. As we will or I should say some of us will, cross check the journalist to make sure what we are ingesting is accurate. A lot of times we put blind trust in a source, this can lead us to some dangerous territory. Trust, especially in an environment dedicated to trust less, can bring about some really dangerous situations. It can also lead to flushing out of such bias.
Recently, POL, Proof of Life, was performed and with that came an influx of communication in and around Burst. Though, not from the journalist or anyone covering the story. Which I might add, that no one as of this writing has contacted anyone for details. But we got a few articles that popped up, and this is where bias is about to rear it’s ugly head.
Bias
In said articles, I want to actually post links to the both of them. The reason for this is to demonstrate bias in a well established and somewhat trusted resource in cryptocurrency circles. The first one is written by CoinTelegraph, it can be found here. Notice the article, it does mention the chain used, Burstcoin, but at no point is there a link provided. Yet, unrelated Eth is mentioned and linked. Now some, will argue maybe the author was rushed and I could agree with that, however, no response to our requests to update.
Now the second article that I am pointing out is written by The Next Web, it can be found here. No link, however, also no direct link to another coin. Granted, they mentioned Burstcoin and did link to the transaction. That is a start I guess, though this raises some concerns when both are considered. One is written from a cryptocurrency perspective and one is written from someone looking at the tech. Both are valid approaches but one is distinctly showing a bias away from even the content itself in order to link Eth, I have no issues with someone liking eth, but I have issues with this behavior.
When worlds collide.
Now, in this situation we could just ultimately argue that this could be a case of just journalists being busy and or not choosing to update for some other reason, who knows. But what happens when it is a source for information for millions, maybe more everyday? Well that gets a little trickier as we travel down the rabbit hole. What happens when a source for a lot of resources, shows bias?
Well it is there, and I can show you with a simple switch of a URL normally associated with language switching, opens up some very interesting changes. So for this let’s first take a look at the following page. This page is the Burstcoin entry in Spanish, for Wikipedia. Now, let’s have a little fun and lets change the es.wikipedia link to the en version, here. Now this is very interesting isn’t it? How can one page turn to three sentences and ignore it’s own algorithm or any of the useful information? Well this is a good question, maybe they can answer.
Censorship
Censorship can come in a variety of ways, but in this case we were able to see ok, maybe this is a journalist thing. Now, with the addition of Wikipedia doing some odd but measurably noticeable things, one might begin to wonder. This is where censorship can be funneled in with bias. Everyone is bias, this is a fact. However, when blatant bias begins to show up in things seen as “trusted” where do we the people, begin to question those informing us? This is something you have to ask yourself, “Do I trust this article, entry, or resource?” If you are not questioning it, you are likely seeing a censored output of the real information. Or at minimum a bias you align with, which is ok as long as you choose that bias.
The scope of this piece was to show different way a bias could lead to some misinformation and lack of depth for the readers to understand the situation. This proves to be dangerous to the readers and those that accept the publications. This also goes for Wikipedia, not sure why it is the way it is, but it is there and you do not need to take my word for it.
* I must make mention that because of my better half, the Wikipedia discovery was made. She was looking over it and when you switch url for en, you get the aforementioned results.
