Information and communication is one of the biggest building blocks of society. It may be the news and media, it may be scientific work, it may be communication between you and your family and friends, the internet, teaching in universities and schools.. It's everywhere. The past decades there has been a huge shift in how news gets to the public. Before the internet, everyone read the news papers, and the journalists made sure to talk to experts, to be on site of the case, and had journalist "rules" to follow. On the other hand, they also had the power to decide what to share and what to keep from the public, to control the narrative. Since it was more centralised, it was easier for governments to do something about the worst ones if necessary. That is, if the governments were on peoples side, and not the narrative controlling entity themselves. This is why the internet was seen as a saviour for information, de-centralising it so everyone could share information and everyone would be informed without a corrupt middle man. Little did they foresee, that misinformation would spread just as much.

Back then it was a rigid system, that could be regulated and fixed, but now it's just chaos. Social media companies try to fix this by hiring lots of moderators, but at the end of the day, social medias can't really do something about it without being the narrative controlling entity we hoped to leave behind. We also see the same problem with AI. People dislike that the social medias and AI are leaning left in ideas, and therefore loose trust in what they read and see.

We have also seen fact checking organisations pop up the past years, which are taking on as many cases of misinformation narratives as possible. While it is much better than nothing, it is not enough, it is not fast enough, and it does not quite hit the hammer on the nail for the wider problem of the origin of misinformation. They often are just similar to article based news websites, and they could technically also be polarized, just like the medias.

Currently we are seeing the rise of AI, but while it is a great companion when working on stuff, it does not really solve the information problem directly. It may solve parts of it eventually, but it also will be and already is subject to moderation. Some are already not trusting what the AI is saying, suggesting that is is politically leaning, which is a continuation of the problem that already exists. Whether this is true or not, people seem to not want to listen to someone and just trust them, they want to understand and think themselves. This happens for example during communication.

We need to go deeper to understand what the real information problem is.

There are two types of people when it comes to information. You have the people that are technical, critical thinking and perhaps well read, and then you have the rest of the public that don't really have time to research that much, but that also are interested in understanding and learning, or to have something to talk about. The first may be critical and take time to get to the bottom of things - and if they cant figure it out, they accept it as inconclusive and leave it behind. Then you have the ones that want to find a conclusion to things, but because of to little time will lead to misunderstandings, a and bad choice of sources. They also often don't remember everything perfectly since its not their profession.

Some say that these people needs to stop talking, and start reading. Stop researching yourselves and listen to the experts. While this is a good idea, it does not solve the problem. People want to be a part of the discussion, to understand things themselves. People like to be the one that knows something so they can share their view to others, and this is probably not going to change. In fact, this is what democracy is. Democracy is good, because of its simplicity. If people are not informed, democracy will not work. It is therefore in everyones interest that everyone is informed, and more importantly, taking part of discussions and understanding what they are talking about.

Instead of limiting and regulating people, we at Xplainit do the opposite. We embrace peoples passion to work on information, and to research themselves. What we are working on, is a place for people to work on information, either personally, as a group in a workspace, or publicly in a forum.

The question is of course - how can we prevent the same chaos seen on the internet? How can our website stay factual if anyone can work on the information? 

The secret lies in the design of the website. Many websites are post-and-comments based, which means you can hierarchically post a comment to a post or a comment to a comment. Examples are Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, and forums in general. Then there are the the ones that are more linear, like chat services like Messenger, Whatsapp, Snapchat, etc. Then there are the ones that have both, like Slack and Discord. And then there is Twitter, now X, that has a post-to-post system, but when you choose a post, the replies are visualised like if it is a comment section.

One thing all these websites share, is that all are starting with a text box. You can write whatever you want and how much you want. No requirements, no rules and no tools. This is one place of many where we believe innovation is needed.

Another thing is how it is all arranged, the visualisation of data, the need for sources and research beforehand. We also have a medium-medium based system, that goes more in depth and are more successful at finding fallacies and problems in perspectives and opinions.