In TIHOMA, each person that has access to the sign-up interface can create an account. However, as the platform is based on user feedback for the evaluation of the information that is published, some members with proven expertise are required to ensure the reliability and trustworthiness of those evaluations. Therefore, the team developing and administrating TIHOMA in its invitations to users includes experts (journalists, fact checkers etc.). As trust and trustworthiness of the functions of TIHOMA lie at its core in order for it to fulfill its goals, the transparency of how the whole project operates is of utmost importance. So the protocol followed to invite experts has to be public, clear and transparent. The criteria with which an expert person is invited, the way its impact in the information evaluation process is handled, and the steps TIHOMA has taken this far are stated below.
Selection criteria
- The person has to have experience in evaluating information and/or producing journalistic content. They may have worked in a media outlet or a fact checking group, they may be a researcher or they may be doing the aforementioned work as individuals (blogging etc.).
- The work that they have produced is of public interest, is in accord with journalistic deontology and incorporates the proper use of the scientific method regarding the narration of events.
- The person must not have conflict of interest in evaluating information properly. This means that the person must not have ties to economic, partisan, religious or any other power structures. That is not to say that a person must not have a political opinion; we all do. It is also understandable that we are all related to some power structure one way or another; the point is not to be dependent on any.
- The person has shown that they are oriented towards sharing the truth with an inclusive manner towards diverse narratives and not amplifying selectively some narratives according to certain biases and agendas. That is not to say that a person cannot have a focus on a field or a subject, but the way that they approach it matters.
The impact of experts
People can be invited in TIHOMA whether they are considered experts or not. They might be experts on the field of fact checking and journalism even if they are not invited as such. The team of TIHOMA cannot know the level of expertise of each person. People who are invited as experts get an initial personal score of 8 in a scale of -10 to 10, by using the score token feature of the platform to affect the, otherwise derived by posts and evaluations, score of a user. This score significantly affects the weight of their evaluations in posts. This is used as one of the safeguards to make sure that the information is not only evaluated by majority standards but also by merit. However, it comes with the caveat that power might be concentrated in a select few members. Here is how TIHOMA attempts to mitigate concentration of power to a selected few:
- Inviting a diverse set of experts (from different fields, with different approaches etc.).
- All members of the platform are affected by other people’s evaluations on their posts. This means that people with any score can increase or decrease the score of any other user.
- Moderation and administration and also the development team through algorithmic calibration will be checking for any abuse of power and trying to balance the scores of posts and evaluations whenever possible.
- Additional safeguards are going to be incorporated in the score token feature in due time. Specifically a cap as to how many score tokes a user can have and also a public interface that will be showing the administrator attributing the token and the justification of it enabling scrutiny as well.
It is also important to note that invitation of experts and score token granting must not become a field of contest rather than be viewed simply as a safety measure, in a platform where anybody can eventually get a score of any level and affect other people’s scores.
What TIHOMA is doing
- Inviting people and experts, the latter according to the aforementioned criteria. There is a specific focus in members of independent, non-profit media outlets that even if they express a political position they are oriented towards informing rather than biased promotion of certain political or partisan agendas (the so called leftist, centrist, anarchist, right-wing, conservative, activist etc.). Investigative journalism media outlets, observatories, think tanks and civic society organizations are prime examples of the affiliations that invited experts might have.
- Working on increasing the robustness of its algorithms per the previous paragraphs explanations.
- Communicating with the target user community to discuss all these issues and include them in the shaping of the platform’s policies and functions.