What is Data 4 The People?

It's not a war, a global energy crisis, the collapse of accountability, or viral hatred and divisiveness (although all these things are happening).

I'm talking about the problem underneath all of them.

Noise.

We are buried in misinformation, disinformation, and stories that are false or, at best, incomplete. This flood has washed away the shared foundation of facts we spent decades building, brick by brick.

Now it's hard to know what is true. Instead, everyone is entitled to their own truth, and a "truth" wins if it's entertaining enough to catch the attention of money-grubbing algorithms. Those algorithms have turned our town square into the church scene from Kingsman: The Secret Service (if you don't know it, look it up later).

Look closely at the crises that worry us most. Underneath each one is the empty space where shared truth used to be, and it is growing into a black hole.

Can we fix this? We must try. And we have a plan.

But before we share it, here is a short history of how we got into this pickle. Click through the visualization below.

We can't rescue journalism (and by extension, truth) by moving backwards. That would be like bringing a horse and buggy to a Formula 1 race. Rather, we need the newest tools to unleash the creativity and curiosity of local and citizen journalists. That means using what we'll call "good AI" to fight back against "bad AI."

And so, we are building AI-assisted tools that make data journalism easy enough for everyday people to do. The tools will use public data that Data 4 The People has collected, checked, and validated. Citizen journalists won't be left alone with a chatbot. An experienced journalist will work alongside each one as a mentor, guiding them as they explore the data and shape their story. Then we publish each story along with all the code, notes, and documentation of the entire process used to create it. Anyone can check the work, and anyone can rebuild it. And then we can use this work to constructively discuss, debate, and solve problems.

Here's how you can help:

1. Donate.
2. Spread the word. Share our work with someone who cares about this.
3. Become a beta tester. Test out our tools while we build them, tell us what breaks, and tell us how we can improve the process (e-mail for details).
4. Become a mentor. If you have a journalism background, we'd like to hear from you.

See you in the data,

Eric