Show HN: A credibility-based social platform (no Likes) to fight misinformation
I’ve been working on a different approach: a social/news platform where every post carries a credibility score. Instead of likes or shares, users assess posts by linking to supporting or refuting sources. Credibility then updates across posts, users, and domains in real time.
A few things that might interest HN:
- Anonymous/pseudonymous accounts (no personal brands driving popularity).
- Credibility > virality: feeds are sorted by time & trustworthiness, not engagement.
- URL and domain-level scoring: credibility of sources builds over time.
- Four feeds: Front Page, Bullpen, Cred Desk, and Subscriptions (you can filter by credibility percentile).
It’s in public beta here: https://noblenews.io
Curious what HN thinks:
- How might this system be gamed or abused? - What are your thoughts on pseudonymous usernames? - What would make it more useful for people who actually want reliable news?
If higher-credibility users end up concentrated in one ideological group, and lower-credibility in another, how should a system like this handle it?
Right now the design doesn’t attempt to enforce “balance.” Instead, it exposes the credibility scores transparently, lets users set their own filters, and tracks credibility at multiple levels (user, post, and domain). But I’d love thoughts from this community on whether that’s enough — or if more guardrails are needed.
I am also interested to see how behaviour changes once your cred is online. I always think about how people behave behind the wheel of their car versus in-person.
Have you thought of how you might handle people using the +/- options as an agree/disagree ranking? I’d the site is small, it may be self-policing, but as it grows it can be a problem. Reddit ran into this. The upvote/downvote was supposed to be about if something contributed to the conversation, regardless of your opinion on it, but that eventually broke down. While giving the next on the button itself may help, there is still the possibility of abuse there.
Will votes +/- be weighted by the credibility score of the voter?
Another issue Reddit ran into was selling of accounts. Someone could build an account with a high credibility score and sell it to someone looking to spread misinformation.
Support/Refute - this allows you to assess the credibility of a post, and you must provide a citation. This affects the credibility score of the post.
Trust/Doubt - this allows you to "predict" the credibility of a post, and if it turns out you predicted correctly, your credibility increases. And vice versa.
The +/- actions are designed to have some friction. You are either required to find a supporting/refuting citation, or you are putting your cred on the line.
The "contributed to the conversation" isn't something I am directly addressing, but am hopeful that good actors will stay on topic, and that credibility scores will sort out the good actors from the bad.
Yes, actions are weighted by the cred of the voter.
The selling of accounts is an interesting one. Haven't thought about that. Of course, once misinformation is posted, their cred will go down. One thought is to monitor the cred trend of accounts, and abrupt changes could be looked into.
Thanks for your great feedback.
You are now approved for the beta. Enjoy, and let me know what you think.
First thoughts
1. Gorgeous interface. Bad... Really clunky to navigate around, especially on mobile. Each post takes multiple seconds to parse and access, where it should be MUCH shorter IMO.
2. Too much functionality scattered around the interface drowns out the key items.
For example, you've buried the Follow (Subscriptions?) function in amongst a bunch of other less important things like Cred Desk and Notifications.
It makes things confusing.
3. I'm not sure what the purpose of the Article Cred slider is at the top of the Front page. That's the most important space on your app, and you've given it over to something confusing and probably not so valuable?
Why not use that to section to highlight the top 3 functions people will want to use? Maybe News Stream, Subscriptions and Favorites or something?
Just my first impressions. Gorgeous app, but I probably won't just it until it comes with a super condensed mode so I can scan rapidly like I do HN and Reddit old.
1. I understand the frustration. I haven't really done anything for speed and performance yet. It's really an MVP.
2. Good feedback. I'll see what others think as well. There is a bug currently. Each post should have a meatball menu where you can follow another contributor or publisher. It is missing on some cards. The Subscription button in the nav bar is to see a feed of only those you follow.
3. The CRED slider at the top of the Front Page, Bullpen and Cred Desk gives you the ability to filter out content not meeting a minimum cred percentile (different on each feed).
Again, appreciate the feedback.
Thanks again for the feedback. Let me know if you have any other issues or suggestions. All feedback is welcome!