BEN – The App for Better Evidence News

In today's world, we are confronted with countless pieces of information - news, opinions, and data from every conceivable source. Consuming news on social media today lacks context, as the structure of social media, with algorithms, quickly creates echo chambers and knowledge bubbles in which not only opinions can quickly become radicalized, but fake news can also spread at serious speed.

We wanted to build a platform that isn’t the next social media app, but instead provides an environment for controlled news consumption with source-backed information while maintaining freedom of speech.

This is exactly where BEN comes in: Our app collects content from various platforms, links it together, and establishes the wider context.

“related”, “supportive”, and “contrary” links form a complete topic

People can import articles they find on the World Wide Web and are given an environment to safely consume them, share them with others, and, most importantly, investigate them. For opinions or facts in an article, users can add “related”, “supportive”, or “contrary” arguments they found in other articles and link them to their own. So we utilise swarm intelligence by leveraging different knowledge from our users to improve the context on the platform. That way we ensure opinions and facts don’t just get spread across the web, but are instead investigated, helping fake news move closer to extinction.

Include the experts, but not everybody has to be an expert

To serve both experts and “news-find-me” people, we built network community features that make it possible to consume, work, and learn from others’ observations.

People who are familiar with specific topics or are naturally curious can help investigate things for people who don’t want to put in that extra effort. By earning points, you can climb ranks. Your comments and investigations reveal whether you are an expert in the field or simply sharing a unique perspective.

Close the circle

To close the circle of importing “dirty” news into our app, we also thought about how to put the “clean”, investigated news back out there into the World Wide Web.

So when a user shares a topic from BEN with someone who doesn’t have the app, they share a cluster showcasing the different facets involved in the discussion and can also jump into investigation mode with BEN.