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 has a lack of context, as the structure of social media with algorithms quickly creates echo chambers and knowledge bubbles in which not only opinions can quickly become radicalised, but also fake news can spread at serious speed.

We wanted to build a platform that isn’t the next social media app but instead provide 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 completed topic

People are able to import articles they found in the world wide web and are given an environment to safely consume, share it with others and most important investigate. For opinions or facts in a article users are able to add “related”, “supportive” or “contrary” arguments they found in other articles and link them within their own. So we utilise swam 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 out in the world but instead people investigate those and fake news will more and more be on the verge of extinction.

Include the experts but not everybody has to be an expert

To serve both experts and “News find me” people we build Network Community features to be able to consume, work and learn from others observations.

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

close the circle

To now close that circle of “dirty” news importing into our app we also thought of how we are able to now put the “clean” investigated news back out there into the world wide web.

So when a User shares a topic out of BEN with someone who doesn’t have the app, he shares a cluster showcasing the different facets there are involved into the discussion and is able with BEN to also jump into investigation mode.