We are pleased to announce that Bonfire has been awarded a grant from the Culture of Solidarity Fund to support cross-border cultural initiatives of solidarity in times of uncertainty and "infodemic".
The grant will be used to release a beta version of Bonfire Social and to develop Zappa – a custom bonfire extension to empower communities with a dedicated tool to deal with the coronavirus "infodemic" and online misinformation in general.
The Zappa extension #
Zappa will be powered by user communities' assessments of content (links, news, videos, pictures) to develop common practices and patterns to fight misinformation.
These assessments will then be used to train experimental artificial intelligence engines.
The user ratings (along with optional input from AI predictions) will generate decentralised "Zappa scores" which may help users classify and act upon content based on each community’s methodology and preferences.
We didn't go much further in outlining how Zappa might work, for the time being preferring to stay with ambiguity as much as possible, because while we have some ideas, we want to co-design it together with interested communities and we welcome you to join the discussion and participate.
How to participate in the Zappa project? #
- We will keep track of our work and deliverables in our milestones, which includes running sessions to come up with user stories that will guide development.
- Feedback and open discussions will take place on the Zappa topic on the SocialHub forum (we may create more topics when needed)
- You are welcome to join the Bonfire chat and engage with the team
As always, we will report progress and news here on the blog, so stay tuned!
