Bad News #0: Welcome Back to Factland, the Fact Check That Fights Back

Evan Hansen

Jun 10, 2025 • 4 min read

“If you don’t read the newspaper, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspaper, you’re misinformed.”
– Mark Twain (allegedly)

We're BAAAACK!

You haven't heard from us in a while, that's not because we stopped working on Factland, it's because we've been rethinking how we want to do this. (Quick reminder: You received this email because you subscribed to it, probably a long time ago. We're pretty sure you're going to be excited about what we have planned, but if not we understand.)

Since we've been gone from your inbox we officially became a 501(c)3 California registered nonprofit. Legal stuff can take a while.

More big news is coming on the product side if you stick around. Hostile US crypto regulation has been a real concern for us until now. Are the changes all rosy? No. But are we now optimistic we can launch an end-to-end legally compliant platform based on delivering a real public good, and not another rug pull? Yes.

So what's different? In a nutshell we're turning the newsletter into a standalone project aimed at helping people navigate the crazy stupid media landscape – not a promo for the Factland demo fact checking dApp.

Every week, we promise to take one of the biggest lies, distortions, or just plain lazy narratives floating through the media bloodstream — and hit it hard with white cells. We're going to give you an opinionated, deeply reported take on something that seriously needs to be talked about. (Sneak peek at next week's issue #1: What's wrong with peer review and how to fix it.)

We’re not here to nitpick typos or play “gotcha” with journalists. We’re here because something deeper is broken. From war coverage to health advice to economic statistics, the media is failing us in a fundamental way: not just by what it reports, but how it frames the truth — or avoids it.

What We’re Doing (That No One Else Is)

To bring you back up to speed: Factland isn’t just another media watchdog. It’s a prediction market for facts. That means:

Anyone can submit a claim, back it with sources, or challenge it.
Stakeholders “bet” their credibility with crypto on what’s true.
A provably randomly selected citizen jury rules on contested claims using transparent standards.
All claims are tracked, recorded, and stored immutably.
People who participate can win rewards for their contributions.

In other words, it’s Wikipedia meets Ethereum meets the adversarial courtroom meets Wall Street — designed to break up monopolies on “official truth” and crowdsource actual accountability.

Bad News will be the editorial arm of that mission — a curated weekly briefing where we do the hard work of picking apart the worst narratives in mainstream news, and showing our receipts.

Why Now? Because We’re Drowning in Bullsh*t.

You’ve seen the headlines:

“Peer-reviewed study shows…” (until it’s retracted two years later)
“Experts say…” (which ones? Funded by whom?)
“Officials confirm…” (right before the quiet correction on page B17)

We live in an age of information overload, institutional collapse, and narrative warfare. And the people meant to help us navigate it — journalists, academics, editors — are often just trying to survive the next news cycle.

So we decided to build a truth engine that doesn’t depend on access, algorithms, or ad revenue. One that makes it costly to lie, rewarding to investigate, and possible to revise when new facts emerge.

Our goal is not to replace journalists and journalism, but to provide transparent and accountable processes to incentivize the critical self-examination of beliefs. Research shows participation is one of the best ways to overcome reinforcement bias. Factland aims to turn passive news consumers into active contributors in the truth-seeking enterprise, and change minds by incentivizing people to engage with others who think differently – not demonizing them and distancing themselves.

Each issue of Bad News includes:

A short, brutal takedown of one false or misleading media narrative — sourced, cited, and linked to original evidence (not vibes).
A 5-question news quiz — fun, fast, and sneakily educational.
A clear take away — so you know what really happened, what matters, and where the media went off the rails.

You’ll never need more than 5 minutes to read it. But you will come away smarter, sharper, and just a little bit angrier — in a good way.

What We Believe

Truth isn’t handed down — it’s earned through testing and transparency.
Censorship is a confession — if your claim refuses to face scrutiny, it’s probably wrong.
The media isn’t rigged — it’s exhausted, distracted, and captured.
Narrative control is power — and the best way to fight it is with vigorous adversarial debate.

This Week’s Quiz: Can You Spot the Real?

(Easy) True or False: Facebook removed more posts for misinformation in 2021 than in any other year.
(Medium) True or False: The U.S. has officially declared war fewer than 10 times in its history.
(Medium) True or False: The majority of climate scientists support banning natural gas stoves.
(Hard) True or False: A peer-reviewed study published in 2024 claimed to reverse biological aging in humans.
(Very Hard) True or False: The World Health Organization changed its definition of “herd immunity” in 2020.

(Answers next issue — or visit Factland.org to see if someone’s staked their rep on them already.)

Join the Fight

We’re not just here to talk about the news. We’re building the infrastructure for public truth — and we want you in, on the ground floor.

Submit a claim.
Back it or challenge it.
Join the jury.
Become a media citizen, not a media subject.

Welcome to the place where facts get their day in court.

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Factland.org | Where the truth is open-source

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