Fighting Fire with Fire: Using Blockchain to Combat Misinformation and Election Fraud

David Shapiro

David Shapiro

Sep 19, 2023 (Medium.com)

Today I tackle the Sisyphean task of rebuilding trust in both blockchain and government simultaneously.

In today’s interconnected world, the spread of misinformation poses a grave threat to democracy and society. With the rise of deepfakes, synthetic media, and generative AI models that can generate convincing text and imagery, it has never been easier to spread falsehoods and mount coordinated disinformation campaigns.

At the same time, doubts about election security and claims of voter fraud have undermined public trust in electoral processes. Faith in elections is the bedrock of any functioning democracy. When that faith erodes, the entire democratic system becomes vulnerable.

To restore trust and combat falsehoods, we need solutions that leverage the same technologies being used to deceive. Blockchain, the distributed ledger technology underpinning cryptocurrencies and NFTs, may provide an answer. By creating transparent, tamper-proof records, blockchain can help authenticate information and validate processes.

I have over 15 years of experience in IT infrastructure and cloud computing. Since 2009, I have been an avid researcher and hobbyist in artificial intelligence. With the release of GPT-2 in 2019, generative AI became my primary focus. Last year, I transitioned into working as a full-time YouTuber and independent AI researcher. Through this work, I have become intimately familiar with the potential of technologies like blockchain to combat threats from malicious uses of AI. If I were advising any government initiative to prevent election interference and combat misinformation, I would make blockchain and NFTs central to the approach.

The Scourge of Misinformation

The problem of misinformation is not new, but modern technology has amplified its scale and potency. Even back during the French Revolution, rogue printing presses were a problem. But today, social media provides a ready vector for falsehoods and conspiracy theories to spread rapidly. Meanwhile, advances in AI enable the automated generation of fake news stories, doctored images, and deepfake videos that blur the line between truth and fiction.

The resulting infodemic threatens to undermine societal cohesion and stoke political tensions. When people cannot agree on basic facts, constructive debate becomes impossible. This is fertile ground for authoritarians and demagogues.

Russia has weaponized these techniques, using troll farms and bot nets to spread disinformation and sow discord. Their intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential election provided a prominent demonstration of what unrestrained information warfare looks like.

Domestic actors have also gotten into the act. Former president Donald Trump’s unfounded claims about the 2020 election being “stolen” worked to undermine faith in the electoral process and helped fuel the January 6 Capitol insurrection.

Meanwhile, advances in media synthesis means similar disinformation campaigns are likely to only become more potent and realistic-seeming over time. The viral deepfake video of Volodymyr Zelensky calling for Ukraine’s surrender provides a chilling example of things to come. Unchecked, these technologies threaten to plunge democratic discourse into epistemological chaos.

We can try to regulate this stuff and require “watermarks” (digital hints embedded in deepfakes) but, do you think our adversaries are going to play nice?

Heck no.

The Promise of Blockchain

To rein in disinformation and restore confidence in institutions, we need solutions that leverage the very technologies that enables the spread of falsehoods. This is where blockchain comes in.

As a transparent, decentralized ledger, blockchain provides a way to irrefutably record transactions and verify the provenance of digital assets. Its cryptographic underpinnings make records tamper-proof, while distributed consensus mechanisms allow truth to be determined by decentralized networks rather than top-down authorities.

Though blockchain is best known as the basis for cryptocurrencies, its potential applications are far broader. Several properties make blockchain promising for combating disinformation:

  • Decentralization — No single entity controls the ledger. Consensus mechanisms make censorship and manipulation difficult.
  • Transparency — All transactions are public and auditable. Provenance can be traced.
  • Immutability — Records cannot be altered or deleted. The ledger provides a permanent audit trail.
  • Security — Cryptography guarantees integrity and prevents tampering. Records authenticity can be mathematically verified.

By leveraging these attributes, blockchain can secure information, validate media assets, and add credibility to institutional processes. Though not a panacea, it provides a crucial set of tools for restoring trust in the digital age.

Authenticating Media on the Blockchain

Deepfakes and synthetic media represent a major vector for spreading falsehoods online. Fabricated images, video, and audio make disinformation more visceral and convince.

Honest Abe liked to boogie down! This is not even a deepfake, btw. Pretty much any image generator can do this.

Blockchain provides a potential solution by enabling the authentication of digital media assets. The basic approach is simple: media publishers mint authentic assets as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on a blockchain ledger. These NFTs become the definitive verified instance of a photo, video clip, or audio file. Anyone can then easily check if a piece of media matches the official NFT by comparing hash values.

This is analogous to how SSL certificates from trusted certificate authorities allow secure websites to prove their authenticity cryptographically. Just as your browser checks that the TLS certificate for nytimes.com is properly signed by DigiCert, blockchain allows certifying the originality of media assets.

Mainstream news organizations and social platforms can maintain their own whitelists of certified media NFTs. Blockchain startups like TruePic are already working on services to authenticate images on the blockchain.

Even better, you can also keep a graylist of unverified media on the public blockchain as well as a blacklist of known fakes.

The immutability of blockchain records makes it difficult to backdate forgeries. The ability to timestamp media at the time of publication provides a bulwark against claims of fabrication after the fact. So imagine this — somehow, someone gets a fake put on a public blockchain (it’s bound to happen, it’s too big of a target) but later, once everyone’s caught onto the fact, you list an “UPDATE” transaction on the blockchain declaring the previous item a fake.

Of course, bad actors could still mint NFTs of fabricated media. But a decentralized and transparent ledger makes this obvious manipulation. The provenance of official NFTs is clear for all to see.

But, by creating publicly accessible lists of white, gray, and black multimedia hashes and files, every website and smartphone can easily and automatically check the authenticity of media. You could even have a global setting in Chrome and Firefox saying “do not show me fake media.”

Securing the Ballot Box

Along with securing information, blockchain can add transparency around electoral processes to restore faith in election integrity.

Claims of election fraud or impropriety have become distressingly common in recent years. Ensuring equitable access to the ballot box remains an ongoing challenge.

Blockchain’s capacity to create tamper-evident records makes it well-suited for election security. Voters could verify that their ballots were properly recorded on a blockchain, while officials and independent auditors can cryptographically validate tallying and reporting.

Switzerland’s city of Zug has already successfully tested blockchain-based voting. Other pilots are underway around the world. While paper ballots will remain essential, blockchain can provide a supplemental layer of transparency around the mechanics of casting, transmitting, verifying, and counting votes.

Blockchain startup Voatz even offers biometrics-secured mobile voting based on blockchain records. Though some security experts argue against mobile voting, the immutability of blockchain at least prevents alteration of records.

This technology remains in its infancy. But down the line, verifiable voting on blockchain could provide citizens with confidence that their franchise was respected and no votes were changed or lost. The public nature of the ledger means all parties can observe the process and audit results without relying on official assurances.

Restoring Institutional Trust

Beyond securing specific assets like media and ballots, blockchain has a larger role to play in restoring confidence in institutions and public information.

As a decentralized ledger that can be inspected but not falsified, blockchain inherently promotes transparency and accountability. Governments and corporations can use it to validate claims and prove the integrity of processes.

Estonia has pioneered applications of blockchain in the public sector. All government data and systems integrate with a blockchain-based platform called X-Road. Citizens have electronic ID cards that allow them to securely access records like health care info and submit forms.

Blockchain gives citizens confidence that their data is safe and has not been unlawfully accessed. Estonia’s embrace of blockchain technology has gone hand-in-hand with high trust in government institutions.

Likewise, Walmart and other companies use blockchain to track supply chains, validating claims about sustainable sourcing and ethics. Consumers can verify these claims on the blockchain rather than relying on corporate assurances.

The core benefit is establishing a “single source of truth” that cuts through competing narratives. Blockchain’s capacity to cryptographically validate transactions provides definitive proof. The ledger itself becomes the primary record that all stakeholders can inspect to resolve discrepancies.

Howard Stark explaining blockchain to Nick Fury back in 1953.

This represents a crucial step in combating institutional corruption and rebuilding public trust. When processes occur transparently and immutably on the blockchain, malfeasance becomes much harder.

Grifters Gonna Grift

Of course, no discussion of blockchain technology would be complete without acknowledging the rampant scams, manipulation, and outright fraud that has plagued the cryptocurrency space in recent years.

The collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX exchange is only the latest cautionary tale. Rug pulls, pump and dumps, wash trading, and shady stablecoins have all contributed to a prevailing mood of public skepticism.

Insider self-dealing and lack of regulation enabled bad actors to take advantage of hype around Web3 and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). The results have often been disastrous for regular investors lured in by promises of easy wealth with so-called “rugpulls”.

Proponents of blockchain need to confront this legacy head on. All innovative technologies attract speculators and opportunists in their early days. But cryptographic ledgers cannot reach their positive potential if distrust persists.

Fortunately, enterprise-grade options are emerging through companies like IBM and VMware. These blockchain-as-a-service solutions offer the benefits of immutable records and consensus mechanisms without the volatility and opacity of cryptocurrency ecosystems.

As blockchain solutions mature and integrate natively into public sector IT systems and commercial supply chains, they should gain mainstream acceptance. The excesses of crypto’s wild west days will fade as real-world utility wins out.

It’s the Wild West out there right now. Time to modernize.

Conclusion

In a world saturated with disinformation, blockchain can tip the scales back in favor of the truth. By certifying media assets, securing ballots, and promoting institutional transparency, blockchain provides a set of tools for combating falsehoods and restoring faith in democracy.

This technology is no silver bullet. Technical solutions cannot fix all societal ills, and blockchains have limitations like scalability challenges. However, used judiciously, blockchain can shore up vulnerabilities in our information ecosystem.

Protecting elections and providing citizens with trusted public data are not partisan issues. They are the foundation of a healthy democracy. As other technologies threaten to undermine electoral integrity and civic discourse, blockchain may offer a promising path to making society more honest, equitable, and just.

I just cringe a bit every time I hear Sam Altman or Chuck Schumer talk about watermarking AI generated media. It’s a dumb idea that’s never going to work, so let’s stop barking up the wrong tree.

David Shapiro

Written by David Shapiro

AI Thought Leader | YouTuber

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