Blockchain, Facebook and a Polygraph

The blockchain technology is a technology that makes use of a set cryptographic primitives that allow it to store information by consensus of the nodes disregarding a central trustly part. These mechanisms also make the stored information unalterable, and allow it to be verified in a quick way. This technology allows us to relate intangibles like truth, consensus and security. Here lies the point of this paper. We aim to develop a polygraph app that can work in social networks using the users of the social network previously registered in the app as the nodes of a blockchain. Using the Nash equilibrium and techniques of Artificial intelligence we already create a mechanism of consensus to the nodes that allow them to register information in the ledger. As the value of the truth is one of the great problems nowadays in platforms of social networks we develop and present an architecture to work in facebook as the first application. The architecture is ethical by design, inspired by the moral formalism of Immanuel Kant. Truth, and lying, were central concerns to his philosophy. The principles of his ethics can be implemented into blockchain technology so we establish a technology which upholds truth as a formal duty between people, by detecting falsehoods spread on social media. This ethical coding would in principle enable society to protect the rationality and dignity of its citizens. This is a small step towards the possibility of greater ethics en-coded in the practices of our digital world, whilst we do discuss and recognise the many technical and conceptual complexities – such as the nature of ‘truth’ and ‘ethics’ in itself, especially given Kant’s hard-lined philosophy. However, Kant's universality of thinking aligns well with the logic of computing; therefore ethical formalism appears to be a suitable first step in the exploration of philosophically inspired truth judgements in blockchain technology.