Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds immense promise, but it has often been misused by online news media, with companies employing sophisticated algorithms to maximize profits by delivering hyper-tailored and highly appealing news to their audiences. This has flooded consumers with biased, one-sided narratives that frequently compromise factual accuracy, enhance political polarization, and contribute to social discord.
In response to this challenge, MIT Professor Max Tegmark founded the Improve the News Foundation (ITN) in 2020 as an apolitical nonprofit dedicated to ameliorating the online news environment. In mid-2023, ITN launched Verity, a free, independent digital publication that aims to empower people to learn the full, nuanced truth behind every major news story. From its inception, Verity has pursued a set of ambitious objectives to be achieved by the end of 2024:
A small, international team—with complementary skills and diverse political perspectives—has driven these efforts. Leveraging advanced digital tools, the team has exemplified the principle of using AI and automation for good.
BUILDING VERITY
Before Verity, there was “Improve the News,” a minimal website and mirror apps developed by our foundation to automatically aggregate and classify external news articles according to political bias. While users appreciated its intent and technology, they also demanded a more refined product. In response, we produced significant improvements, observing a holistic approach.
1. Rebranding
We introduced a new, standalone brand—“✓ERITY”—designed to be more memorable and engaging. The checkmark replacing the “V” emphasizes accuracy, echoing its Latin root, veritas (“truth”). Along with this change, we moved our publication domain from improvethenews.org to verity.news.
2. Product & Design
We completely redesigned our website and apps. The homepage now highlights major news stories produced by our editorial team, separating facts from narratives sourced externally from new and old media. Where appropriate, we also integrate related Metaculus predictions. The original homepage featuring aggregated articles was reassigned to a separate section, and two new sections were added for controversies and public figure profiles. Additionally, daily and weekly newsletters were launched, and the overall design was enhanced with professional photography and a refined mix of colors, fonts, symbols, icons, and banners.
3. Engineering & Related Efforts
Our engineering team not only executed these design and product upgrades but also improved system reliability, boosted loading speeds, and integrated AI and automation tools to workflows to enhance productivity. AI models now generate first drafts of our news stories and social media posts, which our human team then reviews and refines. This process is supported by robust project management, quality control, and documentation, supplemented by thorough manual curation for tasks that are harder to automate
4. Editorial
We established editorial standards to enhance trust in our content. Facts are presented in a neutral tone, corroborated by consensus among sources with differing viewpoints, or verified through primary sources. Our narratives steelman opposing perspectives. Additionally, we now complement regular news stories with election guides, “Context Stories,” and “Deep Dives” that explore complex topics in progressively greater detail.
5. Multimedia
We broadened our content’s reach by converting written articles into audio readings and offering our daily newsletter as a podcast on major platforms. Visually engaging explainer videos were also produced for our Context Stories.
PROMOTING VERITY
As our publication evolved, we promoted Verity organically, primarily on Reddit—a platform that values genuine conversation over clickbait. This promotional effort unfolded into two main stages:
Stage 1: Community Mapping
We analyzed Reddit’s ecosystem and identified over 500 subreddits with diverse political leanings, from large forums to niche communities where discussions aligned with our content. We then targeted these spaces for authentic engagement.
Stage 2: Authentic Engagement
Our team adopted a “participate first, post second” approach, observing platform rules and community guidelines. Instead of merely pushing links, we engaged as active members—posting thoughtful comments and upvoting meaningfully. Once established as trusted contributors, we shared Verity content selectively, tailoring each post to the culture and key discussions of each subreddit. Over time, we diversified our contributions with AMAs and topical discussion threads.
RECOGNITION
Since the launch of Verity, we have received numerous unsolicited positive comments praising our publication, often highlighting its trustworthiness and innovation. Some examples:
Our approval on Facebook now stands at 96% out of 53 reviews. We have also maintained a 4.4/5 star rating in the App Store from 57 reviews and a 4.9/5 star rating on Spotify from 54 reviews of our podcast.
During 2024, our Reddit campaigning on multiple Subreddits yielded a total of approximately 11.7M views, 46.9K upvotes, 20.6K comments, and 5.5K shares. Beyond the numbers, we received frequent praise from Redditors, including moderators, with the r/unitednations moderation team reaching out to us to commend Verity’s commitment to political impartiality and inviting us to post more regularly.
USER BASE
From the launch of Verity in mid-2023 to the end of 2024, we managed to grow our accumulated unique visitors to 505K. This has meant scaling website visitors by 316% from 38K in Q3, 2023 to 158K in Q4, 2024. Moreover, our Facebook and X accounts now stand at 615K and 89K followers, respectively.
