🛡️ Vatnipedia’s Trust Model

A Swarm, Not a Stack - NAFO Style

How decentralisation protects truth from sabotage

When you poke authoritarian networks, they poke back.
To map their influence safely, we need a system that can’t be silenced.

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🧠 Fragile Truth in a Hostile Environment

Authoritarian disinformation relies on centralised platforms — and centralised enemies.
A project like Vatnipedia — tracing narratives, affiliations, and information warfare — would be an obvious target.

A single front end?
A centralised admin?
One API and one "official" version?

That’s a recipe for sabotage.

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🐾 Inspired by NAFO: Swarm Architecture, Not Stack Control

Just like NAFO didn’t organise through a hierarchy — Vatnipedia doesn’t either.
It uses a layered trust model, built for resilience, redundancy, and forks.

You don’t need permission to fork the interface.
You don’t need credentials to see the data.
And no one can pull the plug.

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🧱 Layer 1: Public Front Ends

Self-hosted, themed, remixable

Anyone can run a front end:

• Host on Netlify, Vercel, or a Raspberry Pi

• Apply your own labels, tags, or colours

• Focus on your region, topic, or enemies

This is read-only data — verified links between people, orgs, and narratives.
It’s designed to be cited, referenced, and visualised — not tampered with.

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🔄 Layer 2: Federated Mirrors

Trusted nodes with sync access

Some partners — think researchers, OSINT collectives, journalists — can host mirrors of the full graph.
They receive updates, propose edits, and log new connections.

But they don’t control the ontology, and they can’t erase evidence.

Each mirror can layer on new narratives, but the core links remain traceable — signed, timestamped, and auditable.

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🔒 Layer 3: Core Moderation

Curators, not gatekeepers

At the heart is a tightly controlled core:

• Source verification

• Ontology maintenance

• Contribution review

Let’s say you add:

• Person: Vanessa Beeley

• Org: Grayzone

• Narrative: White Helmets Hoax

Ontology maintenance ensures:

• “Person” and “Organisation” are clearly defined types

• The relationship “promotes” is valid between Person → Narrative

• “Grayzone” isn't accidentally listed as both a “Media outlet” and a “Political group” unless justified

• A duplicate of “Beeley” under a different alias isn’t created

The central API is write-protected, not to enforce an ideology, but to protect the integrity of connections, sources, and provenance.

“Layered architecture: outer layer shows UI forks, middle shows federated partners, centre shows secure curation layer”

This model means the core can’t be hijacked — and forks can't be stopped.

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💡 Why It Matters

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🐕 NAFO Showed Us the Way

NAFO didn’t win because it was centralised.
It won because it was funny, fast, and impossible to kill.

Vatnipedia isn’t a meme machine — but it’s built with the same resilience in mind:

• Forks are normal

• Consensus is emergent

• Truth is documented, not dictated

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🌍 Get Involved

Want to run a mirror?
Fork the UI?
Contribute a regional dataset?

We’re building Vatnipedia to outlast the news cycle — and outsmart coordinated influence.