{
  "_comment": "Drives veracracy.hippotion.com. Edited by hand or by promotion from the vault's veracracy-watch quarantine — NEVER directly by a web-reading agent. Year math: walked = now - anchor_year (1991 — the dials measure internet-age infrastructure; Athens 508 BC remains the lineage in copy, and -508 here would give ~3860); first light = now + walked*(1-p)/p where p = weighted dial mean. Watch entry 'minutes' are progress-minutes (1/720 of the whole walk), rendered as years at democracy's pace.",
  "anchor_year": 1991,
  "night_minutes": 720,
  "updated": "2026-06-12",
  "world": {
    "label": "Full daylight — the world",
    "indicators": [
      {
        "name": "Press freedom",
        "value": 0.45,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "Reporters Without Borders — World Press Freedom Index",
        "url": "https://rsf.org/en/index",
        "note": "Global average sits in RSF's 'problematic' band. Free press is the input pipeline of any veracracy.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Open government data",
        "value": 0.4,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "Global Data Barometer",
        "url": "https://globaldatabarometer.org",
        "note": "Most states publish some data; little of it is the data decisions actually rest on.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Community verification at platform scale",
        "value": 0.25,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "Community Notes (X), Meta community notes rollout",
        "url": "https://communitynotes.x.com/guide/en/about/introduction",
        "note": "Bridging-based community fact-checking exists on major platforms but covers a sliver of public discourse.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Deliberative practice",
        "value": 0.2,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "OECD Deliberative Democracy Database",
        "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-deliberative-democracy-database.html",
        "note": "Citizen assemblies number in the hundreds and growing — the 'deliberative wave' — but remain advisory almost everywhere.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Epistemic access",
        "value": 0.67,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "ITU — Individuals using the Internet",
        "url": "https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-D/Statistics/Pages/stat/default.aspx",
        "note": "About two thirds of humanity can reach the open evidence base at all. The strongest dial; access is not literacy.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "AI as verification infrastructure",
        "value": 0.1,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "(emerging field — no settled index)",
        "url": "",
        "note": "AI that audits claims, traces provenance, and serves citizens rather than feeds. Nascent; currently the same models mostly amplify noise.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Institutional transparency",
        "value": 0.43,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "Transparency International — Corruption Perceptions Index",
        "url": "https://www.transparency.org/en/cpi",
        "note": "Global CPI average has been stuck near 43/100 for a decade. Opacity is the oldest enemy of verified governance.",
        "status": "seed"
      }
    ]
  },
  "beacon": {
    "label": "First light — the beacon",
    "region": "Taiwan",
    "why": "vTaiwan and Polis put open deliberation inside the legislative process; g0v made civic code a public utility; a digital ministry treated disinformation as an engineering problem with civic answers ('humor over rumor'). No jurisdiction is closer to governance grounded in verified, participatory knowledge.",
    "indicators": [
      {
        "name": "Deliberation wired into lawmaking",
        "value": 0.65,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "vTaiwan / Polis",
        "url": "https://info.vtaiwan.tw",
        "note": "Open consultation has shaped real regulation (ride-sharing, alcohol sales online), though it is not yet the default path.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Civic tech as institution",
        "value": 0.7,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "g0v community",
        "url": "https://g0v.tw/intl/en/",
        "note": "A standing civic hacker movement with government collaboration, not a one-off project.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Press freedom",
        "value": 0.7,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "RSF index — Taiwan ranks at/near the top of Asia",
        "url": "https://rsf.org/en/country/taiwan",
        "note": "",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Counter-disinformation without censorship",
        "value": 0.55,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "Taiwan digital ministry practice",
        "url": "https://moda.gov.tw/en/",
        "note": "Rapid civic response to disinfo while keeping speech open — the hard balance a veracracy must hold.",
        "status": "seed"
      },
      {
        "name": "Decisions traceable to open evidence by default",
        "value": 0.3,
        "weight": 1.0,
        "source": "(the dawn criterion itself)",
        "url": "",
        "note": "The honest dial: even in the beacon, most binding decisions still don't carry a public evidence trail. This is the distance that remains.",
        "status": "seed"
      }
    ]
  },
  "watch": [
    {
      "date": "2026-06-12",
      "region": "World",
      "title": "Meta adopts community-notes-style verification",
      "direction": "toward",
      "minutes": 4,
      "summary": "Bridging-based community fact-checking spread from one major platform toward several — the first verification primitive to reach billions of feeds.",
      "source": "Public announcements, 2025",
      "url": "https://about.fb.com/news/",
      "status": "seed"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-06-12",
      "region": "World",
      "title": "The deliberative wave keeps growing",
      "direction": "toward",
      "minutes": 3,
      "summary": "The OECD's database of citizen assemblies and deliberative processes keeps expanding; some bodies are becoming permanent rather than one-off.",
      "source": "OECD Deliberative Democracy Database",
      "url": "https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/oecd-deliberative-democracy-database.html",
      "status": "seed"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-06-12",
      "region": "Taiwan",
      "title": "vTaiwan: deliberation that produced binding regulation",
      "direction": "toward",
      "minutes": 6,
      "summary": "The standing proof-of-concept: thousands of citizens, Polis consensus mapping, and regulation that actually shipped. The beacon's core exhibit.",
      "source": "vTaiwan",
      "url": "https://info.vtaiwan.tw",
      "status": "seed"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-06-12",
      "region": "World",
      "title": "Synthetic media outpaces verification",
      "direction": "away",
      "minutes": -8,
      "summary": "Generative models made fabricated evidence cheap faster than provenance infrastructure made truth checkable. The clock is honest: this one runs backward.",
      "source": "(the contradiction the Watch exists to keep filing)",
      "url": "",
      "status": "seed"
    }
  ]
}