**Editor’s note:** In the interest of transparency and accountability, we are publishing the full transcript of our conversation with Aron D’Souza, which took place on April 14, 2026. This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity and length. The related story can be found here.

**Aron D’Souza:** I found our conversation last week very thought-provoking. It’s an intellectually fascinating question: if you had unlimited resources, how would you reinvent journalism—or truth-telling—to improve society?

**Rebecca:** Let's start at the beginning. What is the company you're launching? What's it called, how much backing do you have, who are your backers, and what problem are you trying to solve?

**Aron:** I'll start with the problem. In 1970, Gallup polls showed that courts, scientists, and journalists were all trusted by about 70 to 80% of Americans. Today, trust in courts is roughly the same. Trust in scientists has dipped slightly since the COVID pandemic. But trust in journalism has plummeted from 70% to 30% over 50 years. That collapse in trust is the core problem I'm addressing.

The company is called Objection. It uses AI combined with human investigators to fact-check any public reporting. It's designed as the first broad accountability system for journalism. This builds on my experience leading the Gawker lawsuit for Peter Thiel, where it took 10 years and $10 million for Hulk Hogan to get justice. That process is too slow and expensive for most people. I wanted to build a system that gives everyone cheaper, more efficient access to justice, fact-finding, and truth.

We've raised a multi-million dollar seed round from investors including Peter Thiel, Balaji Srinivasan, and several other venture capitalists.

**Rebecca:** And you're launching this week?

**Aron:** We launch tomorrow.

**Rebecca:** So this is a platform that lets people object to reporting?

**Aron:** Yes. The first question is philosophical: what is truth? I believe truth is not a vibe; it's a process. Our society has two excellent processes for finding truth: courts and the scientific method. Adversarial courts involve a plaintiff and defendant presenting opposing sides, with evidence adjudicated by an impartial judge. The scientific method is about the repeatability of an experiment—if one objective journalist writes a story, another should be able to write nearly the same one. These are trusted methods we can use to reimagine how we find truth. This is ultimately our society's most difficult problem. We cannot have a civilization without a shared sense of truth, and we lack an agreed-upon system for finding it. I'm trying to build one.

**Rebecca:** Why isn't this just a better-funded, AI-enabled version of Pravda? In 2018, Elon Musk, after receiving negative coverage about Tesla, proposed building a reputation system to discipline critics.

**Aron:** As far as I know, he never built it.

**Rebecca:** Right, so this feels similar.

**Aron:** The criticism that billionaires are involved—well, virtually every media outlet is owned by a billionaire. Your own outlet is owned by Apollo Global Management and Leon Black, who has his own checkered history. The standard defense is a division between editorial and advertising. Similarly, there's a division between my investors and the software we're building.

**Rebecca:** That's not my question. My question is: this is like Pravda, and you're actually implementing it.

**Aron:** Pravda was never built. Musk's rant was intellectually interesting because a core tenet of journalism is holding power to account. But who holds journalism accountable? We'd be uncomfortable if it were the government—that leads to a Chinese Communist Party-style apparatus. So what's an effective, private-sector approach? The key material difference is that we're building a trustless system. I use the analogy of Encyclopedia Britannica versus Wikipedia. Britannica relied on high editorial standards and trusted experts. Wikipedia took a radically different approach: don't trust the people, trust the software. By allowing everyone to contribute easily, it was proven—after only a few years—by the journal *Nature* that Britannica had more errors than Wikipedia. (Fact check: The *Nature* report found Wikipedia was just about as good as Britannica, not that it had fewer errors.) We're building something that requires no trust in me or my investors, only trust in a fully documented process. All technical white papers are available on our website.

**Rebecca:** You say "trust the system," but the system is built and governed by people, including you. What makes it trustworthy?

**Aron:** Look at the technology and the process. We don't distrust Wikipedia because we distrust Jimmy Wales personally.

**Rebecca:** No, but I don't know who Jimmy Wales is. I do know Peter Thiel and Balaji Srinivasan. Peter Thiel funded a lawsuit that bankrupted a media company, and you led that lawsuit. Why should journalists trust a system he backs to be neutral?

**Aron:** Would you call the accountability brought upon Gawker a negative? They published an unauthorized sex tape, and a free, independent jury in Pinellas County—

**Rebecca:** That wasn't my question. I'll answer yours if you answer mine.

**Aron:** Okay—reiterate the question.

**Rebecca:** Why should journalists trust a system backed by Peter Thiel and run by the person who brought down a media company? Balaji Srinivasan is also pretty anti-institution and pro-network-states. This isn't necessarily neutral infrastructure; it comes from actors with a history of hostility toward the press.

**Aron:** I'd call it a history of healthy skepticism. Existing fact-checking institutions like ProPublica haven't done a very good job. A lot of money has been put into fact-checking, especially on social media, over the last decade.

**Rebecca:** What makes you think they haven't done a good job? PolitiFact exists, ProPublica exists—they're not out there publishing mistakes or misinformation.

**Aron:** If they were effective, the decline in trust in media would have ceased.

**Rebecca:** I disagree. Trust dropping doesn't mean there's no truth in news media. The problem is perception, shaped by powerful people with large audiences claiming "fake news" because they don't like reporting on their bad behavior.

**Aron:** But why hasn't that pattern affected trust in science or courts? President Trump, for example—

**Rebecca:** We've got MAHA going on. I think there is a lot of mistrust of science today.

**Aron:** That's not borne out by the evidence. Gallup polls on trust in science, courts, and journalists show scientists took a hit post-COVID. But courts? The president, with a much larger audience than Supreme Court justices, constantly criticizes the court system, yet trust remains strong. Powerful actors routinely criticize courts, but trust is remarkably high—even, as a lawyer, I'd say too high, because although courts are good at finding truth, the process is expensive and slow.

**Rebecca:** So the process is also slow and expensive.

**Aron:** We can agree that lawyers don't deserve $2,000 an hour for dragging out what should be simple into decades-long processes. As a lawyer and legal academic, seeing how defamation or libel trials work is disgusting. The system benefits lawyers. Everything takes too long, everyone bills by the hour, and individuals have no access to justice. Peter Thiel's client Hulk Hogan was a single-digit millionaire and couldn't afford to sue Gawker. Regardless of the merits or First Amendment implications, someone of his stature should be able to access justice. That's a major failure.

**Rebecca:** That's not the journalist's fault. Publishing someone's nudes non-consensually—I don't call that journalism. Your platform seems focused mainly on journalists. You say this is about truth and accountability. Is it really aimed at journalists, or anyone with mass influence, including podcasters?

**Aron:** You'll see a live test case about Joe Rogan on the platform. I've been on his show; his format engenders unique trust. But he has a large audience and exerts power, so it would be inappropriate to exclude him. Podcasters, YouTubers, TikTokers—under-30s trust TikTok as much as the *New York Times* for news. It's scary.

**Rebecca:** Why center your pitch on holding journalists accountable rather than people and platforms with larger audiences and looser standards? Journalists have a code of ethics. They are held accountable through peer review, defamation suits, and rebuttals.

**Aron:** Those are fair points. But social media platforms have addressed content creator misinformation. Community Notes on X have been very effective.

**Rebecca:** Community Notes are also used for articles.

**Aron:** Community Notes is a great example of a trustless system—the source code is available on X's website. It's complicated but well thought-out so no one person controls it. Yes, there are many problems. I've chosen to focus on legacy media because the gatekeeping of editorial standards doesn't mesh with the modern world. Off the record, journalists say it was great in the '80s—big expense accounts, large budgets, time for in-depth reporting. Structural changes over 30-40 years have made that impossible. Economic changes have shifted incentives. In 1990, a *New York Times* writer's job was to sell subscriptions. Now, journalists focus on clicks, viral headlines—they're beholden to algorithms. That has fundamentally changed incentives.

**Rebecca:** I feel like my job is being mansplained a bit. That's not necessarily how we operate. Of course you want a readable headline, but I don't sit here thinking about virality. I think about holding power to account and reporting accurately on trends. Many stories don't perform well; it's unclear what makes stories succeed. Sometimes the most mundane story gets the most views. There's some truth to what you say, but shifting models don't mean there's less truth in the stories.

**Aron:** When budgets were larger and incentives different, it was easier to write truthful, non-clickbaity stories not beholden to algorithms. It's disappointing that journalists in America earn less than new Uber drivers. It's an important profession serving the public interest—the only one outside government enumerated in the Bill of Rights.

**Rebecca:** It's the Fourth Estate. You say it's important. Can a journalist fully comply with your system while protecting a source's identity?

**Aron:** I thought about that after our last conversation, and there's a technological solution. Protecting a source is vital, but there's a power asymmetry: the subject gets reported on, but there's no way to critique the source or observe the editorial process. I've asked my engineers to build a cryptographic hash. You could upload information about the source, identity verification, etc. The AI would assess the data and issue a certificate saying you can use that anonymous source in a certain way, verified in a trustless, open-source system. There are engineering limitations—if you're writing about Sam Altman, we couldn't pass data to OpenAI—but enough foundational models exist to solve it.

**Rebecca:** Let's step back. You can pay to object to content—an article, podcast, YouTube video. Once objected, there's a combination of human and AI...

**Aron:** Human investigators, mostly ex-law enforcement: CIA, FBI, MI6 agents.

**Rebecca:** Have you hired them?

**Aron:** Yes. They're contractors, like Uber drivers or freelance journalists. Some are investigative journalists from important publications. They investigate line by line, sentence by sentence. Anyone quoted on the record gets a call: Did you say that? Was it taken out of context? Is it fair and accurate? All captured information goes into a public data room. Even a simple article, like Joe Rogan endorsing ivermectin, now has hundreds of evidence pieces attached.

**Rebecca:** What about anonymous sources, important for whistleblowers and holding power accountable?

**Aron:** We have an evidence ratings rubric. Level one is an unimpeachable primary source document, admissible in court. Level five is a rumor.

**Rebecca:** Most reporters won't report rumors.

**Aron:** Most won't, but there have been plenty of rumored capital raises and deals reported.

**Rebecca:** Capital raises aren't rumors. They're based on inside knowledge, usually leaked for gain.

**Aron:** Sometimes it's a banker, or a company drumming up support. There are often bad incentives. The anonymous source can be cryptographically measured in this open-source model.

**Rebecca:** That requires the journalist to provide source information to your platform. That would never happen. What do you mean "fully open-source model"? I'd have to provide the person's name.

**Aron:** Or as much information as you're comfortable with, and it would give an evidence score.

**Rebecca:** This addition came from our previous conversation? Previously you said using anonymous sources equals weaker evidence and a lower rating.

**Aron:** Using a fully anonymized, unverified source would lead to that, yes.

**Rebecca:** Anonymous sources are anonymous for a reason. Identifying them publicly could reveal who they are. A source is vetted for trustworthiness. My process determines who they are, how they have the information, whether I can see primary documents. They share because they know it won't go public and they won't face retaliation.

**Aron:** Rebecca, you work at a high-quality outlet.

**Rebecca:** The outlets you attack are also high quality.

**Aron:** Well, Gawker, for example—

**Rebecca:** You can bring up Gawker all you want. A celebrity rag publishing Hulk Hogan's explicit photos isn't the standard for critiquing all journalists. Would the Pentagon Papers—

**Aron:** What about Fox News, *The Sun*, *The Daily Mail*?

**Rebecca:** I don't read them much, so I can't speak to accuracy. They're biased