Adobe Working With Twitter And NYT To Develop Industry Standard For Content Attribution

At Adobe MAX last week, Adobe announced it’s partnering with The New York Times and Twitter in a new initiative to develop an industry standard for digital content distribution.

The Content Authenticity Initiative, a result of the collaboration between the three companies, is aimed at providing “proper content attribution for creators and publishers”; which is “critical” to ensure online trust and transparency.

“With the proliferation of digital content, people want to know the content they’re seeing is authentic,” explains Dana Rao, executive VP and general counsel at Adobe. “While this is a formidable challenge, we are thrilled to be championing the adoption of an industry-wide content attribution system, along with The New York Times Company and Twitter. It is critical for technology and media companies to come together now in order to empower consumers to better evaluate and understand content online.”

As part of the Content Authenticity Initiative, Adobe is currently developing an opt-in system that will let both creators and publishers securely attach attribution data to their content, when it is shared. On one hand, authors verify their content so that they get the proper attribution for it, and on the other, consumers get an attribution trail that tells them that the content they are consuming is indeed authentic.

“Discerning trusted news on the internet is one of the biggest challenges news consumers face today,” explains Marc Lavallee, Head of Research & Development at The New York Times Company. “Combating misinformation will require the entire ecosystem—creators, publishers, and platforms—to work together. This initiative lays the groundwork for doing that through open standards and protocols.”

The three companies involved, now plant to expand the Content Authenticity Initiative within the next few months, with the collaboration of many more technology and media companies.

Those who are interested in participating can find out more here.