DClaims: A Censorship Resistant Web Annotations System using IPFS and Ethereum

Abstract: The proliferation of unreliable and biased information is a significant problem on the Internet. To assess the credibility of the information retrieved from news websites and other sources, users often resort to social platforms looking for confirmation with trustworthy parties. However, users may be faced with considerable obstacles posed by the platform provider, who can prevent access to certain content. This paper presents DClaims, a system that provides a censorship-resistant distributed service for the exchange of information over the Internet using web annotations. DClaims' fully decentralized architecture relies on Inter-Planetary File System (IPFS) and Ethereum blockchain, both of which offer desirable censorship resistant properties. DClaims is implemented as a web annotations browser extension which allows for the classification of news articles, on news websites. From our evaluation of the system, we conclude that a large scale implementation of the system is practical and economically viable.