Vol 4. The Glass Box

How We Code-Generated Trust

Date: December 12, 2025 Author: Max Spevack

Most algorithms are black boxes. We stare into them—scrolling, clicking, refreshing—but they don’t stare back. They just feed us. We don’t know why a story appeared, why another vanished, or whose thumb was on the scale. This opacity breeds anxiety.

When we set out to build Fishwrap, we knew we couldn’t just build another aggregator. If we did, we’d eventually just be building a really efficient wrapper for Reddit.

To build the “Anti-Feed,” we had to invert the relationship between the user and the algorithm. We had to build a Glass Box.

The Ghost in the Machine

Early in development, we noticed a drift. We’d run the engine, and the “News” section would feel… angry. Or the “Tech” section would feel strangely obsessed with a minor Linux kernel patch.

The answer was obvious. NYT published 50 stories a day. Reddit published 5,000. The sheer volume of the hive mind was drowning out the signal. Volume is a form of Bias.

We didn’t need better logging. We needed a forensic accountant.

Enter The Auditor

In Fishwrap v1.2, we introduced The Auditor. It’s a dedicated module that runs after the Editor has made its decisions but before the Printer warms up the plates. It pulls data from our SQLite history (newsroom.db) to provide context on what we could have printed versus what we did print.

It asks three questions of the engine:

What did you see? (The Funnel)
What did you kill? (The Bubble)
Are you just a mirror? (Source Efficiency)

This isn’t just console.log. The Auditor compiles these answers into a Transparency Report (transparency.html) that ships with every single edition of the paper. It is the receipt for the news.

The Metrics of Truth

We had to invent new metrics to quantify “Trust.”

1. Anti-Feed Protection

“Yield Rate” is a manufacturing term. It implies that rejecting raw material is bad. In the attention economy, rejecting raw material is the product.

We calculate Anti-Feed Protection:

(Total Items - Published) / Total Items

If Fishwrap scans 3,000 items and prints 30, our Anti-Feed Protection is 99.0%. We shielded you from 2,970 pieces of noise. That’s not a bug; that’s the feature.

2. The Efficiency Index (Delta)

This is our “Blade Runner” metric. It detects Replicants.

If Reddit makes up 50% of our input pool, and 50% of our output, the algorithm is lazy. It’s just a mirror. But if Defector makes up 0.5% of our input, and 15% of our output? That’s a Positive Delta (+14.5%).

It means that source “punches above its weight.” It means when they speak, we listen. Conversely, a Negative Delta means we are aggressively filtering a high-volume source.

3. The Bubble (Fishwrap’s March Madness)

The hardest part of editorial judgment isn’t picking the winner; it’s cutting the runner-up. We track the “Last 3 In” and the “First 3 Out”.

Seeing the stories that didn’t make the cut is haunting. It’s “Tears in Rain”—high-quality moments lost because we hit our self-imposed scarcity limit. But seeing them proves the limit is real.

Trust as a Compile Artifact

We believe that in the Diamond Age of AI, you cannot earn trust with a “Mission Statement.” You earn it with proofs.

Fishwrap doesn’t just ask you to trust the algorithm. It gives you the keys to the room where it happens.

View the Live Glass Box (Click “Source Transparency” in the footer)