Digital evidence is getting harder to trust. The challenges are well known: journalists documenting war crimes, activists recording abuses, and researchers protecting their data all face the same question:
Can they prove their material wasn’t fabricated after the fact?
As AI-generated content floods the internet, the simple ability to show that this file existed before the controversy is becoming critical infrastructure for an open society.
Zeitwerk is our attempt at providing a model for this infrastructure: a free, open-source timestamping service, kept away from Big Tech, with no blockchain and no fees — and proofs that stay verifiable for decades, even if Zeitwerk itself disappears.
I’m delighted that this work is supported by the Prototype Fund. It’s a return for us — the original DEPT web archiving tool began life as a Prototype Fund project too! The Fund exists to back open-source software made in the public interest, by independent developers, for everyone. That’s exactly the spirit Zeitwerk needs: infrastructure for civil society shouldn’t belong to any one company or country. More soon!