How We Audit Our Own Claims

1. Independence

Black Box Notes is operated by Lumenwhite Media Holdings Pte Ltd, a portfolio entity of Web4Guru. Web4Guru does not approve, review, or commission specific articles. Editorial control rests with the named bylines.

We disclose this relationship on every page footer, on the About page, on this page, and again on the Disclosure ledger. We disclose it again at the head of any piece that covers the Web4Guru group's products (Web4Guru, Web4OS, the ROGA recording project). We have not yet been asked to soften coverage on behalf of the publisher. If we are, we will publish the request.

2. What we cover, and what we don't

We cover. The technical, institutional, and regulatory dimensions of opacity in modern AI systems. Production audits, interpretability research, the regulatory implementation in the EU/UK/Singapore/U.S., and the operational practice emerging inside enterprises that deploy agentic systems at scale.

We don't cover. Personnel gossip, fundraising narratives without operational consequence, breathless founder profiles, or sponsored "thought leadership" in any form. We do not run roundups based on press releases. We do not run case studies sourced from a vendor's marketing.

3. Sourcing standards

Every assertion of fact in a Black Box Notes piece must rest on one of the following:

• A primary document the publication can link to. Regulatory filings, published research papers, audit reports, transparency reports, court filings, corporate disclosures.
• Direct verification by a contributor. A walkthrough of a system the contributor has hands-on access to, with documentation the editorial team can review.
• A named source on the record. First name, last name, current affiliation, in the piece.
• A pseudonymous source the editorial team has met. See §6.

We do not publish assertions sourced from press releases without explicit verification. We do not paraphrase what an executive "said" in an off-record briefing as if it were a documented position. We do not use anonymous quotes from sources we have not met.

4. The "we do not invent specifics" rule

This is the publication's first principle. We do not invent quotes. We do not invent study citations. We do not invent dollar figures, deployment counts, model sizes, or any other quantitative claim. We do not write "according to a [type of source]" as a substitute for a citation.

When a contributor needs a specific they have not verified, the piece carries a visible placeholder of the form [TKTK: thing-to-fill-in] until verification completes. Drafts containing [TKTK] tokens do not ship.

5. Verified anchors when covering individuals

When a Black Box Notes piece covers a named individual, the contributor works from verified biographical anchors only. We do not extrapolate from inference. We do not characterise an individual's beliefs on the basis of their employer. When we do not have a verified specific, we say "the publication could not verify" rather than guess.

6. Anonymous and pseudonymous sources

We publish pieces by named contributors only. The Editorial Team byline is collective rather than anonymous; pieces under it are signed off by Vogel or Esquivel.

We accept tips from anonymous sources via tips at blackboxnotes dot com. We publish material from those tips only after either (a) we have met the source and have documented their access and motive, or (b) the underlying documents the tip provides are verifiable on their own terms.

When a piece relies on a pseudonymous source, the byline block on the piece carries the following disclosure: "One source quoted in this piece is identified by a pseudonym. Their identity and affiliation are known to the editorial team." If a piece cannot carry that disclosure, the piece does not run.

7. Conflicts of interest

Contributor-level conflicts. A contributor who has a financial or consulting relationship with a subject they are writing about declines the assignment. Owning index-fund exposure to the broader market is not a conflict. Holding stock in a named subject of a piece is a conflict.

Publication-level conflicts. The publication is operated by Lumenwhite Media Holdings, a Web4Guru entity. Coverage of Web4Guru, Web4OS, ROGA, or Andrew Rollins is disclosed in-piece and on the Disclosure ledger.

Reciprocal coverage. We do not coordinate coverage with other publications in our publisher's portfolio. We do not exchange links with them. We do not pull our punches on a story because another publisher property has a relationship with the subject. If we discover this is happening, we publish the fact.

8. Embargoes

We do not honour embargoes on our reporting. We do not accept advance copies of research papers in exchange for favourable coverage. We do not accept "exclusive" access to a product launch as a condition of coverage. We will read published research, published reports, and published company filings. We will respond to fact-check requests on pieces that quote a source's named statements.

9. Fact-checking process

Each Black Box Notes piece passes through three stages before publication:

1. Contributor draft. The contributor writes the piece, attaches an annotation file linking every assertion of fact to its source.
2. Editorial fact-check. A second member of the masthead reads the annotation file against the draft, verifies every cited source resolves, and flags assertions that lack a source. Flagged assertions either get a source or come out.
3. Subject notification. When a piece names an organisation in a critical frame, we send the subject the relevant excerpt 72 hours before publication and ask for corrections of fact (not framing). We publish their response, or its absence, in the piece.

10. Corrections policy

If we publish an error of fact, we correct it in public. We do not quietly amend. The process is:

• The original text remains intact, marked with [CORRECTED →].
• The correction follows immediately, with the date and the editorial team's note.
• An entry appears on the Corrections log with the original-text, correction-text, and reason-for-correction columns.
• The piece's modified date is updated; the published date is not.

Errors of framing are not corrections — they are editor's notes. When the editorial team revises its position on a published piece, the piece carries an editor's note at the head describing the revision and pointing to the follow-up. The original analysis remains.

11. Link policy

Outbound links from Black Box Notes pieces go to:

• Primary documents (regulatory filings, papers, audit reports).
• The home page of an organisation we name on first reference, where the name might be unfamiliar.
• A small number of operator destinations we have an interest in disclosing.

We do not exchange links with other publications. We do not link to vendor-marketing pages for products we cover; we link to the technical documentation. We do not link to the operator's blog post about a controversy if the underlying filing is available.

12. Pitching us

We accept pitches from working researchers, practitioners, and analysts whose work touches the publication's beats. Pitches go to editors at blackboxnotes dot com. A useful pitch is two paragraphs: what the piece will argue, what specifically the contributor has access to, and why now. We respond to viable pitches within ten business days; we respond to pitches that misread the publication's beat by not responding.

13. Compensation

Standing contributors are on retainer with the publication. Pitched pieces from outside contributors are paid by the piece, at the publication's standard rate. Rates are not negotiable per-piece. We do not run unpaid contributions. We do not run contributions in exchange for "exposure."

14. Material we will refuse to run

We will refuse to run:

• Pieces sourced primarily from a press kit.
• Pieces whose function is to defend an interpretation of a regulator's filing.
• Pieces by writers we have not met and whose identity we do not know.
• Pieces that quote a subject from off-the-record material as if they were on the record.
• Pieces that recycle the publication's prior analysis without acknowledgment.
• Pieces that materially overlap with the contributor's paid consulting work without an explicit conflicts declaration in the byline.

15. Updates to these guidelines

These guidelines are revised when the publication has reason. Revisions are dated at the bottom of this page. Material revisions trigger an editor's note explaining the change.

Last revised: 2026-05-22.