About Decipon
Understanding how influence tactics are detected and scored.
Our Philosophy
The Problem with Fact-Checking
Fact-checking is broken. It's slow, politically charged, and creates dependency instead of discernment. The answer isn't telling people what's true—it's teaching them to see manipulation for themselves.
For this to work, three things must be true:
Emotional hooks, coordinated messaging, tribal framing—these aren't subjective. They're patterns that can be detected and scored.
People don't need to be told what to believe. They need to recognize when they're being played. Once you see the technique, you can't unsee it.
Any centralized "truth arbiter" becomes a target for capture. The methodology must be transparent, auditable, and decentralized.
Our Approach
The NCI Protocol is a 20-category scoring system that shows you both sides—why content looks manipulative AND why it might be legitimate—so you decide, not us.
What Decipon Does
Decipon analyzes content to surface influence tactics and verification gaps. It identifies persuasion patterns—fear appeals, false dilemmas, urgency triggers, tribal framing—so you can recognize how content attempts to shape your thinking.
What it doesn't do: Decipon does not declare content "true" or "false." It is a tactics lens, not a truth oracle. A high score indicates the presence of influence techniques, not necessarily misinformation. Legitimate persuasion—advertising, opinion editorials, advocacy—may score high without being deceptive.
The NCI Methodology
Decipon uses the NCI (Narrative Credibility Index) framework, which analyzes content across 20 distinct categories of influence tactics. These categories are grouped into 5 composite factors, each measuring a different dimension of persuasion.
1. Emotional Manipulation
Measures how content leverages emotions to bypass rational evaluation.
- Emotional Triggers: Fear, outrage, guilt, or anxiety invoked without proportionate evidence
- Urgent Action Demands: Pressure to act immediately, discouraging reflection
- Novelty Overuse: Claims of "unprecedented" or "never before seen" events
- Emotional Repetition: Same emotional triggers repeated to reinforce response
- Manufactured Outrage: Anger that appears disconnected from underlying facts
2. Suspicious Timing
Examines whether content appears strategically timed for maximum impact.
- Timing Coincidence: Content released to coincide with events, elections, or crises
- Financial/Political Gain: Narratives that benefit specific powerful interests
- Historical Parallels: Patterns resembling known propaganda or influence campaigns
3. Uniform Messaging
Detects coordinated or artificially amplified narratives.
- Phrase Repetition: Identical phrases appearing across multiple sources simultaneously
- Bandwagon Effect: Appeals to conformity—"everyone agrees" or "the consensus is"
- Rapid Behavior Shifts: Sudden, coordinated adoption of symbols, hashtags, or positions
4. Tribal Division
Identifies content designed to create or exploit group conflict.
- Us vs. Them Dynamic: Clear in-group/out-group framing with moral judgment
- Simplistic Narratives: Complex issues reduced to good vs. evil frameworks
- False Dilemmas: Presenting only two extreme options when others exist
5. Missing Information
Evaluates whether content omits context or uses flawed reasoning.
- Context Omission: Alternative perspectives or relevant facts excluded
- Authority Overload: Over-reliance on credentials without substantive evidence
- Suppression of Dissent: Critics dismissed, silenced, or labeled rather than addressed
- Cherry-Picked Data: Selective statistics that misrepresent the full picture
- Logical Fallacies: Arguments containing structural reasoning errors
- Framing Techniques: Language choices that shape perception before evidence is considered
How Scoring Works
Each of the 20 categories is scored from 1 to 5 based on the strength of detected indicators. These scores are aggregated into the 5 composite factors, which are then combined into an overall NCI Score from 0 to 100.
Important: A high score does not mean content is false. It means the content employs techniques commonly associated with persuasion and influence. Use the score as a prompt to verify claims independently, not as a verdict.
Attribution
The NCI (Narrative Credibility Index) methodology was created by Chase Hughes, a behavior expert and author specializing in influence, persuasion, and behavioral analysis.
Decipon is an independent implementation of this framework. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or officially connected to Chase Hughes or any related organizations.
For information about Chase Hughes and the original NCI methodology, please consult his official publications directly.