Sourcedlt

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  Hand drawn user interface concept showing the automated link verification logic.

Inspiration

I was scrolling through some of the bigger subreddits that use links as sources and kept seeing people complaining in the comments. A lot of the time, someone posts an amazing fact, but then when you click, it doesn't actually prove what the title says. It’s a recurring problem where big claims don't have real evidence. Since these subs move so fast, it's impossible for human moderators to check every single link. I wanted to build something that lets the community verify these facts for themselves automatically.

What it does

SourcedIt is a simple bot that helps keep subreddits honest. When someone makes a post with a link, the bot immediately checks if the website actually works. It then leaves a comment at the top of the post asking the community to vote on whether the link is a good source or not. If enough people flag it as fake, the bot removes the post. If people agree it's legit, it gets a Verified tag. It basically turns the comment section into a courtroom for the news.

How we built it

The core logic of SourcedIt is built entirely in Python. It parses text strings, extracts URLs, and matches them against a pre-defined whitelist of trusted sources such as Wikipedia, Science.org, and BBC.

Challenges we ran into

During development, Reddit updated its developer platform rules, shifting from instant self service API access to a manual Responsible Builder human review queue. Because of this administrative backlog, we could not run the bot live on Reddit's live servers before the deadline. We successfully overcame this challenge by writing a fully functional simulation script that mirrors exactly how the bot processes posts.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We successfully mapped out a clean, fast string matching logic that handles domain extraction flawlessly without lagging or slowing down.

What we learned

We learned a great deal about handling platform infrastructure changes and how to properly build simulated testing models when waiting on third-party API keys.

What's next for Sourcedlt

As soon as the manual developer review queue clears and our live credentials drop, we will connect this Python core directly to PRAW (Python Reddit API Wrapper) to launch SourcedIt live in our target communities

Built With

• googlekeep
• markdown
• paper
• pen
• python