A non-profit public accountability platform

Mission

Plumbline exists to help consumers make informed decisions by documenting publicly available corporate conduct using verifiable evidence. Every company is measured using exactly the same published methodology. The standard never changes. Only the measurement changes.

What Plumbline is not

• Plumbline is not a boycott website.
• Plumbline is not political.
• Plumbline is not activist.
• Plumbline does not determine guilt.
• Plumbline does not publish rumors.
• Plumbline does not target individuals.
• Plumbline documents organizations only.

How the platform is governed

• Owner: Holds ultimate accountability for the platform and the standard.
• Administrator: The only role that may publish. Reviews sources before anything goes public.
• Researcher: Assembles drafts and attaches primary sources. Cannot publish.
• Reviewer: Independently checks citations, statuses, and language. Cannot publish.
• Moderator: Handles community content. No access to the evidence record.
• Verified Company Representative: May submit statements, corrections, and documentation.
• Public User: Reads the record and may submit corrections or community feedback.

Every edit, approval, correction, publication, deletion, and role change is written to an audit log with a timestamp and the responsible reviewer. The audit log is append-only.

No advertising, no sensationalism

The platform carries no advertisements and publishes no clickbait. Headlines use the language of the underlying document. Where a record is thin, the profile says so rather than filling the gap with inference.

What we are building toward

• AI research agents operating under the same publication gate
• Government API integrations
• Court record integrations
• Evidence graph visualization
• Corporate family trees
• Mobile applications
• A public API
• A browser extension

Each of these extends the same architecture: research assists, humans review, administrators publish, and every statement links to its source.