An open source ledger for news stories that shouldn't expire

Hey everyone,

Remember the Porsche kid in Pune? You know, the one where a 17-year-old allegedly mowed down two people while drunk, and the initial punishment was writing a 300-word essay on road safety? Yeah, that one. Where the blood samples mysteriously got swapped, and suddenly we were all living in a Bollywood thriller nobody asked for. [Pune Porsche Case on Deadline]

Oh wait, you probably don’t remember it anymore because we’ve moved on to the next outrage of the week. That’s exactly the problem.

What is deadline.click?

An open source accountability ledger that tracks stories until they actually get justice. Not just until people stop making memes about them. We’re building a timeline-based interface where you can follow incidents from “this is outrageous” to “wait, what happened to that case?” to hopefully “justice served” (rare drops, legendary tier).


checkout: https://deadline.click

Think of it as a bookmark manager, except instead of saving articles you’ll never read, we’re saving stories that shouldn’t be forgotten just because they’re not trending anymore.

The actual plan:

Create a self-sustaining autonomous news organization that aggregates multiple perspectives, statements, and arguments on incidents. The goal? Bring some rationality to public discourse and maybe hold leaders accountable for longer than one news cycle.

We’re also adding:

  • Radio feature
  • Politician profiles
  • Scan through reddit, youtube, comments, etc.
  • A corruption leaderboard (Forbes-style, but actually useful)
  • Timeline updates that persist even after the hashtag dies

Tech Stack:

  • Frontend: Next.js
  • Backend: Python (migrating to Frappe soon)
  • Database: Supabase
  • Primary fuel: Spite, chai, and existential dread

GitHub: Deadline.click · GitHub

Why we’re here:

We’re final year students who apparently thought building this was easier than therapy. We need guidance from people who’ve built sustainable open source projects without losing their minds completely. How do we keep this running long-term? How do we handle the inevitable trolls and “you’re biased” accusations? How do we fund this without selling our souls?

Also, if anyone’s hiring or wants to collaborate, or just wants to tell us our database schema is a mess, please reach out:

We’re actively looking for internships/jobs, ideally ones where we don’t have to pretend systemic issues don’t exist.

Check out the repo, contribute if you want, or just tell us this is doomed to fail. We’re collecting all kinds of feedback at this point.

Because apparently, in 2025, we need an app to remember that rich kids shouldn’t get away with murder just because they can write essays.

Durva & Om

6 Likes

Hey Durva and Om, this is a great idea!

We need guidance from people who’ve built sustainable open source projects without losing their minds completely. How do we keep this running long-term? How do we handle the inevitable trolls and “you’re biased” accusations? How do we fund this without selling our souls?

We’d love to know more about the project and problems you’re facing, and perhaps we might have some useful advice to share. Do you mind sending an email to maintainers@fossunited.org? We can setup a call sometime next week.

I’ll also share this post in the community so it gets more eyeballs.

Hi Ansh, sorry for the late reply. We were busy all day at a hackathon.

We’ve sent you an email and are really excited about the call. Thanks so much for the support and for sharing this in the community.

Best,
Durva & Om

This looks lovely!

I’ve been looking for something like this to track cases of violence against health workers and students. Will try setting up a local instance and get back.

PS: total agreement with the frustration over ever shortening collective attention :fist:t5:

1 Like