Lesson plan

Confinity

Confinity Inc. was an American software company based in Silicon Valley, best known as the creator of PayPal. It was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, and Yu Pan initially as a PalmPilot payments and cryptography company before pivoting to an email-based payments product.

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Article summary

Confinity Inc. was an American software company based in Silicon Valley, best known as the creator of PayPal. It was founded in December 1998 by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek, Ken Howery, and Yu Pan initially as a PalmPilot payments and cryptography company before pivoting to an email-based payments product.

Key claims

  1. date of foundation: 1998 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95
  2. date of foundation: 2000 — source: Wikipedia · confidence 0.95

Discussion questions

  1. Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
  2. The record states that the date of foundation is "1998". What evidence would count against this claim?
  3. The record states that the date of foundation is "2000". What evidence would count against this claim?
  4. Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
  5. If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?

Bibliography

  1. Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1362705877

Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.