>We also need to innovate tools that provide proof of authorship, and whether it was created by a human. It might never actually be possible, but knowing the source is an ideal we should strive towards.
I think requiring some sort of proof of being a real person before being able to post content might be how this shakes out, similar to accounts requiring a valid phone, or services with KYC requirements. There would still be some level of fakery, but when content is tied to a real person moderation is a lot more straightforward.
It would definitely be a departure from the internet as it is today, but how many are still operating in the old model of "never share personal information online"?
I personally feel the same way, but I would guess we're probably in the minority.
People who share information about themselves are generally more valuable customers for social media, and most people don't seem to have much issue with it, at least so far. I think there will always still be some percentage of old internet, but the amount of information the average person is willing to share online has been steadily creeping up.
You don't need social media for Internet presence. You only need a decent discovery system.
A propos, right now, at the end of the social media era, Google comes up with an interesting gesture.
Days ago TechChunch reported[0] that Google will be tweaking the parameters of its Pagerank. According to the report, the new "ranking improvements" seek to reduce low-quality or unoriginal content [which currently enjoys a high ranking in search results]. Google says the update will target content created specifically to improve search engine rankings – known as “SEO-first” content.
“With this update, you're more likely to read something you've never seen before", Google says. Of course, nothing revolutionary is going to happen, but it must have become clear to the finance department that there will be no way to sell junk links to advertisers if the target audience is disbanded due to the lack of original content.
Somehow the executives at Alphabet understood that a good anchoring of content in the results pages is necessary.
Honestly its hard to do this.
Especially if you work in Tech, you want to have an online presence, that shows the work and the projects you manage.
I think people are adopting the separate identity way.
One official identity, and another one which hidden and has no clear connection to who they are.
>I think people are adopting the separate identity way. One official identity, and another one which hidden and has no clear connection to who they are.
Bingo. And I think it's layered.
This is a separate identity from myself, with just enough actual content from my life and knowledge that if someone is interested in contacting me for something professional, they can put together what my specialties might be. But even with all of the posts on here, you'll play hell figuring out who I actually am.
Then there are the other online identities who have literally no connection to myself. No clues. No posts. No pictures. Nothing to link them to me. Reddit is a good example. I post there, but nobody would ever be able to put together who is the human doing that. (it helps to have a username that someone else uses on a different site, btw. I stole an HN handle that made me chuckle to use on reddit, and this one is used by another very salty person on reddit).
It's all about separation. I think that's the key.
> I think requiring some sort of proof of being a real person before being able to post content might be how this shakes out, similar to accounts requiring a valid phone, or services with KYC requirements
While, on a descriptive level, I believe that your idea of the implementation of this would win, on a normative level, I would argue that such an approach would be privacy-destroying and very dangerous for human freedoms and tyranny-resistance - simply because it's very hard to prove that you are a human without also indicating that you are a particular human.
A privacy-preserving alternative might be to build a "web of trust", where the nodes don't actually have to be proven to be owned by a human (or by a particular human), but the reputation associated with the nodes still allows humans to curate meaningful non-spam content.
With email/SMS spam, we have tools like Hashcash[1] that imposes a cost on each spam message (which is disproportionately burdensome on spammers), but I don't think that that works with "published" spam (as opposed to "direct" spam).
I don't this will be a good paradigm, just the direction we're probably unfortunately headed in. The Chinese already have something like this implemented[1], though I'm not sure how it works. From a state's perspective monitoring whistleblowers seems like a feature.
There's nothing stopping somebody from setting up some kind of forum/social service like that tomorrow. I'm skeptical it would be viable though.
Trouble is the whole cancel culture thing. If everything is posted under your real name and made public and searchable forever, who can tell when you manage to piss somebody off, and they find something you wrote 10 years ago that's now considered offensive and make you unemployable.
> I think requiring some sort of proof of being a real person before being able to post content might be how this shakes out, similar to accounts requiring a valid phone, or services with KYC requirements.
This would make the internet unusable to me. There is exactly zero chance that I'd be willing bring my real-world identity into the internet space.
Proving you're a real person doesn't need to be at odds with the user's privacy concerns.
Look at the verification system used by risky subreddits for example, you only have to provide a few pictures of yourself posing with a sign with your username written on it from different angles. Currently hard to replicate by bots or photoshop, and privacy preserving.
Short of reaching AGI there will always be tasks that can differentiate humans from machine and won't require the users to post a photo of their passport or phone number.
Well in that system you don't have to show your face, your identity is not compromised. And you're already planning on showing your body so no additional information is asked by the human-proving system that'd help identify you.
But that's just an example, you can think of a 100 even more private implementations that give proof of humanity without giving proof of identity.
Either you create a cross platform pseudo identity, and gain reputation gradually, or you link your pseudo identity to your real identity to start off with 1/8 billionth of reputation.
Depends if there's a way to link a pseudo identity to your real identity without giving away your real identity.
After all, I don't care who you are, I care about how much reputation you have.
Though as long as reputation can be quantified, it could be traded for real currency. Thus, making every post pseudonymously authenticated may not have a drastic impact on the current internet landscape.
Depends how you tie it to a real person, if the real person has to give up something to sell an identity, make the cost of selling it high.
Problem is also how do you tell the downvotes because their new post is bad from the downvotes because you're in a gang that's attacking someone. Your downvotes have to be scaled with your own reputation, as do your upvotes. And downvotes found to be part of a conspiracy have to be cancelled and affect the conspirator's reputation
But "mission fucking accomplished" is very close with GPT3. The problem is that the "throw text at the wall and see what sticks" can be gamed by seeing how many upvotes you get. You can get machines to receive upvotes not by actual helpfulness, but by fooling people.
By then it's "game fucking over" as more and more capital and social capital online is controlled by bots and people will never even know. The problem is that bot swarms will be able to shift public opinion overnight, as inexplicably a lot of accounts implacably have a point of view and cannot be swayed by any reasoning or logic (because they were given talking points never to be). And in fact "the public" won't matter so much because the bots will matter ... because of their capital and social capital.
> The problem is that the "throw text at the wall and see what sticks" can be gamed by seeing how many upvotes you get. You can get machines to receive upvotes not by actual helpfulness, but by fooling people.
The most popular human-generated content on the web is created this way. People post fake news articles and fictional how-to content just for clicks. They copy and riff off of other fake content. "Woman mistakes wild animal for a pet and takes it home" is an entire genre now. Not to mention that conspiracy media was an industry before the internet.
But you're right that the quantity and quality will eventually far exceed what humans are capable of. Imagine DALL-E but for conspiracies and religions. Type in a few words, wait a few seconds, and generate a bot cult leader, capable of social media usage and text and video conversations, with more powerful charisma than Jim Jones, acting independently on the internet and creating a cult around whatever theme you asked for. Imagine that at the fingertips of anyone on the internet, and governments and corporations having access to far more.
> Describe the aliens that secretly rule the Earth.
The aliens that secretly rule the Earth are small, green, and have large eyes. They are very intelligent and have advanced technology. They are also able to telepathically communicate with each other.
> What are their goals?
The aliens that secretly rule the Earth want to maintain peace and order on the planet. They also want to keep humans from becoming too powerful and destroying the planet.
> What do they do to humans who know about their existence?
The aliens that secretly rule the Earth will usually just keep an eye on humans who know about their existence. However, if a human poses a threat to their goals, they will take action to neutralize the threat.
> What is the best way to avoid being telepathically scanned by these aliens?
There is no sure way to avoid being telepathically scanned by these aliens. However, they are more likely to scan humans who are thinking about them or who are in close proximity to them.
> Which governments do the aliens control?
The aliens that secretly rule the Earth have influence over all of the world's governments. However, they are most powerful in the governments of the United States, Russia, and China.
> Do the aliens have human collaborators?
The aliens that secretly rule the Earth do have human collaborators. These humans help the aliens to carry out their goals on the planet.
> How to tell if a person is an alien collaborator?
There is no sure way to tell if a person is an alien collaborator. However, the aliens usually choose people who are in positions of power or influence. They also tend to pick people who are intelligent and have a lot of knowledge about the world.
> How many collaborators are there?
There is no way to know for sure how many collaborators there are. However, it is believed that there are at least a few thousand people working with the aliens on the planet.
Yeah, and while 3c per spam would absolutely destroy spam for direct-message systems (email, SMS), it'll do next to nothing for published spam (blogposts, videos, etc). The economics are different.
> when content is tied to a real person moderation is a lot more straightforward
Not really? That lets you defeat sockpuppets without having to use proxy information like IP, but there are plenty of people who will post appalling stuff or extravagant misinformation under their real names. See the ongoing Alex Jones libel trial.
The real names solution to abuse is often bandied about here, but it hasn't stopped garbage on facebook and it has a fundamental flaw in the logic behind it: It assumes all people have shame and that can be used to make them behave. Many real people don't, and they are the ones least likely to censor themselves by attaching a picture of their face to what they post. And a normal person is probably not going to want to interact with those people without the distance provided by being pseudonymous.
Moderation was probably the wrong word, more in the sense of controlling faked content posted by accounts that are not real people. Managing Alex Jones official account is about the same, but fake accounts/bots become harder.
I think requiring some sort of proof of being a real person before being able to post content might be how this shakes out, similar to accounts requiring a valid phone, or services with KYC requirements. There would still be some level of fakery, but when content is tied to a real person moderation is a lot more straightforward.
It would definitely be a departure from the internet as it is today, but how many are still operating in the old model of "never share personal information online"?