Re: Meronymity

I don't see how this reputation system is resistant to Sybil attacks. Also,
it's not clear if:

"LiTweeture then posts the query and meronyms to X and Mastodon."

implies some centralization.

Adrian

On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 1:34 PM Kim Hamilton <kimdhamilton@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think this is a brilliant use of VCs and DIDs. And mailing lists like
> this are good examples of where social inhibitions/fear of judgment keep
> people from asking questions or engaging (at least anecdotally, as people
> report to me). How much more productive would we be collectively if this
> were less of a factor?
>
> It would be fun to sketch this out more. Sounds like a great RWOT topic as
> well
>
> On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 9:47 AM Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Greetings CCG,
>>
>> From my reading of a recent techxplore story, the 'meronymity' devised by
>> "MIT researchers" (and apparently the Allen Institute) may be an innovation
>> of interest to many in this group. It attempts to solve the problem that
>> anonymity, desired for good reasons often, precludes knowing the
>> credentials of the participants, and hence brings trust and accuracy
>> problems.
>>
>> https://techxplore.com/news/2024-04-equitable-discussions-social-media-meronymity.html
>>
>> From the story:
>>
>> "Meronymity (from the Greek words for "partial" and "name") allows people
>> in a public discussion space to selectively reveal only relevant, verified
>> aspects of their identity."
>>
>> The story goes on to describe an implementation with academics, and the
>> results. It does seem to have had a noticeable positive impact. They go on
>> to say:
>>
>> "Now that they have built a framework around academia, the researchers
>> want to apply meronymity to other online communities and general social
>> media conversations, especially those around issues where there is a lot of
>> conflict, like politics."
>>
>> It appears that some form of verifiable credentials is used, but whether these are W3C-compliant ones, and involved DIDs, I'm not sure. I did a quick scan through the pre-print paper the story is based on (available through the above link, at the end), and couldn't see any direct reference to them.
>>
>> If not, IMO this might be a good place for W3C VCs and DIDs to be involved. Hence this post. :-)
>>
>> Steven Rowat
>>
>>