Re: Meronymity

The concept is the point. Our work on VCs and DIDs has focused on privacy
and ignored reputation. It's been hard to find practical uses for VCs as a
result and that will not change until we get real about reputation,
accountability and deduplication.

Adrian

On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 4:33 PM Kim Hamilton <kimdhamilton@gmail.com> wrote:

> I believe the *concept* is the point, vs any specific implementation
> details.
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 21, 2024 at 10:54 AM Adrian Gropper <agropper@healthurl.com>
> wrote:
>
>> 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
>>>>
>>>>