Re: The Slopification of the CCG

It’s fundamentally unfair to restrict my use of technology if I’m willing
to take full responsibility for the posting. My reputation should suffer
just as much if a post offends regardless of what tools I may have used.

The problem seems to be that we have no way to enforce human
responsibility.

As I see it, this is the only problem. I wish we were discussing solutions.

Adrian

On Tue, Apr 21, 2026 at 9:04 AM Amir Hameed <amsaalegal@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> We are discussing decentralised standards on a centralised email mailing
> list which is open to receive anything , it worked earlier because there
> was a limited capability a user had in terms of what they could research,
> type an email, structure it well and then send it to the mailing list, we
> had very few people who really were willing to put their work and time and
> help develop standards , few years back the same user has been handed over
> a tool where he can write a sentence and get multiple paragraphs answer
> that too structured in a intelligent way but may not be factual, it’s
> obvious that users who ever wished to write an email to the mailing list
> but could not do that due to lack of both energy to research , draft and
> put it forward for discussion might think of using these tools to overcome
> that barrier to entry, it’s similar to industry revolution, there was a
> time when only elite could afford a car because there was no assembly line
> and it was done with hands manually , once we had assembly lines anyone
> could buy a car if they had money.
>
> Our current technology has reached another assembly line moment, this time
> it’s not cars but human skills, reasoning ,  and information systems. So
> this points us to something deeper and that is we need to rethink the
> entire process now, patching doesn’t always help like Kyle said ,
> reputation is not helpful in open ecosystems , we may have to elevate the
> criteria of what is valuable once intelligence and skills become a
> commodity and we need to think of humans as artists in the industrial
> world. Technology is not always the only answer , before we decide anything
> , let’s step back and rethink how the whole thing has changed ever since
> intelligence became commodity and generative tools became digital
> replacement of human skills. We may not have the mailing list itself in
> future , transition period is always chaotic and we collectively navigate
> it, I strongly believe for a better solution we need to rethink and come up
> with some fresh perspectives like verifiable provenance, proof of
> expertise, proof human , otherwise human signal will drown in this
> asymmetry.
>
>
> PS: it’s written by me no tool was used in this except the mail itself ,
> It took me few more minutes but it’s worth it
>
> Regards
>
>
> On Tue, 21 Apr 2026 at 11:27 AM, Kyle Den Hartog <kyle@pryvit.tech> wrote:
>
>> Reputation systems work well as a heuristic metric when you’re operating
>> in high re-interaction environments. That’s not really the case on the Web
>> because of its openness properties where it's easy to build up and spend
>> down identities in an automated fashion. It's made even easier with LLMs
>> now too.
>>
>> For example, on this mailing list spammers could form new emails in
>> seconds and form new identities to continue their attacks. If you set up a
>> guard to prevent it you've now accepted the tradeoff of reduce openness and
>> entered a cat and mouse game at the same time. There are discourse forums
>> (polkadot and ZCash are 2 examples where I've encountered this) that have
>> these techniques built in where you can only post once you’ve built up a
>> reputation. They have specific threads that allow people with low
>> reputation to engage and then you earn reputation over time. This comes
>> with the tradeoff of reducing the openness of the system in exchange for a
>> higher bar of entry. Maybe a poster has something legitimate to add to the
>> conversation, but because they didn't build their reputation up enough they
>> can't contribute. With automation like LLMs given to attackers these days,
>> it's producing an asymmetric attack surface and reverting the solution more
>> towards option one (Dark Forest theory - retreat to safe communication
>> channels).
>>
>> Another example where we're dealing with these sorts of low value sybils
>> is in Brave's hackerone bug bounty programs. There's evidence[1] from
>> BugCrowd this could be security vendors using this to gather training data,
>> but it also simply could be someone operating out of a lower wage country
>> where one bug bounty report can be worth a month's salary or more. So
>> they're incentivized to use an LLM to generate new identities on the fly,
>> spam bug bounty programs, and if their signal degrades too much they drop
>> and swap them.
>>
>> Additionally, I’m not sure how much you’ve been following the Web3 and
>> public goods funding/DAO spaces, but they’ve actually been relying on these
>> identity credential systems as a sybil resistance mechanism for a bit now.
>> While there’s been mild success shown, the system over time has had to add
>> capabilities to address different attacks that have been conducted. For
>> example, Gitcoin Grants 24 saw a 60% reduction in sybil attack influence
>> from their GG23 round[2]. They’re the most widely deployed system that I’ve
>> seen trying to actively go down the route of identity based protections for
>> Sybil attacks and spam. Worth a look for you at least but it's also worth
>> pointing out they're producing a system that structurally still faces the
>> problem as long as the incentives for conducting the attack are still high
>> enough ($1.8 million dollars was given out in GG24). For their system they
>> rely on over 20 different potential signals including government IDs,
>> biometrics, social signals, and financial signals (Binance accounts which
>> require KYC)[3]. Even then, people are still successfully conducting
>> attacks against this system and as more systems are built on the same
>> identity credential based sybil resistances (aka the reputation system atop
>> it) the value of conducting a sybil attack grows because it can be
>> repurposed across multiple systems.
>>
>> There's 2 other deployed identity credential systems that have also been
>> working on this problem as well in the Web3 space with some issues.
>> Idena[4] and Worldcoin[5] have fallen susceptible to some form of Sybil
>> attacks also. From what I've seen, people are conducting "puppeteer
>> attacks" where one person "puppets" many people who have digital IDs to
>> coordinate in the system and conduct attacks. These typically occur
>> through an attacker paying for some action to be taken in order to conduct
>> the attack. Again, these attacks are usually successful because they're
>> operating out of lower wage countries where the seemingly smaller amount of
>> money paid makes the attack worth it.
>>
>> The point here is that attaching reputation systems onto this means
>> you're in for a attack surface that has historically struggled to keep up.
>> I'm not convinced that an email list is ready to deal with this let alone
>> technology built through a standardization process that takes years to
>> iterate on. Especially when the human(s) who are participating is actively
>> coordinating with agents to conduct the spam or sybil attacks. So yeah,
>> that's why I'm not really convinced identity credentials are going to be
>> that useful. I'd be happy to be wrong, but what I'm seeing both in terms of
>> real world adoption as well as attacks I've had to deal with (we've seen
>> these sybil attacks against other systems in Brave too) identity
>> credentials only go so far in solving the problem and they come with
>> tradeoffs that normally aren't worth it.
>>
>> Here's some links for the citations made above as well.
>> [1] Bugcrowd:
>> https://www.bugcrowd.com/blog/bugcrowd-policy-changes-to-address-ai-slop-submissions/
>> [2] Gitcoin reduces attacks:
>> https://gitcoin.co/research/quadratic-funding-sybil-resistance
>> [3] Gitcoin Signals:
>> https://support.passport.xyz/passport-knowledge-base/stamps/how-do-i-add-passport-stamps/the-government-id-stamp
>> [4] Idena:
>> https://stanford-jblp.pubpub.org/pub/compressed-to-0-proof-personhood/release/5
>> [5] Worldcoin:
>> https://www.dlnews.com/articles/regulation/singapore-officials-warns-against-worldcoin-account-trading/
>>
>> -Kyle
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> On Tuesday, 04/21/26 at 05:16 Casanova, Juan <J.Casanova@hw.ac.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Kyle,
>>
>> You say
>>
>> Identity credentials are highly unlikely to stop this either which I
>> suspect is where many in this community would want to turn. Identity
>> credentials just turn the issue back into a key management problem and we
>> don’t really have a great way to prevent a user from sharing their keys
>> with their agent. That problem persists whether the system has a delegation
>> solution or not too.
>>
>> I think there may be an important "but" to this. I think some of the
>> things you suggest later may relate to it, or some of the ideas that Will
>> discussed later. I'm definitely sure that there has been much more
>> discussion about things like this and more attempted approaches to similar
>> things that I am aware, as I still consider myself a newbie here. However,
>> let me state my view...
>>
>> While you can't prevent a user from sharing their keys with their agent,
>> you can have, like you said "pseudo-reputation" systems attached to keys,
>> that take time and good contributions to build, and are deteriorated when
>> providing lower quality contributions. I believe this can be achieved
>> without systematically breaking sovereignty. These hypothetical system(s)
>> could span across multiple mediums, they don't need to be constrained to
>> single contexts, and be optional and complementary rather than strictly
>> enforced, but they could help both as a deterrent for people haphazardly
>> sharing unfiltered AI contents (I refuse to use the word slop because I
>> feel it has connotations that challenge civil conversations and is pretty
>> much a slur, even if I understand what people mean by it), and as a way for
>> people to identify and neutralize persistent sources of it.
>>
>> In my view, this is no different to what we already do in our physical
>> embodied life. We have face recognition embedded into us (most of us), and
>> we learn to create an internal opinion of other people based on their
>> interactions with us. When somebody consistently steals our time with
>> pointless drivel and unfiltered contributions, we don't need to put them in
>> jail, put a sign over their heads that says they are unworthy, or
>> (generally speaking) prohibit them from participating in public life. We
>> simply don't pay as much attention to them, because we know who they are
>> and what their usual approach to contributions is. Identity online simply
>> can replace the face recognition in a way that is more flexible and
>> preserves sovereignty better, as well as being better equipped to deal with
>> the volume.
>>
>> As I said, I'm sure I am unaware of the extent to which similar ideas
>> have been proposed and explored. I am also very aware that in the same way
>> that some people here are using questionable predictions of what AI *will
>> become *that, whether grounded or not, remain just a prediction and not
>> a current reality that can be wielded as a definitive argument for what to
>> do right now; what I am discussing here is also a prediction or a hope,
>> rather than a current reality. But in the same way that I think it's valid
>> to work towards better AI tools, I think it's valid to work towards systems
>> that enable us to better *filter through the ocean of information* in
>> ways that respect sovereignty for all sides involved, can be personalized,
>> and respect our own intelligence. I think it's a dream worth pursuing, and
>> I believe it relates directly to the current matter.
>>
>> But in the meantime, I feel that discussing like we are doing seems to
>> already be shaping a lot of moderate people's views into compromises that
>> may make this mailing list more comfortable for everybody involved. One way
>> or another, we will find out.
>>
>> *Juan Casanova Jaquete*
>>
>> Assistant Professor – School of Engineering and Physical Sciences – Data
>> Science GA Programme
>>
>> *j.casanova@hw.ac.uk* <j.casanova@hw.ac.uk> – Earl Mountbatten Building
>> 1.31 (Heriot Watt Edinburgh campus)
>>
>>
>>
>> Email is an asynchronous communication method. I do not expect and others
>> should not expect immediate replies. Reply at your earliest convenience and
>> working hours.
>>
>>
>>
>> I am affected by Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder. This means that I am an
>> extreme night owl. My work day usually begins at 14:00 Edinburgh time, and
>> I often work late into the evening and on weekends. Please try to take this
>> into account where possible.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------
>> *From:* Kyle Den Hartog <kyle@pryvit.tech>
>> *Sent:* Sunday, April 19, 2026 06:28
>> *To:* Steve Capell <steve.capell@gmail.com>
>> *Cc:* Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>; Marcus Engvall <
>> marcus@engvall.email>; Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>;
>> public-credentials@w3.org <public-credentials@w3.org>
>> *Subject:* Re: The Slopification of the CCG
>>
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>>
>>
>> In case it helps, here’s how things are going in terms of AIPREFs WG and
>> the impact on search crawlers:
>>
>> https://x.com/grittygrease/status/2044152662673752454?s=20
>>
>> In other words, we don’t really have any enforcement mechanisms here to
>> stop this. In fact I highly suspect some people are using them in this
>> conversation right now unless their writing styles dramatically changed in
>> the past few years. My email client started noticing it via machine
>> learning I suspect and filtering threads to my spam inbox like this most of
>> the time given I engage a lot less these days. Personally that’s been a
>> good enough solution for me.
>>
>> Identity credentials are highly unlikely to stop this either which I
>> suspect is where many in this community would want to turn. Identity
>> credentials just turn the issue back into a key management problem and we
>> don’t really have a great way to prevent a user from sharing their keys
>> with their agent. That problem persists whether the system has a delegation
>> solution or not too.
>>
>> So where do we go? I’m not exactly sure. Here’s the leading theories and
>> their tradeoffs that stand out to me for the generalized solution of AI
>> generated content:
>>
>> 1. https://www.ystrickler.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-internet/ -
>> users just stop engaging in these spaces and retreat to closed door forums.
>> Then we lose the open collaboration that made the Web great.
>>
>> 2. Re-hash DRM debate by making it so users can’t actually access their
>> keys used to sign their identity credentials. This seems to be the current
>> path governments like. It optimizes enforcement but also entrenches access
>> to the Web around a select number of OSes and reduces who’s allowed to
>> access and contribute to conversations on the Web. I also see that as a bit
>> short sighted.
>>
>> 3. Re-introduce fingerprinting (and pseudo reputation to that
>> fingerprint) based identity like what CAPTCHAs do. That works well for
>> service side enforcement but in mailing lists like these not so much. So
>> likely will need user controlled filtering like what spam filters in email
>> clients do as well.
>>
>> 4. Is the most interesting but most unproven. We shift how people are
>> reachable and build out Horton Protocol like what Mark Miller proposed
>> years ago at ActivityPub conf. They may have already tried this and had
>> issues. I’m not exactly sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAfjEnu6R2g
>>
>> In any case though, we don’t have much of a solution right now in our
>> particular forum and outside things like 3, I don’t expect much to change
>> in a coordinated manner right now. Looking forward to seeing what we come
>> up with though over the next decade and hopefully the trade offs we make
>> don’t take away too much of what originally made the Web great.
>>
>> -Kyle
>>
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> On Sunday, 04/19/26 at 13:10 Steve Capell <steve.capell@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Challenge : there’s an increasing amount of AI generated content that,
>> whilst possibly containing useful insights, takes more time to read than to
>> generate and, given the size of this mailing list, is likely to lead most
>> of us to unsubscribe, rendering the list worthless
>>
>> Constraint : AI used well is a genuinely useful tool and can dramatically
>> improve quality of output.  “Used well” is key and, unfortunately, many do
>> not use it so well.  Nevertheless, this group can’t become anti-LLM
>> luddites or this list may equally become worthless for the opposite reason
>>
>> Goal : to continue to enjoy intelligent discussions between real humans
>> that feel empowered to use AI to improve the value of their human
>> contributions.  So the goal, it seems to me is not to block AI content but
>> rather to block content that has little evidence of human analysis and
>> interpretation.  Perhaps counterintuitively, LLMs themselves might be the
>> best tool to detect such content
>>
>> Proposal : rather than continuing to discuss whether AI content on this
>> list is good or bad, let’s collectively agree a rubric in the form of an AI
>> prompt that can act as an automated list moderator.  The rubric should
>> focus on requiring evidence of human assessment rather than blocking AI
>> content
>>
>> I had a go at this myself with several of the messages in this thread and
>> earlier ones and it seemed quite effective at blocking the ones that I
>> would have blocked myself.  I know that there is a token cost associated
>> with such a moderator but I for one would delighted to contribute.
>>
>> Disclaimer : this message was written with blurry eyes and fat thumbs on
>> my iPhone - with no AI assistance whatsoever
>>
>> Kind regards
>>
>> Steven Capell
>> UN/CEFACT Vice-Chair
>> Mob: +61 410 437854
>>
>> On 19 Apr 2026, at 10:03 am, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> 
>>
>>
>> ne 19. 4. 2026 v 1:49 odesílatel Marcus Engvall <marcus@engvall.email>
>> napsal:
>>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I’m glad to see that we have some healthy discourse in this thread with a
>> variety of views. I would like to address some of the points made.
>>
>> On 18 Apr 2026, at 01:50, Melvin Carvalho <melvincarvalho@gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> LLMs have the advantage that they know most or all of the specs
>> inside-out, due to their training. Most humans (with notable exceptions),
>> including on this list, have partial understanding of the complete works of
>> web standards.
>>
>>
>> This is a real advantage that these tools have and it should not be
>> understated. I use them professionally for referential lookups and for
>> confirming hypotheses, and I have no doubt that they have the ability to
>> accelerate otherwise excellent standards work. But I am also careful to not
>> fall into the trap of assuming that their lexical consistency can fully
>> substitute  for human judgement. LLMs are probabilistic models with
>> encyclopaedic knowledge, they are not deterministic oracles with the
>> capacity to rigorously derive that same knowledge. In the context of the
>> kind of work done in this group I think it is important to not confuse the
>> two. I trust an LLM to give me a comprehensive overview of a standards
>> framework - I do not, however, trust it to prescribe the framework itself
>> without and human review and editorial judgement.
>>
>> I do however concede on your point on testing methodology, and I think
>> you raise a good point that Manu eloquently touched on.
>>
>>
>> Good points. However LLMs outperform humans on medical exams,
>> olympiad questions and many other tests, often by wide margins. They are
>> much more than prediction machines or probabilistic guessers. What I'm
>> saying is that I predict LLMs would exceed humans in the standards setting
>> on any quantitative evaluation. We just have not the tools to evaluate yet.
>> However, I believe the picture will be much clearer one year from now.
>>
>>
>>
>> On 18 Apr 2026, at 02:24, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com> wrote:
>>
>> Technology transitions, especially ones around human communication can
>> be rough to navigate. This one is no different, and sometimes it takes
>> decades to figure out the norms around a new medium (the printed page,
>> radio, television, BBSes, mailing lists, AOL, ICQ, Napster, Twitter,
>> Digg/Reddit/Discord, and so on).
>>
>>
>> You are completely right that this is a transition, and I think we are
>> all trying to map this new technology onto our existing mental models of
>> what discourse should and could be. Friction and contention is bound to
>> arise. It is clearly counterproductive, as you and later Amir rightly
>> stated, to enforce neo-Luddism and reject the technology wholesale.
>>
>> My point however is that the ability to passively follow and occasionally
>> contribute to developments and discussions in this group is immensely
>> valuable, both commercially and technically. Compressing the
>> signal-to-noise ratio raises the bar for both comprehension and
>> participation, and my fear is that the inevitable intractability will, as
>> you pointed out in the other thread, overwhelm people and alienate them,
>> especially those of us with many other commitments and who do not have the
>> time or ability to participate in every group call. That said, it is, as
>> you suggested, our responsibility to moderate our own information
>> ingestion, as has been the case for time immemorial in any rhetorical forum.
>>
>> Perhaps LLMs will simply change the structure of how discourse is
>> conducted in forums like these rather than drown it out, as some other
>> writers have suggested in the thread. If the cost to contribute text tends
>> to zero, naturally the valuable discussions will shift elsewhere to forums
>> that still have a cost, such as the group calls. I just hope the work
>> doesn’t lose the diversity of opinions that is crucial to develop a refined
>> and well-considered standard.
>>
>> --
>> Marcus Engvall
>>
>> Principal—M. Engvall & Co.
>> mengvall.com
>>
>> ------------------------------
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