Re: Scott Yates candidacy for Public Credibility group

I went back and read the mission of the group (pasted below for reference). Noting the general tone of the thread, perhaps we should get more intentional now about how we will have an impact on the world in a reasonable time frame.

 

Seems like we already have a really good start on some credibility indicators in the docs created under Sandro’s watch. One way to have impact with that (and I’m sure there are other ways) is to flesh it out to capture things we’ve missed, organize it and march it around to private platforms from Facebook, Twitter, smaller platforms and anyone else we want to see adopt this. Get their feedback, critiques, draw them in to the solution, and then publish a document that has some legitimacy and market the heck out of it so it gets adopted. We could support 3rd party efforts to build browser extensions, other tech, around these standards (not build our own).

 

I would gladly support Scott or Aviv or anyone who might take any impact oriented approach to lead the next phase of this group.  

 

Chandran Sankaran <https://www.linkedin.com/in/chandran-sankaran/> 

(I know some of you but not many.  I’ve been an entrepreneur for a couple of decades – not in media/journalism tech. I’ve been a sporadic contributor to this group. Currently involved in a commercial venture Repustar, supporting non-profits around fact-check standards, and some legislative things on misinformation in California.)

 

 

******* 

The mission of the W3C Credible Web Community Group is to help shift the Web toward more trustworthy content without increasing censorship or social division. We want users to be able to tell when content is reliable, accurate, and shared in good faith, and to help them steer away from deceptive content. At the same time, we affirm the need for users to find the content they want and to interact freely in the communities they choose. To balance any conflict between these goals, we are committed to providing technologies which keep end-users in control of their Web experience.

The group's primary strategy involves data sharing on the Web, in the style of schema.org, using existing W3C data standards like JSON-LD. We believe significant progress toward our goals can be reached by properly specifying "credibility indicators", a vocabulary/schema for data about content and the surrounding ecosystem, which can help a person and/or machine decide whether a content item should be trusted.

 

 

From: Sara-Jayne Terp <sarajterp@gmail.com> 
Sent: Sunday, August 1, 2021 9:43 AM
To: Scott Yates <scott@journallist.net>
Cc: Credible Web CG <public-credibility@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Scott Yates candidacy for Public Credibility group

 

If there is seconding to be done, I second Scott's plans and candidacy.   He's done good work already, making sense of groups and work across this field. 

 

Sj.

 

On Sun, 1 Aug 2021 at 17:15, Scott Yates <scott@journallist.net <mailto:scott@journallist.net> > wrote:

Dear Sandro and members of the group:

 

My name is Scott Yates. My platform for what I would do as chair of this group is this: Create a document that can be used to evaluate other efforts to fight disinformation. That is, instead of trying to come up with a solution, first come up with a definition of what a good solution looks like.

 

Right now we have dozens of efforts, and new ones pop up all the time. For whom are they helpful? Do they respect free expression? Do they have unintended negative consequences? How do they fit into the overall landscape? Nobody can answer any of those or a dozen other similar questions because there’s no document by which to make such an evaluation. I propose that we come up with such a document. 

 

It would have as an underpinning the previous excellent documents from this group, and would build up from there. This new document would make it possible for the people behind anti-disinformation efforts to self-evaluate, and perhaps improve based on the guidelines contained in the document. We could also evaluate efforts as a community group, and we could encourage other similar groups (like the Credibility Coalition, of which I am a longtime member) to also use this document.

 

To do this most effectively, I would recommend that we expand this group to include some newsroom leaders, standards experts, and people behind some of the notable efforts out there. I will personally invite people, and would welcome the help of others in that.

 

A bit about me: I’m the founder of JournalList.net, caretaker of the trust.txt framework. I have also worked on the Journalism Trust Initiative. Before JournalList, a nonprofit, I started three technology companies, and before that I was a reporter. I live in Denver with my family, our mutt, and my dictionary collection. In my spare time I’m trying to fix Daylight Saving Time.

 

Thank you for our attention,

 

-Scott Yates

Founder

JournalList.net <http://JournalList.net> , caretaker of the trust.txt framework

202-742-6842

 <https://youtu.be/lunOBapQxpU> Short Video Explanation of trust.txt




 

-- 

Sara-Jayne Terp
Strategist
ThreeT Consulting LLC
sarajterp@gmail.com <mailto:sarajterp@gmail.com>  | +1 646 400 8497

https://threet.consulting <https://threet.consulting/>  | @bodaceacat

CogSecCollab: www.cogsec-collab.org <http://www.cogsec-collab.org>