Re: Is Alice, or her post, credible? (A really rough use case for credibility signals.)

On Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 4:37 PM Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov> wrote:

> I don’t think this is a wise approach at all.
>
Can you propose an alternative that does not simply formalize the status of
existing elites and thus strengthen hierarchies in public discourse? For
instance, the existing Credibility Signals
<https://credweb.org/reviewed-signals/> (date-first-archived, awards-won,
..) would seem to provide useful information about only a tiny portion of
the many speakers on the Web. By focusing on the output of awards-granting
organizations, while not providing signals usable by others, they empower
that one group of speakers (those who grant awards) over the rest of us.
Can you propose a mechanism that allows my voice, or yours, to have some
influence in establishing credibility?

We are seeing now that fraudsters and misinformation dealers are able to
> gain traction because there is so little barrier to their reaching high
> numbers of readers.
>
Today, the "bad" folk are able to speak without fear of rebuttal. Neither
the fact-checking organizations nor the platforms for speech seem to have
either the resources needed, or the motivation required, to usefully remark
on the credibility of more than an infinitesimal portion of public speech.
How can we possibly counterbalance the bad-speakers without enabling others
to rebut their statements?

In any case, the methods I sketched concerning Alice's statements would
empower formal fact checkers as well as individuals, For instance, a
"climate fact-checking" organization would be able to do a Google search
for "hydrogen 'only water-vapor
<https://www.google.com/search?q=hydrogen+%22only+water-vapor%22>'," and
then, after minimal checking, annotate each of the hundreds of such
statements with a common, well formed rebuttal that would be easily
accessed by readers. Organizations could also set up prospective searches,
such as a Google Alert, that would notify them of new instances of false
claims and enable rapid response to their proliferation. I think this would
be useful. Do you disagree?

Any real solution must not make it just as easy to spread misinformation as
> good information.
>
I have rarely seen a method for preventing bad things that doesn't also
prevent some good. The reality is that the most useful response to bad
speech is more speech. Given more speech, we can discover methods to assist
in the process of separating the good from the bad. But, if we don't
provide the means to make alternative claims, there is little we can do
with the resulting silence. False claims will stand if not rebutted.

It must yield a signal with much much less noise than the currently
> available signals.
>
What "currently available signals?" Other than platform provided moderation
and censorship, what is there?

Increasing the level of he-said/she-said doesn’t help determine what is
> reliable information. Adding to the massive amounts of junk is not the
> answer.
> -Annette
>
> On Aug 16, 2021, at 11:52 AM, Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us> wrote:
>
> The thrust of my post is that we should dramatically enlarge the universe
> of those who make such claims to include all users of the Internet. The
> result of enabling every user of the Web to produce and discover
> credibility signals will be massive amounts of junk, but also a great many
> signals that you'll be able to use to filter, analyze, and reason about
> claims and the subjects of claims.
>
>