Re: A Credibility Use Case: Lessig v New York Times ("Clickbate Defamation")

Interesting scenario.  A few thoughts.

This is not low-hanging fruit. Evaluating contradictions between 
credible sources, like this, seems like harder territory to address than 
some common cases like: a source with no obvious credibility rating, so 
people end up believing it because it says something they like or uses a 
nice layout.

But maybe it's not that hard either.  The easy thing about this is that 
it's perhaps the kind of situation where ANYONE willing to spent 30 
minutes hard work can evaluate it.  Lessig's argument is that the NYT 
headline and lede are dangerously misleading summaries of his article 
and the interview.  No special information or access or skill is 
necessary to evaluate Lessig's claim that the NYT got it wrong; just 
read the article and interview and think a little.  That kind of thing 
can be sort of crowd-sourced. It's not like a public health claim or a 
mystery.

It's quite hard among self-contained fact-checks, though, because the 
text has some nuance and the topic is extremely sensitive.  It's like if 
Alice makes a false derogatory statement about Adolf Hitler, then who 
wants to wade into the muck, fact check her, and get branded a Hitler 
apologist?  And then if her argument required some nuance, ... it's a 
total mess.

On the mechanical issues:

It's clear to me we need a credibility layer independent from the 
content layer.

When you're viewing content from X, you need independent annotations and 
filtering based on signals from your whole credibility network, beyond 
the control of X.

Ways this could be done:
1. When you're getting your content through social media, the 
credibility layer can be implemented by the social media platform. I 
expect social media vendors will be happy to do this once the system is 
proven to work well but not until then.
2. When you're getting your content through a browser, the credibility 
layer could be implemented in a browser extension for now and eventually 
in the browser itself. I think browser vendors would love to do this if 
the system is proven to work well, but not before then.
3. The website for X *could* provide the credibility layer branded as a 
neutral 3rd party service that they swear they wont tamper with. I think 
this is more likely for product vendors than news vendors. X could be a 
manufacture of Widgets, and they want you to use your credibility 
network to see that people generally have a great experience with X's 
Widgets. I think it could also work for news sites, though.

I think the most promising deployment strategies are via (1, above) 
finding a small social media platform that's interested in making this 
their distinctive feature, and via (3, above) finding some high traffic 
sites who are very confident of their credibility rating among people 
who know them and want to spread the word to others.

     -- Sandro



On 8/29/21 5:34 PM, Bob Wyman wrote:
> Many think that reliable credibility signals will be useful in 
> addressing the problem of misinformation. But, how do credibility 
> signals help, or hurt, when one highly credible speaker accuses 
> another highly credible speaker of spreading misinformation? Can 
> credibility signals make it harder to combat misinformation?
>
> Some context: On Sept 14, 2019, the New York Times carried an article 
> discussing a medium.com <http://medium.com> post written a few days 
> earlier by Lawrence Lessig. While the body of the article summarized 
> Lessig's arguments with reasonable accuracy, its headline inaccurately 
> described Lessig's position and did so in a way that Lessig believed 
> caused him significant and lasting harm. (For context, see: 
> https://clickbaitdefamation.org/ <https://clickbaitdefamation.org/> ) 
> Lessig asked for a correction, but the New York Times, for quite some 
> time, refused to act, saying that anyone who read the entire story 
> would realize that the headline was inaccurate. Lessig argued that 
> most people would believe that the headline was accurate, since the 
> NYT is highly credible, and that most who saw the headline wouldn't 
> read the entire article. Eventually, the NYT backed down and made a 
> correction to the online story.
>
> The New York Times is widely considered to be highly credible. It has 
> been publishing for a long time, it has won thousands of awards, and 
> can present many other indicators of credibility that could be 
> captured in signals. Lawrence Lessig, a law professor at Harvard, 
> co-founder of CreativeCommons.org, winner of many awards, and once 
> presidential candidate, is also able to present many positive 
> credibility signals. Yet, Lessig and the New York Times are in 
> conflict. In this case, not about an article, but just the article's 
> headline.
>
> Given the Lessig v NYT controversy, how do credibility signals help or 
> hurt the ability of third-party readers to correctly identify 
> misinformation? How would credibility signals have helped limit the 
> impact of the misinformation in the New York Times' headline? Also, 
> while Lessig was able to mobilize his considerable public reputation 
> and spend a great deal of effort and expense in combating the NYT, we 
> must wonder if someone without his many positive credibility signals 
> would have found it dramatically harder, if not impossible, to either 
> defend themselves or convince the NYT to correct the headline. When a 
> highly credible source spreads misinformation about someone whose 
> credibility can't be well established, should credibility signals be 
> considered harmful or counter-productive?
>
> Given the web as we know it, Lessig was able to rebut the NYT article 
> by writing a 3,500 word piece on medium.com <http://medium.com>. 
> Lessig also coined the term "Clickbate Defamation" and created a 
> website devoted to it. Further, he contacted the New York TImes, he 
> was interviewed by a variety of other news organizations, and he 
> created a podcast series to lay out his case in detail. He also filed 
> a legal suit for damages against the New York Times. Of course, even 
> with all that effort, only a tiny fraction of those who read the NYT 
> piece ever became aware of Lessig's determined and voluminous 
> rebuttals. His credibility remains severely challenged in the opinion 
> of many readers of the original story who never saw the follow-up. Had 
> Lessig fought less, or been less well-known, it is quite possible that 
> the correction would not have been made. The New York Time remains, of 
> course, considered by many to be a credible publisher.
>
> There are a couple interesting "mechanical" issues here:
>
>   * While the New York Times would be likely to present, embedded on
>     its own website, a great many signals attesting to their own
>     credibility and to that of their writers, they are unlikely to be
>     as vigorous in presenting similar signals concerning the many
>     subjects of their writing. Thus, within the context of any story,
>     the signals are always likely to be very biased towards the writer
>     or the publication. Is a reliance on one-sided, self-asserted
>     credibility signals a problem that should be addressed? Should
>     there be a way to "inject" off-site, but relevant, credibility
>     signals into the readers' context? If so, how?
>   * Unless the New York Times provides for comments (they only do so
>     on some stories), any rebuttals of their articles, or challenges
>     to their credibility, are likely to be seen by only a tiny
>     percentage of those who read the rebutted articles or statements.
>     Even when comment sections are provided, the NYT moderates those
>     comments, controls their presentation, etc. Thus, it is likely
>     that even if Lessig had been able to write a comment on the NYT
>     site, few readers of the headline, or even of the full article,
>     would have seen the comment. (Note: Annotation systems could help
>     here, if more widely used.)
>
> Should credibility signals be useful in a case such as the Lessig v 
> NYT controversy? If so, how are they useful? What is their role? If 
> they are not useful, or are counter-productive, what is the value of 
> credibility signals? Can the utility of credibility signals be 
> increased by some change to their design or implementation?
>
> bob wyman
>