Re: Updates for the Grop [via Credibility Community Group]

Sandro,
Thank you for the clarification. I found it somewhat ironic that an
announcement concerning leadership of the public-credibility group did not
appear to be credible...

I also find it rather bizarre that there appears to be no focal point for
discussion within the technical community of problems rooted in technology
even though those issues inspire raging, and often ill-informed,
discussions outside the community. At this time, it appears that the most
commonly proposed "solutions" to the problem of credible online speech
focus on various ways to restrict either our right or our ability to speak.
It would be unfortunate if such solutions were to be imposed if there exist
reasonable, but unexplored, technical alternatives that could address
the problem. I suggest that our responsibility as a community extends
beyond not only creating and deploying technology but also to doing what we
can to ensure that others understand it and that technical solutions are
developed to mitigate or eliminate problems caused by what we have done.
Just as an engineer would feel responsible to address an unintended bug in
some software, I believe the technical community should feel responsible to
address, or at least understand, the unintended consequences of its work.
If the W3C is not the proper forum for such discussions, what is?

Given an apparent absence of proposals for technical solutions to the
problem, I suggest that this group should initially focus on trying to
generate discussion of the problems, and the inadequacies of existing
proposals, in the hope that a deeper and more broadly shared understanding
might generate some useful ideas that could be explored in depth. Thus, I
would suggest that an attempt be made to reinvigorate the W3C Credible Web
Community Group Zoom meetings after over a year of inactivity. An hour or
two of Zoom meetings every month seems like a small investment that might
have significant impact. Along similar lines, I suggest that the Chair of
this group should put out a call for fresh proposals in an attempt to flush
out ideas that have not yet been fully explored or developed. Ideally, that
call would be made as broadly as possible. I would like to see a news story
entitled "Web Community seeks solutions to problems" rather than yet
another story detailing a proposal for how Facebook, Google, or whomever,
should improve their ability to decide what can and cannot be said in
public forums.

My personal belief is that while Web Annotation has been discussed, it's
potential, when combined with Credibility Signals, has not been fully
recognized -- either as a means to address credibility or as a potential
source of entrepreneurial opportunity. As an individual user of the web, I
believe it should be a simple matter for me to publicly tag or annotate any
visible resource or fragment as either credible or not, as true or false,
etc. In essence, I suggest that *the solution to bad speech is more speech*.
Others may observe that such an ability would simply create a cacophony of
conflicting statements or claims. But, I am confident that we'll be able to
develop tools to extract signals from the noise. If nothing else, such
annotations might help those who operate formal fact checking systems by
identifying which resources are controversial at any particular moment.
Also, it should be recognized that when such statements are made about me,
or subjects close to me, Web Annotations facilitate my exercising a "Right
to Respond." Today, too much of what is said is protected from response by
being on sites or in formats that don't permit comments or responses from
those who have an interest in the truth or credibility of statements that
are made.

It is my hope that either this group, or some other group more appropriate,
will reinvigorate a technical discussion of these issues. What is going on
in the world of politics and in the press does not appear to me to be
leading us in a good direction.

bob wyman