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

Hi All,

I would love to see this group restart. I hear interest in it all the time. This Vision statement [1] is all but adopted (feedback welcome), and I think that CredWeb can help.

I would love to see more input from browsers, as many of us have been involved with work that is theoretically brilliant but does not get adopted. There is also a lot of discussion about both credentials and credibility in the Credentials CG, and I think it’s important for us to understand where we overlap. For example, someone posed the question of Digital Press Passes as a Credential [2]. I think that this group would have a lot of thoughts about what that can and can’t do toward credibility.

[1] https://github.com/WebStandardsFuture/Vision

[2] https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-credentials/2021Jul/0162.html


Tzviya Siegman
Information Standards Principal
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>

From: Tom Jones <thomasclinganjones@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, July 19, 2021 4:19 PM
To: Sara-Jayne Terp <sarajterp@gmail.com>
Cc: Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov>; Sandro Hawke <sandro@hawke.org>; Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth@adobe.com>; Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us>; Credible Web CG <public-credibility@w3.org>
Subject: Re: Updates for the Grop [via Credibility Community Group]

⛔
This is an external email.
somehow i think this really is the critical question for the future of the Internet.
1. Biden says "they are killing us' and the opinion writers seem to be backing him up on that.
2. T-rump says "attack the voting process' and the largest experiment in democracy is threatened to its core.
Doesn't everybody agree that it is past time to create a credible internet?

Be the change you want to see in the world ..tom


On Mon, Jul 19, 2021 at 12:00 PM Sara-Jayne Terp <sarajterp@gmail.com<mailto:sarajterp@gmail.com>> wrote:
Thank you!  Let me get out from under this work (writing an app to make AMITT easier to use), then will do some writing about this.  (please hold me to that - I don't write externally enough)

On Mon, 19 Jul 2021 at 18:41, Annette Greiner <amgreiner@lbl.gov<mailto:amgreiner@lbl.gov>> wrote:
Sara-Jayne,
It’s great to hear from you on this thread. I’ve admired the work you’ve shared within the Credibility Coalition. Your comment makes me very curious what specific credibility standards would be helpful in your view. I think it’s helpful to think about the three different spaces you outlined, but getting from that list to a list of needed standards is still a leap for me.
-Annette


On Jul 18, 2021, at 9:27 PM, Sara-Jayne Terp <sarajterp@gmail.com<mailto:sarajterp@gmail.com>> wrote:

There's a deeper need here.  The practical work I've been doing recently has focussed on how to manage three interacting environments - the information space, specifically how to improve the boosting of informative signals (think covid, election, similar information) and find and reduce things like information voids (places where people seek information because of where they are, how they're named, phrases used etc); the risk space (misinformation narratives etc); and the response space.  Doing those three things well would be a lot easier with credibility standards we could apply consistently across the information space.

My apologies for being quiet in here Sandro - I've been a little busy.

Sj.

On Mon, 19 Jul 2021, 4:42 am Sandro Hawke, <sandro@hawke.org<mailto:sandro@hawke.org>> wrote:
I concur with your basic point, Bob, and to my eye it lines up with our mission statement well enough that I'd venture we all agree. The tech industry should do something about this problem, and do it in a way that wont make things even worse.

The question is how.  You say, let's get together and talk about it, at least.  Well, we did.  Have you read carefully through the Credibility Tech <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.w3.org/2018/10/credibility-tech/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks8GFV9rRg$> and Reviewed Credibility Signals<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/credweb.org/reviewed-signals/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks_mr0AEeA$>?  And there are lots of meeting notes and presentations at meetings, at all credweb.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/credweb.org/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks9268L7Pw$>.  We made some progress, but not even enough to catch up with the rate the problem is getting worse in the world at large, I fear.

In my judgement, the most promising solutions are in credibility networks, or reputation networks focused on credibility. That lets everyone say everything, at the same time as each of us mostly only sees the good stuff. But that work isn't nearly ready for standardization -- there isn't even a single product that's proven it works let alone an industry that needs to work together. I've spent most of the last year experimenting with prototypes and I had encouraging results but nothing like a proven solution. There are some companies out there (and in this group) like repustar and creopoint which take their own promising but unproven approaches to the problem. But, again, they're nowhere near ready for interoperation or standardization.

Like, how can the industry or this group work together to solve the problem?  There are various places to meet and chat and collaborate -- technical and academic conferences, where some of those can happen. W3C is useful when companies with viable products want to make them work together. I don't see that here.  Sometimes it can go farther afield, but if there's no clear plan, people are not likely to come along.

On Leonard's point -- C2PA is an example of the kind of thing W3C could help with, but Leonard has plenty of his own experience with standards and they chose a somewhat different path. I expect it made more sense given the exact details of their slice of the industry. I think it's great work, but only a tiny piece of the puzzle. I'm most interested in how they identify people and organizations; my advice has been to stay far from blockchains on this and just use web pages (eg social media profile URLs).

      -- Sandro



On 7/18/21 9:49 PM, Leonard Rosenthol wrote:
Bob -  well said…

There are, however, a variety of efforts that are ongoing in other places/forums about attempting to provide technology to address various aspects of the larger issue(s) raised here.

For example, I chair the Technical Working Group of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (http://c2pa.org<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/c2pa.org/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks8i8JtgOw$>) which is working to deliver standards in the area of asset provenance.  The C2PA is doing its work in conjunction with W3C’s Media and Entertainment WG and a proposed PNG update (https://w3c.github.io/charter-drafts/png-2021.html<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/w3c.github.io/charter-drafts/png-2021.html__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks_x9aZFNw$>), the ISO’s JPEG Fake Media WG (https://jpeg.org/jpegfakemedia/<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/jpeg.org/jpegfakemedia/__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks_eW2Dpuw$>), ETSI’s ESI TC (https://www.etsi.org/committee/esi<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.etsi.org/committee/esi__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks9Qy5pLIQ$>) and others.

There is also work going on from Google and Chromium to bring WebAnnots more natively in the browser that seem to align with some of your thoughts - https://github.com/bokand/web-annotations<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/github.com/bokand/web-annotations__;!!N11eV2iwtfs!7zl-KzKvVfybnrzDdwhLooKfXm2kX05SINgp56-7N2nXAzkWh_60Ks_O1VnNeQ$>.  I suspect that if that work were to gain momentum, it could serve as part of the solution you envision.

And of course you have Verifiable Credentials and Decentralized ID work here at W3C and elsewhere to address identity requirements that are necessary to establish any form of trust.

Leonard

From: Bob Wyman <bob@wyman.us><mailto:bob@wyman.us>
Date: Sunday, July 18, 2021 at 9:27 PM
To: Sandro Hawke <sandro@hawke.org><mailto:sandro@hawke.org>
Cc: Credible Web CG <public-credibility@w3.org><mailto:public-credibility@w3.org>
Subject: 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





--
Sara-Jayne Terp
Strategist
ThreeT Consulting LLC
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