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

Apologies for coming late to this discussion.  My E-mail service deemed 
it spam, i.e., not credible.  I discovered it by chance today.

I'm generally in agreement with Leonard along these lines.  What I'd add 
is that I believe the focus is misplaced on individual "sources," i.e., 
persons, groups, or organizations.

 From my perspective, it is delusional (as well as tribal & vain) to 
look beyond the records themselves, whose quality should be judged in 
accordance with reliable metadata associated with each of them. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine-readable_document

In any event, if this group does come to agreement on anything that we 
may wish to try to accomplish together, I will be happy to render our 
plan in open, standard, machine-readable StratML format for inclusion in 
the set at https://stratml.us/drybridge/index.htm#W3C

Owen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/owenambur/


On 7/18/2021 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) 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://w3c.github.io/charter-drafts/png-2021.html>), the ISO’s JPEG 
> Fake Media WG (https://jpeg.org/jpegfakemedia/ 
> <https://jpeg.org/jpegfakemedia/>), ETSI’s ESI TC 
> (https://www.etsi.org/committee/esi 
> <https://www.etsi.org/committee/esi>) 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://github.com/bokand/web-annotations>. 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>
> *Date: *Sunday, July 18, 2021 at 9:27 PM
> *To: *Sandro Hawke <sandro@hawke.org>
> *Cc: *Credible Web CG <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
>