Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2024 15:17:12 -0500
From: Dave Taht via Nnagain <[email protected]>
To: Network Neutrality is back! Let´s make the technical aspects heard this
time! <[email protected]>
Cc: Dave Taht <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [NNagain] The growing challenges of discerning authentic vs.
inauthentic information and identity
Basically I am interested in the intersection between politics and the
internet in the context of this list, which is broader than the NN
issue. So I appreciate monday conversation starters like these.
In my case, I often have to revert to thinking about the present in
terms of what used to be science fiction. "Interface" - upon
cogitating about what the coming election will look like came to mind
- https://www.amazon.com/Interface-Stephen-Bury/dp/0553572407
When I first saw the deepfakes Pr0n phenomenon a few years ago, I had
my oh-ghu moment, as I realized once tools like that got into
everyone's hands the truth and authenticity of any form of media begin
to vanish, and the recent rise of the LLMs *almost* put the finish to
it. Thankfully the LLMs (so far) have a terrible tendency to
hallucinate which is often easily detectable, and overall, the
technoliterati have managed to expel really bad ideas like
crypto-grift, web3, and so on in the last few years. Web3 investment
is down 70% this year...
I now wish very much that the concept of "whuffie" existed in the real
world, but the flight to mastodon, twitter's addition of community
notes, most of newspapers moving to a for-pay model, and in general,
the innoculation of the populace at large to distrust everything they
learn on line is well underway which I find some comfort in.
Promoting widespread skepticism and disbelief are powerful tools, but
trying to find guidelines to what is actually truthful harder. For
example, I read wikipedia's talk page on everything controversial. Too
few do that. I recently sat through fox news with my mom, because her
blood pressure was too low, and it served well to "improve" that, and
me, take a lisinopril.
Life's just a ride, tho, you know?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Down_and_Out_in_the_Magic_Kingdom
On Wed, Jan 3, 2024 at 9:32 AM David Bray, PhD via Nnagain
<[email protected]> wrote:
Dear NNAgain’ers,
Today on a different listserv, I joined a discussion on what I sense will be a
pressing issue across multiple sectors in 2024. I recognize this is not
NN-related and so if it isn’t of interest, I apologize in advance. However as
most of us have technology background here, my sense is we generally have a
better sense of the looming issue than non-technical folks at the moment. Below
I outline some of the contours of the evolving problem space, and invite each
of you to share your thoughts as I sense the diversity of perspectives here
might help with brainstorming potential solutions necessary for civil societies
to continue:
Premise: We are at the precipice of an extended era where inauthenticity vs.
authenticity will be difficult to discern, that that involves multiple forms of
content including biometrics and more.
In isolated pockets, governments are becoming aware of this - however it’s
going to be really difficult for pluralistic societies like the U.S. where any
of the Estates that traditionally would have a role to play in verifying the
authentic vs. inauthentic nature of something have had public trust in them as
arbiters eroding. And it doesn’t help that both politics and advertisement rely
on presenting things as 100% authentic when they’re often only somewhat so (or,
to be more generous, mix facts with lots of beliefs).
Not supporting autocracies, however they have a bit of a “home field” advantage
here because there is only one singular narrative - and anyone who questions it
can be fired/isolated, imprisoned/disappeared, or killed/executed. Tools of
such regimes, to include filtering, censorship, and repression - will be used
to ensure only one narrative (authentic or not, mostly likely the latter) is
seen by a majority of their population. Pluralistic societies will have it much
harder, and the last ten years will pale in comparison to the challenges of
sensemaking in a world flooded by both media and mediums of questionable
authenticity.
Back in 2019-2020, I did my darnest to connect Pablo and an additional
People-Centered Internet expert with Salesforce that has a lot of CRM data with
the proposal that SF could provide a feature where, as part of the CRM, “out of
band” questions could be included to do some sort of additional level of trust
that the entity on the other end was who they claimed to be. Unfortunately that
pitch was overshadowed by larger concerns that SF’s software, give some of its
features, could be misused in ways not intended by them (think about ways akin
to Cambridge Analytica) and they were trying to figure out how they could
incorporate features to prevent actors from misusing/abusing their software in
ways not intended by them as a company.
2024 is going to be hard. Manipulation of what people appear to see, hear,
sense - and thus know - is becoming sadly easier.
Meanwhile understanding of the importance of triangulation, triangulation,
triangulation from different perspective to discern authenticity vs. inauthenticity
remains time-consuming and hard. Perhaps we need to consider standing up private
sector Dun & Bradstreet-like entities for identity and other important
adjudicatory functions - however that doesn’t immediately solve the issue of how to
help the public in a would experiencing a flood of questionable content,
information, and identities? And who “watches” the adjudicators?
David Bray, PhD Principal, LeadDoAdapt Ventures, Inc.
Loomis Innovation Council Co-Chair & Distinguished Fellow
Henry S. Stimson Center, Business Executives for National Security
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--
40 years of net history, a couple songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9RGX6QFm5E
Dave Täht CSO, LibreQos
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