Berners-Lee Wants Truth Ratings For Websites 535
holy_calamity writes "While introducing the new World Wide Web Foundation Tim Berners-Lee made also asked for a system of ratings to help people distinguish truth and untruth online. 'On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly,' he said, saying that 'there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.'"
I can get you ratings readily enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
And Then What? (Score:5, Insightful)
What is to prevent any such proposed system from becoming yet another popularity contest plagued by those who want to quash unpopular ideas?
Where's the "goodluckwiththat" tag (Score:4, Insightful)
Fancy way of saying PageRank doesn't work... (Score:2, Insightful)
Worst idea ever. (Score:1, Insightful)
Worst idea ever.
A rating system can't overcome stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Truthfull to some.. (Score:1, Insightful)
How would this work on a site about the bible? Or about evolution? I certainly don't consider the bible to hold any truth, just as religious people dont see evolution as the truth. So how should such sites be rated? "Truthfull (if you belive in evolution.)" perhaps?
And what version of the truth? (Score:3, Insightful)
Your version,
Their version,
the Truth and
what actually happened.
If that works out will I see a big red pulsating "This is all bullshit" label on the Scientology or any Creationist homepage? I doubt any admin in their self-righteous mind would put something like that on their site. In the specific idiology what is true in reality is a lie in their world. So who's to decide who gets one of those and ranked by what? And you had to rule out all of the parties and congress's website. What about Whitehouse.gov? There should have been one of these "untruthful" markers for eight years now. Where is it?
This will NEVER work. Since everyone makes their own truths nowadays there will be just as many ranking systems as there are opinions.
Re:I can get you ratings readily enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA is /.ed, and MirrorDot's not behaving, so this is a shot in the dark. But I'm reasonably sure we've heard something like this before, and the idea is just as bad now as it was. Berners-Lee is smart enough to know that all systemic rating scales are subject to being gamed. I fail to see how embedding such a scale in the protocol would help, and it's not unlikely that it would hurt the situation.
Moreover, the WWW as he created it - being a very dumb platform - allows us to implement such a scale at a high level, using user input and so forth.There are already a ton of services that do something very like this. Hell, I can trust the top 10 things on del.icio.us more than I can trust random Google results.
I donno. I just fail to see the point of this. Yeah, people's capacity to care about facts and details appears to be limited, but I don't think this is the solution.
Re:A rating system can't overcome stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And Then What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly (Score:2, Insightful)
Why? (Score:1, Insightful)
Why should we have 'truth ratings' for websites when we don't for books, magazines, newspapers, etc?
If you want to know the reputation of a website, research the website just as you would research any other source of information.
1984 all over again (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Just what we need... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ironically, the Op's statement is more insightful than many people may realize. Let's face it, there is alot of crap floating around that masquerades as "Truth". The entire "9/11 Truth" movement, for example. (Which, I suspect, is what the OP got the "truthiness" quip from. A mock on the "truther" movement.)
The point is, WHO is to be the arbiter of "truth"? And how do we know they won't have a political agenda? I think that the major problem is not that some sites need a "true" or "not true" label, but that FAR too many people lack critical thinking skills and fall for emotional ploys and the latest "chicken little" scares.
It would be far more efficacious to push for a critical thinking and debate class requirements in grade and collegiate level schools. At least then people would be better equipped to winnow out the facts from the crap themselves, and we wouldn't have to rely on some nebulous "Truth Authority" to inform us.
We haven't managed it in real life... (Score:3, Insightful)
i.e. a universal reputation system is a hard problem.
Today, we use brands for that.
Re:Which begs the question... (Score:3, Insightful)
Bah. I've already posted, but if I hadn't I'd mod you up. These are exactly the kind of worries one might have about a system like what Berners-Lee is suggesting.
But there's something else here. Suppose we were to pick one of the first two options you present (users or an uninvolved organization). Then the suggestion isn't terribly original. There are already sites that incorporate user input to rank sites (and some of them *koff*digg*koff* don't work all that well). And the idea of a neutral fact-checking group/site isn't too interesting either. Just thinking of factcheck.org [factcheck.org] and snopes.com [snopes.com], it isn't too hard to see something like a rating service coming down the line. (And there are probably more obvious relatives than those that I'm just missing.)
Just doesn't seem like a very good idea...
Facts vs truth vs belief (Score:2, Insightful)
OK, this is a noble idea, but I'm an atheist and many of the things that pass as legitimate discussion, i.e. theology or bible study, is nonsense.
Lets be honest, all religion is bogus and would not pass muster. Sheeple believe it, sheeple will fight and die for it.
How is other nonsense and lies any different?
Is christ truth? Of course not, but people would be offended by an impartial system that brands all nonsense as nonsense. There must be rigidly defined parameters of "acceptable" nonsense that includes things like christianity and islam whilst excluding scientology in Germany and so on.
Sheeple believe because they need to believe. People believe because they have seen and understand the facts. When someone says to you, "You have to believe in something..." The only sane answer is "no I don't."
Re:Just what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And Then What? (Score:5, Insightful)
How about religion: Christianity, Islam, Scientology?
How about acupuncture or homeopathy?
Or to be really contentious how about OS feature debates?
Quite!
Re:Which begs the question... (Score:3, Insightful)
So you are asking this question?
"What is truth? Is your truth the same as mine?"
What rating would be given,
The Roman Catholic Church?
The Mormons?
Scientology?
What about Global Warming sites? What about sites that say Global Warming is a theory and is unproven?
Facts are easy to rate. A site that claims that a Toyota Prius gets 3000 MPG is has their facts wrong.
A site that says the McCain is a Nazi would have their facts wrong.
But Truth is much harder.
Re:Fancy way of saying PageRank doesn't work... (Score:5, Insightful)
The onion is far more accurate than your average editorial page.
Perhaps, but it is a rather bad reference on actual onions.
Re:And Then What? (Score:5, Insightful)
And that, my friends, is the exact problem with Web 2.0 (for lack of a better term). Allow "democratic" control of content, and all content eventually converges on boobs and beer, because it is the lowest common denominator for a lot of Internet users. I need only cite digg.com for this point.
Re:A rating system can't overcome stupidity (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you think that a world-class education will cause people to set aside their own prejudices on any subject? Educated people still make bone-headed analyses whenever their own ox would be gored by the "truth".
Re:But truthiness is more important! (Score:5, Insightful)
Can someone out there DDoS the fuck out of it while they're at it?
Why? It's not like it's a danger. It's just information contrary to normal belief. I may not agree with it, but I don't think that it's worthy of FPMITA prison.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:1, Insightful)
(Which, I suspect, is what the OP got the "truthiness" quip from. A mock on the "truther" movement.)
Never seen the Colbert Rapport?
Re:Just what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
Critical thinking will never be in high schools as long as we have programs like No Child Left Behind.
Re:Who rates the rater? (Score:3, Insightful)
Tim Berners-Lee advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting untruth. His idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to his particular idea.)
( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
( ) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(x) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
(x) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business
Specifically, your plan fails to account for
( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(x) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook
and the following philosophical objections may also apply:
(x) Ideas similar to his are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
(x) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
(x) Blacklists suck
(x) Whitelists suck
(x) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Sending email should be free
(x) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(x) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough
Furthermore, this is what I think about you:
( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(x) This is a stupid idea, and he is a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your
house down!
Re:Fancy way of saying PageRank doesn't work... (Score:4, Insightful)
a popularity contest, not a truth gauge
The distinction is, I regret, becoming increasingly subtle.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:1, Insightful)
The point is, WHO is to be the arbiter of "truth"? And how do we know they won't have a political agenda?
Well said, I can't see any way that one person, ANY one person, could be expected to avoid bias. Fortunately you can correct for bias using a larger statistical sample. We don't need a single arbiter of truth, we need a team of truth, the bigger the better. Since teams of experts rarely form hardworking groups on their own without other insentives we should convince the government to pay for it... rather like a ministry. Yes, a Ministry of Truth, I rather like the sound of that!
Re:Whose "truth"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Likewise, you atheists have some pretty weird assertions about the beliefs of Christians.
How do we mark you?
Re:A rating system can't overcome stupidity (Score:1, Insightful)
What makes you think that a world-class education will cause people to set aside their own prejudices on any subject? Educated people still make bone-headed analyses whenever their own ox would be gored by the "truth".
Educated people are, however, less likely to do so.
Re:I can get you ratings readily enough... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Sad to say (Score:3, Insightful)
Censorship means denying access to information. How does rating the information as (un)trustworthy deny access?
"...it won't work perfectly which is to say it won't work - period.
Nothing works perfectly - period! However, this does not mean we throw out the Principa Mathematica.
"Look at an algorithm like PageRank which Google bombed so easily. What's to prevent miscreants from messing with this?"
Nothing. - What's preventing you from learning the SKILL of researching information (eg: the definition of censorship [google.com.au])?
Re:Just what we need... (Score:2, Insightful)
Truthiness is a creation of Steven Colbert of the Colbert Report, and was Merriam-Webster's 2006 word of the year [merriam-webster.com]
Yeah, but I'm waiting for that website gets a -1 Troll for adding incorrect words to its dictionary, thus legitimizing the undereducated to bring the rest of society down with them.
I often use language to 'sort' people, and I do not socialize with the "wassup" crowd. Should "wassup" find itself in the dictionary, how will we sort the uneducated from the educated? I won't even touch upon the reasons for making the distinction in one's personal life, the educated among us should see them already.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:1, Insightful)
I agree that critical thinking and probably some classes that teach how to filter and research on the internet would be great at a high school level.
Having said that, I think that it is kinda like "The strongest survive". Most of those that can't make these kind of critical thought decisions are going get sucked into something somewhere. The internet is just one more place to look for it.
The thing that scares me about Tim's yimmer yammer is if they decide in some kind of a "democratic" determination truthiness, the majority isn't always right. If they decide that some kind of "authority" should make the determination then what are they going to base that determination on and just what bank account do I put money in to make "My Truth" the one they choose.
It is just a pipe dream. If the pipe dream comes true then it is just one more reason to start looking for an island where no one can find me to wait out the war. (that's my truthiness)
Re:Just what we need... (Score:4, Insightful)
That may be even harder to make happen than to implement a fair and accurate "truthfulness" rating.
That said, I'm opposed to the idea of any kind of trust ranking. It promotes intellectual laziness, which we already have enough of, and would work against what you promote.
As far as I'm concerned, we need to push tools that stimulate critical thinking and logic. Any system that purports to provide a trustworthiness value of a source is dangerous to society in the long run, for reasons given in others' posts (e.g., groupthink).
Re:Bury (Score:3, Insightful)
What about text editors? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about sites that slam MySQL?
What about Vi vs Emacs?
Hell... lets be serious:
What about insiders who are leaking information about the next enron?
What about global warming?
What about academic sites that publish research linking cell phones to cancer? What if a paper is published that actually does connect them? How do you prevent it's "truthliness" from getting freeped by people with vested interests in the status quo?
What about a pharmaceutical website that claims their medication is safe despite mounting evidence it shuts down the liver?
What about a website that has recipes for making heavy grade explosives? How do you rate the truth in something that only a terrorist or a government can test?
What is the truthliness of Homestarrunner?
What about the story published in the National Enquirer about John Edwards affairs when nobody believed them?
This is another version of The Semantic Web and is just as impossible to pull of as the original. Both fail to take into account the tenancy to lie and exaggerate things to promote your world views. They operate under "as long as everybody plays by the rules this idea is perfect!"... which is a very stupid idea unless you've got a legal framework to enforce the rules.
Re:Which begs the question... (Score:1, Insightful)
A site that says the McCain is a Nazi would have their facts wrong.
No, that's opinion/guesswork, not fact. There is a (low but non-zero) probability that McCain harbours secret Nazi leanings, but he just keeps quiet about it.
Plus, it depends on what you classify as 'Nazi'. How many of Hilter's opinions/policies do you have to agree with? Is the uniform/swastika important? What about neo-Nazi - Is that the same? Do you have to think of yourself as a Nazi to be one, and if not which other rightwing parties/opinions/people are possibly Nazi?
And streching it a bit, a bald statement (unqualified) like 'a Prius gets 3000mpg' is not 100% certain to be false; it could be talking about when the Prius is coasting down a gentle slope.
You really haven't thought this through.
Re:I can get you ratings readily enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
If you remove anonymity from the equation, efforts to game the system will work just as well as before, because people can then filter you out after you demonstrate that you disagree with them.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
keep the people in their boxes. (Score:3, Insightful)
This seems little more than keeping people more tightly within the boxes they already are in. He doesn't propose a single system, but multiple different ratings systems. So the Democrats could have one, the Republicans could have one, the Scientologists could have one, the "free thinkers" could have one, the Vegans could have one, the Anti-abortionists could have one, etc. I think I'd prefer a single all-encompassing one. At least everyone would know that's bullshit.
In other words, you could always be certain how well the website you're reading corresponds to your Chosen Doctrine. Great. Hell, with such a ratings system people could filter out anything and everything that disagrees with Doctrine.
No, the current system of your friends and family telling you "You're An Idiot" when you read stupid things like "the moon landing was faked" works a lot better. Sure, it sucks too, but at least you know the people telling you you're an idiot, and occasionally get exposed to some idea you may not agree with.
Re:This article is not true. (Score:5, Insightful)
Except of course that in the Dark Ages they did not burn Witches (most were hung) and they were not as many as people think (only a few thousand over 150 years) and many where not old and not women, and the Church were against the practice ...
So in the Not very Dark ages not very many witches (of all ages and genders) were not burnt, and not by the church ...
This is the problem with truth : Everything most people know to be true is wrong
Re:no one can train yo how to think (Score:3, Insightful)
> all you can do is expose people to issues and arguments,
> and their mind grapples with it
We can hope so, but I've seen too much from every side that indicates a lot of minds don't grapple.
Examples:
Barack Obama is a Muslim.
Sarah Palin asserts the conflict in Iraq is God's war.
The Universe is only 6000 years old.
etc, etc.
But yeah, you may be right that the obvious, really stupid stuff is good fodder for young apprentice thinkers.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree it's critical to sort which people you interact with, but if you're using strict language as a key indicator, I'm going to guess you're doing a poor job sorting.
Do you not socialize with people who use casual language constructs practically to improve rapport with others? Do you not socialize with any creative people who find the natural evolution of language to be fun and interesting? Do you not socialize with any people who learned English as a second (or third) language because their grammar is imprecise?
I understand that there is some correlation between poor speakers and people who are not worth socializing with, but it's not so strong that I would use it as a key indicator. There are far too many great people whom I would have excluded from my life in that case. I'd say that your prejudice in this area may be a better indicator that you're someone not worth socializing with.
Cheers.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:5, Insightful)
Should "wassup" find itself in the dictionary, how will we sort the uneducated from the educated?
Considering that usage of a popular term has no relationship to the level of education that person has, you're facing that problem already. You're just going to have to find less shallow ways of judging people.
Re:I can get you ratings readily enough... (Score:5, Insightful)
The important thing berners-lee is missing is that cults rely on restriction of information to thrive, not the ready availability of it. Fair enough - cults find a wider audience through the web, but so does all the anti-cult information that exposes their various scams.
I mean, look at Scientology - thanks to the web, a lot more people know what Scientology is nowadays, and why it is a scam. So when they are walking past a "free stress test" stand they are less likely to get sucked in.
Problems created by misinformation are solved by education, not censorship.
Re:Research shows ratings would have inverse effec (Score:2, Insightful)
The same effect was seen with statements about tax revenue.
I'm just curious about what statements you are speaking of there...
I'm assuming (which gives me the distinct possibility of being wrong) that it has something to do with the effect of tax rates on the amount of revenue collected by government. And since you seem to be beating on the Bush supporters (which on about 95% of what he has done I am not), I'm assuming (once again opening myself to being incorrect) that your position is that raising taxes brings in more revenue to government.
That would be a true if we were starting at a 0% tax rate. It of course be incorrect if we were starting at a 100% rate.
Tax revenue and the effect of the tax rates is a maximization problem. Unfortunately, no one in our government seems to be interested in trying to work on the maximization of revenues.
The leftists want to take the rates to the ceiling despite the fact that the government could take in more money by utilizing a lower rate. It's generally about class warfare rhetoric and geared toward "punishing" the "rich."
The right wants to (well at least in argument, but the 6 years of Bush and his Republicans in congress didn't follow it... a clear illustration that they don't have any true principals) cut taxes to the ground to shrink government. It's really based around letting their friends avoid paying that much.
The problem is there is a point that could maximize revenues and keep enough in the private sector to create jobs and economic growth. Unfortunately, I doubt all the lawyers that are running our government took many math classes that covered maximization problems. They all just use their rhetoric to rob the people... either they overtax or undertax them and don't get enough money to keep the government out of the red, which just makes the future tax consequences for everyone greater.
The politics and crony-ism need to be taken out of tax policy in order to maximize revenues and ensure economic growth. The US tax system is nothing but a tool for buying votes, which is the only real objective our so called representatives in government seem to have.
Re:Research shows ratings would have inverse effec (Score:2, Insightful)
1. I define myself as a liberal because I believe in using tax money to fund social programs, I'm against the war, for gay rights, etc. All positions which you can probably respect, regardless of whether you agree. ..., Freak show, because I admitted it myself, right?
2. Change the definition of the word "liberal" in people's minds minds to mean Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking, Sushi-Eating, Volvo-Driving, New York Times-Reading, Body-Piercing, Hollywood-Loving, Left-Wing Freak Show [amazon.com].
3. Since I gave myself that label, I can no longer argue that I am not a Tax-Raising, Latte-Drinking,
In my own mind I do the same with Republicans. I hear "conservative" and I think, "Gun-toting, Bible-thumping, fact-ignoring, etc", when really they probably just believe in lower taxes, a free market and strong national defense, which are things I don't agree with but don't hate you for believing.
Re:Just what we need... (Score:3, Insightful)
You're just going to have to find less shallow ways of judging people.
Why? Everybody does that! Here's how we should solve the education problem in this country : focus entirely on grammar, vocabulary and literature. Why bother trying to educate people when you can just make them sound educated?
In other words: Blogrolls, del.icio.us, and Karma (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't get why people are slagging Tim off over this. We already do have such mechanisms on the small scale: karma points for comments, reputation systems for online trading, blogrolls and 'social bookmarking services' for 'this unknown website is recommended/suggested by this other website I read'.
Remember Advogato's rankings?
The logical next step would be to have a generic way of talking about such rankings/recommendations such that I don't need to subscribe to a third party to do it. Use, oh, I don't know, how about RDF? We've already got FOAF - how about an 'Enemy Of My Enemy' protocol?
Yes, this will lead to 'ontology wars' as groups with different views of trustworthiness start formalising the metrics they already use informally. As long as the protocol itself remains open and interconnectable, I don't see this as a huge problem. At least people will be openly owning their philosophical bias rather than pretending it doesn't exist.