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The endgame here is bizarre. I can see a future in which there is no online trust at all. Not news, not proclamations, not even previously trusted sources. Thi

The endgame here is bizarre. I can see a future in which there is no online trust at all. Not news, not proclamations, not even previously trusted sources. This trust erosion threatens the very fabric of government. If I stop trusting remote sources, who can I actually trust? City government with a physical presence, well known physical police and government officials known personally to me, and no others. This troubling trend does not end well.

binarymax 6y ago
Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising.
- ardy42 6y ago
  > Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising. Do you mean Library of Babel [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel: "In any case, a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing zero books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information..."
  - black_puppydog 6y ago
    I suspect they meant what they wrote.
  - ordinaryradical 6y ago
    The Tower of Babel refers to the story from the Bible's first book, Genesis, in which the hubris of people leads to the building of a gigantic tower, a technological marvel for its time but one that ultimately contains the seeds of its own undoing. People build the tower as a symbol of greatness and unity but in the end are scattered by God and thrown into disunity and disarray. It's an enduring story precisely because it seems to so well encapsulate our relationship with technology and the law of unintended consequences. Borges' story on the Library of Babel is in conversation with this much older story.
toomuchtodo 6y ago
This is not a call for fatalism. This is a call for trust infrastructure, trust anchors, and proven underlying identity and trust mechanisms. What happens when you try to fake being an Estonian who holds a national ID card that utilizes cryptographic primitives? Along those same lines, this infrastructure is the very same needed for business to transact (think document/agreement execution, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, payment processing, real estate ownership record systems, etc). If I can't prove who I am, that's a gap to be solved for by government (and many have already solved for this, it is a well worn path [1]). If you require me to attest to my identity, that's a regulatory, governance, and oversight issue. As glib as is sounds, fight misinformation/disinformation with trust (infra). Make trust the default, not the exception. EDIT: Login.gov [2] provides authentication services for DHS' Global Entry. Why can we not use that to attest identity facts elsewhere? Why can't any citizen get a CAC [3] to use with this system? (I frequently see Login.gov is hiring for SREs, but no internal advocates/champions; why?) Why can I pay with Apple Pay but can't prove my identity without a paper birth certificate and social security card (or a passport if you're among the well heeled)? </soapbox> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... [2] https://login.gov https://login.gov [3] https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/ https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/
- tomjen3 6y ago
  Why should I trust the US government to assert who you are? Surely they make false passports for their spies all the time.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Why should I trust your Keybase proof? Because "they [Zoom now] say so"? Those seeking to verify identities and personas are free to ignore whatever roots or trust chains they choose. Edge cases aside, the US government (in the case of your example) still holds and projects trust value (not sure how many US passports per day are used to validate citizenship, employment eligibility, and entry requirements at nation state borders, I assume it's quite a bit). Trust is hard (there are entire industries around it), but the notion that it's impossible should not be entertained. It's a core component of modern civilization.
vngzs 6y ago
Trust is a difficult problem. Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral. I could at least envision a world where cryptographic identity is taken for granted. Think Keybase for publications. Sign articles to prove authenticity. The cryptography involved is largely a solved problem. Software engineers did it with Keybase, and it's easy enough to use that people with very little cryptographic ability can prove who they are to the Internet (assuming they're an established identity with social accounts, or they have trustworthy people willing to vouch for their identity). But we'd need browsers/clients that have the ability to display proof status on messages, and it would have to be nearly as easy to use as existing clients like Twitter. I hope we start building businesses that repair trust, rather than harm it. Making everyone distrust everything might benefit a few opportunistic parties in the short term, but in the long run everyone loses.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  >Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral. I mean, you have to understand that the actions of the globally dominant "West" (North America, EU, Australia, and their allies) in the past 20 (and further beyond that) years have done a lot to undermine trust in them also. Fake news to lead people into the Iraq War (a 20 year quagmire which only cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars for minute changes on the ground), an inability to defeat ISIS which meant the US had to rely on Iranian militias to beat them. On that note, I think the whole history of US-Iran relations is enough to undermine faith in the "West" as it stands. I'm not saying other axes of power are better, but trust isn't a competition, it's very possible for people to trust no one outside their few close acquaintances. Trust has to be earned, and the "West" doesn't do a good job of it.
- itsyaboi 6y ago
  Interesting, just looked through notsureaboutpg's reply to your comment and it seems like someone has gone through and systematically downvoted(?) all of their comments (now marked as dead). Why?
fapjacks 6y ago
Why? This was the situation in the 90s. No one trusted the internet. It's hard to imagine unless you lived it, but buying something online was once seen as completely stupid, and people were universally skeptical of information (and people) online. We should be more concerned about the level of trust built up since then, not the other way around.
theklub 6y ago
Trust no one? Have people historically trusted anyone other than their families?
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
That might bring it back to actual people. If you can't even tell which pop artist is real, or which talking head is legitimate, maybe you trust the people you know. We go back to trusting that newspaper that you pay, who in turn pays someone to actually be on the ground somewhere. And trusting people you personally know IRL. No more of this reporting on things the journalist read about on twitter and read a press release about.
high_byte 6y ago
Implying you trust government and police, because they never done anything malicious before... At least with online sources it's up to you to decide.
- pontifier 6y ago
  Not really trust, but it's the local gang with the physical power and presence to operate conspicuously in the area.
mam2 6y ago
Ehh.. ive thought about it, either for fake news or fake identities. Maybe also people will start spending less time online and care more about local stuff that overall, will impact their lives more directly. Maybe not that bad of a thing.
uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 6y ago
They (government) will probably have to regulate these techniques as though they were WMDs, along with other ML tools. "Oh another absolutely perfect fake of $powerful_person calling for $atrocity[n]". Fomenting FUD in a rival's populace seems to be a game of mutually assured destruction. Incidentally, those nations with unfree comms laws and culture are best defended against these techniques, though I would not advocate for bringing in federal censors.
2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago
This is basically how I already treat the Internet. I take a defensive stance and just assume everyone is a foreign bad actor or shill.

binarymax 6y ago

Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising.

ardy42 6y ago
> Yes. It’s our own Tower of Babel. All built in the name of 3rd party advertising. Do you mean Library of Babel [1]? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel: "In any case, a library containing all possible books, arranged at random, might as well be a library containing zero books, as any true information would be buried in, and rendered indistinguishable from, all possible forms of false information..."
- black_puppydog 6y ago
  I suspect they meant what they wrote.
- ordinaryradical 6y ago
  The Tower of Babel refers to the story from the Bible's first book, Genesis, in which the hubris of people leads to the building of a gigantic tower, a technological marvel for its time but one that ultimately contains the seeds of its own undoing. People build the tower as a symbol of greatness and unity but in the end are scattered by God and thrown into disunity and disarray. It's an enduring story precisely because it seems to so well encapsulate our relationship with technology and the law of unintended consequences. Borges' story on the Library of Babel is in conversation with this much older story.

toomuchtodo 6y ago

This is not a call for fatalism. This is a call for trust infrastructure, trust anchors, and proven underlying identity and trust mechanisms. What happens when you try to fake being an Estonian who holds a national ID card that utilizes cryptographic primitives? Along those same lines, this infrastructure is the very same needed for business to transact (think document/agreement execution, bank accounts, brokerage accounts, payment processing, real estate ownership record systems, etc). If I can't prove who I am, that's a gap to be solved for by government (and many have already solved for this, it is a well worn path [1]). If you require me to attest to my identity, that's a regulatory, governance, and oversight issue. As glib as is sounds, fight misinformation/disinformation with trust (infra). Make trust the default, not the exception. EDIT: Login.gov [2] provides authentication services for DHS' Global Entry. Why can we not use that to attest identity facts elsewhere? Why can't any citizen get a CAC [3] to use with this system? (I frequently see Login.gov is hiring for SREs, but no internal advocates/champions; why?) Why can I pay with Apple Pay but can't prove my identity without a paper birth certificate and social security card (or a passport if you're among the well heeled)? </soapbox> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card_policies_by_country https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card... [2] https://login.gov https://login.gov [3] https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/ https://www.cac.mil/common-access-card/

tomjen3 6y ago
Why should I trust the US government to assert who you are? Surely they make false passports for their spies all the time.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Why should I trust your Keybase proof? Because "they [Zoom now] say so"? Those seeking to verify identities and personas are free to ignore whatever roots or trust chains they choose. Edge cases aside, the US government (in the case of your example) still holds and projects trust value (not sure how many US passports per day are used to validate citizenship, employment eligibility, and entry requirements at nation state borders, I assume it's quite a bit). Trust is hard (there are entire industries around it), but the notion that it's impossible should not be entertained. It's a core component of modern civilization.

vngzs 6y ago

Trust is a difficult problem. Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral. I could at least envision a world where cryptographic identity is taken for granted. Think Keybase for publications. Sign articles to prove authenticity. The cryptography involved is largely a solved problem. Software engineers did it with Keybase, and it's easy enough to use that people with very little cryptographic ability can prove who they are to the Internet (assuming they're an established identity with social accounts, or they have trustworthy people willing to vouch for their identity). But we'd need browsers/clients that have the ability to display proof status on messages, and it would have to be nearly as easy to use as existing clients like Twitter. I hope we start building businesses that repair trust, rather than harm it. Making everyone distrust everything might benefit a few opportunistic parties in the short term, but in the long run everyone loses.

notsureaboutpg 6y ago
>Geopolitical entities have been using the Internet to undermine trust in "the West," broadly speaking, for at least half a decade. Warfare has always included disinformation campaigns (they called it "propaganda"), but never has it been so viral. I mean, you have to understand that the actions of the globally dominant "West" (North America, EU, Australia, and their allies) in the past 20 (and further beyond that) years have done a lot to undermine trust in them also. Fake news to lead people into the Iraq War (a 20 year quagmire which only cost millions of lives and trillions of dollars for minute changes on the ground), an inability to defeat ISIS which meant the US had to rely on Iranian militias to beat them. On that note, I think the whole history of US-Iran relations is enough to undermine faith in the "West" as it stands. I'm not saying other axes of power are better, but trust isn't a competition, it's very possible for people to trust no one outside their few close acquaintances. Trust has to be earned, and the "West" doesn't do a good job of it.
itsyaboi 6y ago
Interesting, just looked through notsureaboutpg's reply to your comment and it seems like someone has gone through and systematically downvoted(?) all of their comments (now marked as dead). Why?

fapjacks 6y ago

Why? This was the situation in the 90s. No one trusted the internet. It's hard to imagine unless you lived it, but buying something online was once seen as completely stupid, and people were universally skeptical of information (and people) online. We should be more concerned about the level of trust built up since then, not the other way around.

theklub 6y ago

Trust no one? Have people historically trusted anyone other than their families?

6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago

That might bring it back to actual people. If you can't even tell which pop artist is real, or which talking head is legitimate, maybe you trust the people you know. We go back to trusting that newspaper that you pay, who in turn pays someone to actually be on the ground somewhere. And trusting people you personally know IRL. No more of this reporting on things the journalist read about on twitter and read a press release about.

high_byte 6y ago

Implying you trust government and police, because they never done anything malicious before... At least with online sources it's up to you to decide.

pontifier 6y ago
Not really trust, but it's the local gang with the physical power and presence to operate conspicuously in the area.

mam2 6y ago

Ehh.. ive thought about it, either for fake news or fake identities. Maybe also people will start spending less time online and care more about local stuff that overall, will impact their lives more directly. Maybe not that bad of a thing.

uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh 6y ago

They (government) will probably have to regulate these techniques as though they were WMDs, along with other ML tools. "Oh another absolutely perfect fake of $powerful_person calling for $atrocity[n]". Fomenting FUD in a rival's populace seems to be a game of mutually assured destruction. Incidentally, those nations with unfree comms laws and culture are best defended against these techniques, though I would not advocate for bringing in federal censors.

2OEH8eoCRo0 6y ago

This is basically how I already treat the Internet. I take a defensive stance and just assume everyone is a foreign bad actor or shill.