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Neither wikipedia or Internet Archive are fully protected from someone tampering their databases. And while I want to believe that they have security sorted out

by kaurov 3y ago

Neither wikipedia or Internet Archive are fully protected from someone tampering their databases. And while I want to believe that they have security sorted out, it demands me to blindly trust them. I like and use Wikipedia but I do not trust it 100% (not because of possible tampering but simply because of the way it is assembled). Giving access to the corpus as a reward is great but the problem is that very few people will actually want to use it :). On the other hand slow access time should not be the problem for those few who care. Maybe the best combination is to continue using fast access systems (like existing digital libraries) and then slow systems only for confirmation. Curation wiki-style might not even be the main issue at the beginning because a lot of things are already pre-curated. Like old radio recordings or newspaper archives. Curation will become a nightmare with modern media like twits… Changing people’s minds would be great, but I am afraid AI is evolving on a much shorter timescale. :)

nonrandomstring 3y ago
Sorry for the late reply. Yea its an interesting problem space and one that belongs squarely in the public interest area. Public interest and commons problems look hard because the incentives look hard. They are not always if you use the right craft and leverage, The GPL is a masterpiece of guile when you think about it. Another way to build trust is legally by creating some very tightly drafted and constantly lawyer-policed consortium that gets donations from bigger players but ensures selfish interests are never allowed to prosper. Such a network would need to have the power to literally tell Google and Apple to fuck off without seriously impacting itself, and that kind of distributed power/spreading would be hard to maintain against constant attempts at capture. By the way, look at what the BBC have been doing with content provenance and media supply chain assurance. Its possible some big owners will watermark and release new commons in the future in such a way as to ensure it's tamper-proof.
- kaurov 3y ago
  Thank you for your input! It is interesting to imagine what consortium of data hosting organization could provide the ultimate trust platform. Some people actually do trust big tech, others trust government or churches, most people in the US trust the military. Therefore, maybe it is possible to imagine a feasible alliance of them that could manage hosting a huge archive.

by kaurov 3y ago

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Sorry for the late reply. Yea its an interesting problem space and one that belongs squarely in the public interest area. Public interest and commons problems look hard because the incentives look hard. They are not always if you use the right craft and leverage, The GPL is a masterpiece of guile when you think about it. Another way to build trust is legally by creating some very tightly drafted and constantly lawyer-policed consortium that gets donations from bigger players but ensures selfish interests are never allowed to prosper. Such a network would need to have the power to literally tell Google and Apple to fuck off without seriously impacting itself, and that kind of distributed power/spreading would be hard to maintain against constant attempts at capture. By the way, look at what the BBC have been doing with content provenance and media supply chain assurance. Its possible some big owners will watermark and release new commons in the future in such a way as to ensure it's tamper-proof.

kaurov 3y ago
Thank you for your input! It is interesting to imagine what consortium of data hosting organization could provide the ultimate trust platform. Some people actually do trust big tech, others trust government or churches, most people in the US trust the military. Therefore, maybe it is possible to imagine a feasible alliance of them that could manage hosting a huge archive.