3 ms·

A dark pattern on your self hosted blogging website is to backdate blog posts and make yourself seem very good at predicting future trends. There is no reason

A dark pattern on your self hosted blogging website is to backdate blog posts and make yourself seem very good at predicting future trends. There is no reason why you have to write a blog over a long period of time, you could quickly pump out several blog posts and link to them to establish credibility quickly.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
sebmellen 2y ago
We need better timestamping services for this. I tried to write out an initial spec here, but I haven’t been able to write any implementations yet: https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination.
- vekker 2y ago
  There's this on the Bitcoin blockchain: https://opentimestamps.org https://opentimestamps.org
- quacksilver 2y ago
  I guess you can use a third party like archive.org, if the blog is crawled by it, the owner doesn't get them to delete it, and there is no politically motivated revisionism going on based on the archive.org maintainers. I would be suspicious of a reasonably popular blog claiming to have predicted stuff and not being able to back that up with an archive.org capture (or raw scraper data), though I guess it is somewhere where storing a hash on a blockchain may offer some benefits for edge cases.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > We need better timestamping services for this. If I were to write a dozen blog posts today, and then straight up dump them on my blog, dating each of them so they're spaced roughly evenly since Jan 2021 to today, and start each of them with a preamble saying "I wrote this in my journal around [backdated timestmap]; publishing it now ([real timestamp]) as part of my 2025 blog revival commitment" - what would you say then? This little preamble explains both the sudden appearance and lack of any prior traces on the Internet corresponding to claimed creation dates. Are you going to call me a liar? No, if someone with even half a brain wants to fake expertise this way, you won't be able to tell. If anything, what will give them away is anachronisms in text. Like idk. an off-hand remark about ChatGPT in a post dated 2021 could make you wonder.
  - nickburns 2y ago
    But you're still a liar. And 'calling you out' isn't a prerequisite to (correctly) suspecting it.
cutemonster 2y ago
Links submitted to Reddit or HN then a bit work as proofs of the publication date since one cannot backdate timestamps on Reddit and HN. Hmm but you can still rewrite the content a bit
- deadbabe 2y ago
  Yes this only proves you had something on a certain date, but not that the content has been unchanged.
gbanis 2y ago
[dead]
fragmede 2y ago
if you're that popular, there should be some history in archive.org or archive.is
vishnugupta 2y ago
If some one is determined to find out the authenticity then it’s possible right? Like Waybackmachine or similar tools?
- deadbabe 2y ago
  Lots of plausible deniability
  - vishnugupta 2y ago
    If I find 10 backdated articles appear out of thin air in Waybackmachine I'm not going to ask the author to explain it. It just lowers their credibility in my mind and I move on. I'm not interested in proving to them or in a court of law that they backdated articles.
    - deadbabe 2y ago
      What if the articles have no date on them at all?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

sebmellen 2y ago

We need better timestamping services for this. I tried to write out an initial spec here, but I haven’t been able to write any implementations yet: https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination https://github.com/sebmellen/proof-of-origination.

vekker 2y ago
There's this on the Bitcoin blockchain: https://opentimestamps.org https://opentimestamps.org
quacksilver 2y ago
I guess you can use a third party like archive.org, if the blog is crawled by it, the owner doesn't get them to delete it, and there is no politically motivated revisionism going on based on the archive.org maintainers. I would be suspicious of a reasonably popular blog claiming to have predicted stuff and not being able to back that up with an archive.org capture (or raw scraper data), though I guess it is somewhere where storing a hash on a blockchain may offer some benefits for edge cases.
TeMPOraL 2y ago
> We need better timestamping services for this. If I were to write a dozen blog posts today, and then straight up dump them on my blog, dating each of them so they're spaced roughly evenly since Jan 2021 to today, and start each of them with a preamble saying "I wrote this in my journal around [backdated timestmap]; publishing it now ([real timestamp]) as part of my 2025 blog revival commitment" - what would you say then? This little preamble explains both the sudden appearance and lack of any prior traces on the Internet corresponding to claimed creation dates. Are you going to call me a liar? No, if someone with even half a brain wants to fake expertise this way, you won't be able to tell. If anything, what will give them away is anachronisms in text. Like idk. an off-hand remark about ChatGPT in a post dated 2021 could make you wonder.
- nickburns 2y ago
  But you're still a liar. And 'calling you out' isn't a prerequisite to (correctly) suspecting it.

cutemonster 2y ago

Links submitted to Reddit or HN then a bit work as proofs of the publication date since one cannot backdate timestamps on Reddit and HN. Hmm but you can still rewrite the content a bit

deadbabe 2y ago
Yes this only proves you had something on a certain date, but not that the content has been unchanged.

gbanis 2y ago

[dead]

fragmede 2y ago

if you're that popular, there should be some history in archive.org or archive.is

vishnugupta 2y ago

If some one is determined to find out the authenticity then it’s possible right? Like Waybackmachine or similar tools?

deadbabe 2y ago
Lots of plausible deniability
- vishnugupta 2y ago
  If I find 10 backdated articles appear out of thin air in Waybackmachine I'm not going to ask the author to explain it. It just lowers their credibility in my mind and I move on. I'm not interested in proving to them or in a court of law that they backdated articles.
  - deadbabe 2y ago
    What if the articles have no date on them at all?