I think a few years ago we cross line and there is no stepping back form it. There used to be some level of trust online. That content we saw or people we interacted with were real. Many fake or bot accounts where not very sophisticated and a competent user could easily spot them. Unfortunately this is not the case anymore.
Over the past ten years, China, Russia and Iran have put signficant effort into spreading disinformation and misinformation online. The amount of damage this has caused is impossible to quantify. It erroded the trust of so many people, so much so that around 30% of people believe that the Joe Biden did not win the 2020 election legitimately. Other notable issues, Ukraine, COVID-19, Israel-Hamas War, all suffer from the same information issue.
It’s impossible for people sort information and find what’s true.
I often here from friends/family that there are not sure how to find factually correct or reliable information online. I don’t propose a solution to this problem, but merely some first steps to build a more open and honest Internet.
Much to the discust of privacy freaks, redditer’s and terminal online users. Yes, we absolutely MUST be able to prove that someone is who they say they are.
This means designing a social media website where users can prove their identity.
I am not blind to the importance of security and that some countries do not have the same freedom of information that I do.
For example: how can we verify that a person is from China without revealing their identity to their government?
I think this posses some questions about anonymity and it’s usefullness in non-democractic countries or countries where speech is heavly oppressed. Is there even value in an anonymous voice if there is no way to tell if it’s a real person?
Modern social-media is designed to maximise engagement, not to connect users and access information.
Ideally the site would be run by a non-profit company with community funding and non-political advertisements.
This would allow for the site to act more like a real conversation in “the real world”, rather than being “online”.
Things are looking pretty cooked right now, but there are many who are aware of the issue. The internet has not been around a long time and the world is not always slow to catch up. Give it time…
- Bay