Proposal: Make it clear who is behind each item of web content
Some Issues and Possible Answers (from MisinfoCon DC breakout)
- Legitimately anonymous journalists/publishers
- Answer? Pseudonyms with trusted certifier
- Shell Company Ownership/Secret proxies
- Use banking model of understanding money transfers (know your customer regs)
- Have some trusted figures in organization
- Reputation might not really help, people maybe don’t care
- Maybe accountability does, if rep doesn’t
- Legit publishers can be tainted by slight connections
- Include explanatory statements, explain editorial controls, mitigate influence
- This doesn’t turn into a 1-bit answer for platforms
- The 1-bit is to motivate compliance, and then some people will look under the hood; like nutrition labels
- Pop-up / hit-and-run sites
- Do bloggers and knitting magazines have to live up to this?
- Have categories, with different levels of expense & security
- This might be a throwback to the world of “gatekeepers”
- Maybe we have even stronger gatekeepers now (platforms); with standards it would be an open process/multistakeholder
- This might exclude legit publishers
- Every approved source looks the same, making it hard for humans to distinguish