We need a CA-like system here for verifications. Allow independent orgs to verify in different ways -- employers for their employees, an ID verification company could verify real people, professional associations with their members, etc, and the users profile would show the badges from those orgs.
Twitter verified is problematic because
1) they are the sole gatekeeper
2) there's no granularity
3) lack of granularity creates a 2-tier system
then let users trust (or distrust) the verifiers.
this network could allow for users to build their own algorithm based on this trust and potentially solve many content moderation issues. for example:
I could post a bond to a company that would include me in their "moderation network", bound by some acceptable use terms. If my content is found to be outside of those terms, I lose the bond. If I post a new bond and keep repeating, their trust is revoked.
users could score the moderated users higher in their alg, demote those revoked, etc
in a sense, your friends list is just an extension of this, your own personal list, and the algorithms can give you options: only see those I trust, etc.
open-source algorithms could be developed, and people could choose how they want information presented or ranked in search results
individual servers could require verification from certain providers and create their own terms
this scheme allows moderation but preserves freedom of speech
it's all opt-in
if you don't want to opt in, fine. but many of us won't see your content.
if you're willing to verify you're a real human, i'm more willing to listen.
in the moderation example, only those verified by that org could submit a violation to that org, and they would put their own bond at risk for false reports.
this also scales financially, as country-specific groups would be doing this in the local currency.
at the server level, each server could choose to adopt those moderation providers they deem qualified, and trust other servers or users based on the same.
this could enable other very useful crowdsourced labeling schemes, webs of trust
split up the idea of federation to allow for federated verification. or federated anything -- federated features if you will -- that hook into your mastodon client.
after all *credentials are good*. credentialism is bad.
to me this fixes both verification and moderation by putting the costs and burdens onto those who benefit from the verification and moderation.
and it creates smaller, less centralized servers.
and recognizes the fact that "notoriety" is a useless concept when there are over 300k youtube channels with over 100,000 subscribers. it's a boomer concept.
it's expensive for social media companies to do this, so they sell you ads and they sell your data.
an app or a server could lay all this on top of the mastodon protocol, and focus on a great UX, trust-based search, and user-selectable algorithms for feed and content discovery, not to mention federated groups/chats.
they wouldn't be burdened by doing moderation and verification themselves.
I would pay for that app.
also my apologies if this already exists or i'm missing something that would make this infeasible, or maybe it's already been attempted. i don't know many in the mastodon community.
is anyone working on something like this @mmasnick?
more: you could choose this when you post.
so if you sometimes speak for an organization with your personal account, you can choose that verification as relevant to your post -- employers already have these social media rules anyway.
but you don't have to associate your professional credential to a post on something that isn't relevant to it, and it won't be shown there, as it shouldn't. IRL this is solved with context that isn't available on social media, ie. "which hat you're wearing".
Nick Davis
Mike Masnick ✅