The Real Slim Shady

NYTimes' Bits blog has a posting about "Separating Real From Fake on the Internet" [ link ].

Look at all the comments posted to that blog entry.  Now look at the names of the posters (look at mine too).  This is one of the great and awful things about the Internet: encourages participation with (varying degrees of) anonymity.

Different sites focus on different things.  The New York Times on The Web wants to take itself as seriously as it takes its print business, and it wants its readers/consumers to do the same.  So there are certain things they will publish on it, and certain processes they follow to ensure that goal is achieved.  Certainly the print business and the Internet/web business differ, so they have to change things (think of balancing the speed of news on the web with the accuracy needed for anything with the brand "NYTimes", advertising/business models, feedback, transparency etc)

Facebook has no "print business" equivalent or anything other than its web business; there is nothing anchoring it to the real world except relationships between emails that belong to people in the real world. Facebook would be worthless without these relationships.  The "web of trust" mentioned by #2 Tobias is inherent in the design of Facebook: one person's email address "validates" another person's email address by "accepting a friend request".  The more friends from your real life whose email address is accepted as a "friend" in Facebook, the more valuable the social network.  The flaw in this is that, this being on the Internet and therefore providing a certain degree of anonymity, there are going to be many ways in which these social networks are exploited for all sorts of bad things; once something is accepted as legitimate or trusted in Facebook, it keeps gaining trust even if it is not deserved.  Remember, Facebook exists only online; there is no office on campus somewhere that verifies that something is true or legitimate.  If many people who individually and voluntarily provide truthful information and who trust each other, decide that something is legitimate and trustworthy, it will become so even if undeservedly.

Providing some truthful information gets you trusted, but then is that a guarantee that all the information you provide is trustworthy?  In real life, trust comes much more slowly than online; a shortening of this "time-to-trust" can be achieved by using "trust authorities" such as banks and DMVs and courts.  In the online world, there exist "certificate authorities", but these are not available in the Facebook-type of social networks.  Other "webs of trust" do exist, but are used by too few people (thawte, PGP, etc) and in any case these do not provide one of the great advantages of other social networks: voluntary sharing of personal (truthful, legitimate, trust-inviting) information coupled with the freedom of some anonymity (by passively not providing truthful information or actively providing untruthful information).

My thoughts.