For the longest time, technologists who wished to support dissent focused on circumvention and anonymity. Those have a place (though often less important than many assume) but verification technologies that are usable, scalable and workable are an urgent unmet need.
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That's why the challenge is to build institutional trust along with verification tech. No pure tech way out of this or anything—just like we didn't get here via pure technological advances. It's playing out *this* way because of "this" political moment. https://twitter.com/peltast/status/1097513568474406915 …
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As I say in the (too short!) column: this is neither easy nor without trade-offs of varying degrees depending on where things land. What technology can help do is move the trade-off point. It can also make the institution building more viable. Tech can't build the institutions.
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The key is when our political/technical ecology shifts, so must we. It's like food: you need different adaptive strategies in an era of food glut, cars and corporatized agriculture compared with era of food scarcity, subsistence/small farming and few cars. So with verification.
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Absolutely. This crisis manifests in this particular way because of how multi-decade institutional failure (with some spike events like those below) has interacted with new tech and its business model. This isn't nostalgia for any past before it either. https://twitter.com/samthielman/status/1097494272398553088 …
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Another anology: modern medicine has meant enormous gains but they've become normalized (thus taken for granted) and a mix of institutional overreach, failure and corruption interacting with this new tech environment have opened a robust path to specific forms of misinformation.
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You can't combat this with some authoritative doctor talking head on TV to lecture people (won't work anymore) or with nostalgia. We must simultaneously understand how we got here and grapple with the politics of the institutions & the technology. That's what a transition means.
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I've made that case directly to *people-in-charge* at twitter HQ, in person, twice, yet can't manage to get them to verify my account - which has been subject to state-sponsored harassment over the past 2.5 years. Refusing is a way of perpetually discrediting my research.
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And given the subject matter, it's quite interesting that Twitter has selectively refused, when they have my ID on file.https://twitter.com/i/moments/887752557761900544 …
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i am@a verified ghost account.
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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