> Not to mention that in an honest world, why would you even need something like this?
The world is what we make it - we are the masters of our own destiny. This is literally true (subject to boundaries imposed on us by nature: the laws of physics, the physical resources available to us, the nature of the evolved human mind and the societies we have built for ourselves to operate in, and other things I may overlook).
If a variable in the world is not to our liking, and it is fixable, we can choose to fix it (as a collective species), or not. Mother Nature imposes some restrictions on this, but not many.
From the article:
> To date, we have conducted more than 100 qualitative interviews with individuals across the political spectrum who use Twitter, and we received broad general support for Birdwatch. In particular, people valued notes being in the community’s voice (rather than that of Twitter or a central authority) and appreciated that notes provided useful context to help them better understand and evaluate a Tweet (rather than focusing on labeling content as “true” or “false”). Our goal(!) is to build Birdwatch in the open, and have it shaped(!) by the Twitter community.
> To that end, we’re also taking significant steps to make Birdwatch transparent:
- All(!???) data contributed to Birdwatch will be publicly available and downloadable in TSV files
- As we develop algorithms that power Birdwatch — such as reputation and consensus systems — we aim to(!) publish that code(!) publicly in the Birdwatch Guide. The initial ranking system for Birdwatch is already available here.
> We hope this will enable experts, researchers, and the public to analyze or audit Birdwatch, identifying opportunities or flaws that can help us(!) more quickly build an effective(!) community-driven(!) solution.
If what they are saying is 100% true (and not at all misleading, and remains true going forward through time), this would be an extremely big deal. Modifications to the fundamental systems we use for collective communication and sense making is the obvious place a benevolent dictator would start to improve the current state of affairs.
However, history strongly suggests that this is not only not true, but most likely knowingly untrue (aka: a lie). I am obviously speculating, but I think this is a reasonable speculation.
Speculating sucks though. I think we are forced to do it far more often than is necessary (under the limitations imposed upon us by nature).
So how about this idea:
Let's say, in the spirit of uniting the country (USA), we make a bi-partisan decision to create a new role for the government: an as-honest-as-possible, process of constant audit of all "major" public communication platforms. Carefully selected, proven to be honest and trustworthy bi-partisan technical people (from the "grassroots" community) would be forcibly embedded within all major corporations, with 100% visibility into all source code, processes, and meetings (where "necessary"). They would carefully monitor the nature of all of this software that is exerting such a powerful force on our society, and that of the world. Where possible (which should be most of the time), their findings would be published for the public to see (and "sniff for imperfections or corruption").
These would be positions of extreme power and insight, and would offer genuine risks to intellectual property and confidential strategy of the companies subject to this treatment. As a first pass at managing this, these people could be paid extremely well, but they would also be subject to extremely punitive measures if they were to ever behave in a compromising manner.
Of course, the flaws in such a plan are numerous. Reality is complex - we can face that head on and manage it, or bury our heads in the sand with speculative claims like "this wouldn't work".
The general goal of this is to force(!) truthfulness (as opposed to honesty) into society. The world is what we make of it, and we can make this little corner of it how we want it to be. And if we happen to disagree with the specifics of "how we want it to be", then deal with it head on: figure it out, and ship to production.
As I understand it, all politicians desire what is best for the entire country (and the world - they only differ on how to achieve this), as well as desire to govern based on The Truth - so I wouldn't expect we would get any pushback from them (and if we did, journalists would be on it, publishing salacious exposes on the obvious corruption) - that leaves the decision up to "we the people".
On a scale of 1 to 10, how good/bad is this general idea? Is it a complete non-starter due to something I have overlooked (that cannot be changed)? Are there even better approaches than this? I have no idea, I am just trying to put some ideas out there for consideration. At some point, I think we have to do something to alter the trajectory we are on.
> As we develop algorithms that power Birdwatch — such as reputation and consensus systems — we aim to(!) publish that code(!) publicly in the Birdwatch Guide. The initial ranking system for Birdwatch is already available here.
I think the idea of finding truth through consensus is the flaw here. A system like this would have silenced the great revolutionary thinkers of history.
> I think the idea of finding truth through consensus is the flaw here.
Oh, I'm not proposing that truth should be (or can be) defined by consensus, nor does the article.
This might be a decent example of the value of such a system: if someone makes such a proposal (ie: "Truth is defined by consensus."), or if someone asserts that someone else had made such a proposal, rather than the tweet being left as it is allowing the misinformation to propagate through the memeplex and into people's minds (aka: their reality), a formal rebuttal can be attached directly to it (so anyone happening upon can see that a collaborative consensus has been reached that it is plausibly misinformation), which is distinctly different from the tweet being declared(!) as conclusively(!) and unambiguously FALSE.
Sometimes such distinctions are important, sometimes they are not. In this case, the distinction is important, because of an anticipatory line I included in my comment:
> Of course, the flaws in such a plan are numerous. Reality is complex - we can face that head on and manage it, or bury our heads in the sand with speculative claims like "this wouldn't work".
In this case, you seem to be asserting that this wouldn't work, due to a specific flaw. However, the flaw you point out is not actually valid - I think this is a legitimate demonstration of how crowdsourcing can address a situation where the truth of a matter is "in play"...one person suggests an idea, another person asserts that it cannot work because <X>, another user realizes that <X> is a false statement and points that out. To be clear: this has not rendered the initial tweet to be True (that would be invalid logic), but it has cast significant and valid doubt on the assertion of ~"Viability = False" (because of a specific reason).
I think it wouldn't hurt to maybe have a little primer on the basics of logic embedded somewhere in this process as well - we always talk about how the general public needs improved critical thinking, so why not teach that wherever we can?
I think the general idea behind Birdwatch is plausibly workable and valuable, and using crowdsourcing allows it to scale. Similarly, I believe the general idea behind my idea to ensure that everyone is kept honest is also plausibly workable and valuable (until someone points out a valid reason that it isn't, of course).
> A system like this would have silenced the great revolutionary thinkers of history.
Can you explain your reasoning? I don't see anything in the proposal that suggests an intention to use this for precision or wholesale censorship - in fact, the article explicitly says the exact opposite of your concern:
> Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.
> In this first phase of the pilot, notes will only be visible on a separate Birdwatch site. On this site, pilot participants can also rate the helpfulness of notes added by other contributors. These notes are being intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate. Additionally, notes will not have an effect on the way people see Tweets or our system recommendations.
Are you seeing something here regarding censorship that I'm not?