Calling Supporters, Fellow Geeks and Legal Eagles! We need to form a foundation...

[hootinholler]

The foci of the foundation will be Persona Verification, the detection of simulated persona in cyberspace and lobbying to make the practice illegal with civil penalties payable to those who have to wade through it. I'm thinking similar to the Can-Spam Act.

As our language processing capabilities increases and our government is investing in Persona Management systems, the systems will only become more sophisticated. That our military is investing in these technologies in addition to entities owned by people like the Koch brothers, there is a great need for people who wish to be knowledgeable about the origination of ideas that they encounter in the world, to be able to gain that understanding.

As an example of the state of the art in the understanding of the digitization of the English language, I present Watson. Sure Watson was engineered to play a language game and answer specific questions, but please consider for a moment what the impact of the use of the raw material available from Watson like systems as a cyberservice, and apply that to cyberhuman mimicry.

Did you ever play with the program Eliza? This program has been implemented many times by many people over the years with varying degrees of sophistication. What persona management means is that someone can place hundreds of interaction points connected to very sophisticated versions of eliza without the other party's knowledge that they are interacting with a software service. Now think about an eliza program on the level of Watson.

The ancient geek saying that to really fuck things up requires a computer, has taken on a mortal meaning now. We all know how easily a significant portion of the population can be capture with a big lie repeated often. Think about that for a few minutes too.

This is a world wide issue. Truly.

I am deadly serious about combating it. I have technical skills enough to apply to the problem. We're gonna need geeks, lawyers, fundraisers and a name.

Please come and join me in this fight, it's too much for only one biological.

-Hoot

Edited for clarity and spelling.

[ThomCat]

1. If you can get the people, the means, and the resources

to do this, I really hope you do. I hope you can make it work so that faking identities online for the purpose of deliberately manipulating people or causing them to reveal information that they otherwise would have wished to have remain private would become fraud, punishable by law, with very large fines attached.

That way, big business couldn't just do it anyway and write off any minor fines as merely the cost of doing business. If the fines are large enough, and escalate per person when large populations of people are involved, so that the fines alone could drive criminal companies out of business, then, and only then, will that kind of trolling really become prohibitive.

[hootinholler]

5. Those are two different problems

One is a misrepresentation of an individual by that individual, the other is basically cyberturfing, an individual represented by many mirrors.

-Hoot

[Motown_Johnny]

2. excellent idea

Add in that you want to go after internet predators who pretend to be someone else so they can prey on children and the (cyber) world will be your oyster.


Hey, if you ever need to overpay some untalented nobody to read stuff online, PM me.

[hootinholler]

3. That Sir is a problem I would love to have.

Suggestions for a name are appreciated.

The goal would be to develop a system that can identify ideas that blossom in a widespread manner. Actual ideas that go viral tend more towards a wave than a scatter. One way to visualize it is to think of a large rock versus a shovelful of gravel thrown into water. The rock representing an idea with resonance and the gravel representing cyberturfing.

-Hoot

[Motown_Johnny]

11. .

VirtuWall

Plays on Virtual and Virtue and nothing comes up on a Google search.

[hootinholler]

13. Oh

That's good.

-Hoot

[Luminous Animal]

4. This is a great idea.

[nebenaube]

6. Hmmm....

I'm pretty geeky...

[hootinholler]

7. Please elaborate...

How so?

-Hoot

[OneGrassRoot]

8. Perhaps partnering with an existing organization/foundation in alignment...

with the core principles in play here would be easier and more effective, rather than creating a foundation from scratch?

I'm beyond clueless about the technicalities of which you speak, and am just now absorbing the implications, but support the idea you're raising here.

:hi:

K&R

[hootinholler]

9. The EFF comes to mind...

Is WishaDoo a non profit or a personal interest/service?

-Hoot

[BobbyBoring]

10. Bot Spot?

Or Bot Spotters??

Brilliant idea and something that we need~

[hootinholler]

12. That's pretty good! n/t

[Aerows]

14. Site specific troll lists

One thing that could stem the tide of trolls is to create extensions for Firefox and Chrome so that you could create "ignore user" filters. I know someone wrote one for Salon. If enough people block out the trolls, and generally, you find out quickly who they are, then they are effectively ignored by the majority of posters at the sites. It's not a perfect solution, but it could help with the highly annoying people that just post inflammatory comments to derail discussions.

[hootinholler]

15. DId you join to reply to me?

I'm touched. Welcome to DU.

-Hoot