Verifiable Content vs Verifiable Privacy
The other day I had an interesting conversation about the importance of verifiability, specifically the importance of verifiability of content consumed over the public Internet.
This was part of a narrative that web3 is about verifiability (which I disagree with, but will write about later under What's So Great About Web3?).
I like to work backwards when I'm having trouble grokking a new perspective, and so I asked, "Who is the person we're talking about and what is the problem that person faces that cannot be solved with Web2?"
His initial response was a tell "I can't tell you about the problem, but I can tell you about the solution."
To me, the most compelling solutions are those that solve a difficult and compelling problem.
A solution without a well-articulated problem is....well, I don't know what it is.
So he said, "In the realm of politics, what if someone wants to know about the political positions of someone running for office? A verified solution would give that person an answer they could trust."
I asked, "So what does someone do today?"
"They have to go to Google to look up the answer. They may have to go to several places and they may not be able to trust the source."
"What is the problem with this? Can't they go to Google, look up the information?"
"They may need to go to multiple sources."
"Doesn't Google sometimes bring together multiple sources into a single answer? That seems to be convenient, plus I can then look up those sources."
"But can you trust those sources?"
"Can you give me an example of how Web3 would enable higher verifiability than, say, Wikipedia, cross-checking with the NYT, the SEC, the FTC?"
"Well, what if someone were in YouTube, and they are in a bubble of information. How will they get counter factual information to counter their existing bias?"
"How many people want to find counter narratives to their beliefs? Meaning, they consider it a problem?"
On this point I articulated that often people want confirmation of their bias. And, I was going to posit, if that small minority truly wanted an alternative opinion, is it that had to find out?
He concede the point before I got there:
"Well, I suppose you could search explicitly for the opposite perspective, or for arguments against."
Yes, so that should help someone.
"But what if the person wants all the nuances in between?"
Okay, so how many people find this to be a true, genuine problem?
"Less than 5%."
"ChatGPT could probably take a pretty good prompt: what are the nuanced positions between these two opposing views?"
At this point, I said that the notion of verifiability of public content is akin to personal privacy. While awareness has grown, in large part because of the amount of money to be made by, say, VPN manufacturers, I would say true privacy still has a ways to go: ensuring traffic from your ISP isn't sold, encrypted DNS, not using public cloud mail services, TOR.
In fact, I'd say the biggest risk for many people who are privacy-concerned are the VPNs themselves.
To which he said, "Well, people need to make sure that they use a VPN which says that they won't resell private information."
To which I said, "How do you know?"
To me, even if verifiability of the truthfulness of content is the critical issue (I'm not sure it is -- in some extreme cases, information has clearly been altered or supressed).
But if that information really were critical (say in highly censored dictatorships), then the ability to access that information privately is likely more important than the verifiability of that content.