| > But you see those people, with your own eyes, and thus know they exist. But I still don't see their credit report. I could still fall for someone fraudulently claiming to be poor. > I don't e.g. particularly trust Facebook, but I trust the social web - if I have a friend who has a friend who has a friend who is a friend of the rural kid in Africa, I can with high confidence assume the rural kid in Africa exists[0]. Well, first of all, if you receive that information from facebook, then you necessarily need to trust facebook first before you can even start with that investigation. But also: Do you trust facebook to not misrepresent the non-existence of that rural kid in Africa? Is that trust warranted? > But I think in pretty much all of them you want to at least know the other person is a human being, and frequently you also want to know they are who they say they are. You don't really expect to accidentally become friends with a bot quite yet, do you? Just because it's difficult for machines sometimes to detect bots, doesn't mean that is really a major problem for closer social connections. Also, what does "know they are who they say they are" even mean? You say you are TeMPOraL, and I am pretty sure you are TeMPOraL, what more is there to "know you are who you say you are" that could be improved by "identity checks" on the part of a "social network"? > This effect is actually sabotaged by the pro-privacy efforts to hide as much information about people as possible, rendering users unable to follow the social web chains beyond their own direct connections. Privacy is important, but it's always a trade-off, sometimes trading off genuinely useful things. Which is why every privacy advocate is for individual control. Privacy is not about forcing you to be paranoid, but about giving you the control over your data. There is nothing wrong with you being able to prove your identity to a peer that you want to prove your identity to, say. The problem is when you are forced to prove your identity no matter the need for the actual social interaction.l |