Re: [Social-discuss] Control own privacy, posted by _others_

[Matija Šuklje]

Dne torek 6. aprila 2010 ob 12:22:52 je Story Henry napisal(a):
> On 6 Apr 2010, at 10:53, Rob Myers wrote:
> > On Tue, 06 Apr 2010 00:05:32 -0400, Ian Denhardt 
<address@hidden>
> >
> > wrote:
> >> Here's the problem I see with this: I'm running a gnu social instance 
on
> >>
> >> my own server, quite literally a PC sitting under my bed. How do you
> >> justify saying I can't make your name, as it appears on my website,
> >> running on my hardware, a link to anywhere I please? Supposing I 
don't
> >> have an instance of GNU Social, I just have a website. should I not 
be
> >> allowed to manually link to various people, who may or may not want 
me
> >> to do so? It's possible it would be impolite of me, but ultimately
> >> there's a free speech issue there.

I'm all for free speech, but the thing is that legally as well as IRL you 
get a clash of privacy vs. free speech. To put it in legalspeek: "One's 
right extends only as far as another's begins."

I deliberately put a few quite pervasive methods as examples to provoke a 
debate, because I feel this is most definitely one of the biggest problems 
we have to solve.

> > Possible solutions:
> >
> > 1. Have "anti-tags" that the software respects by default. Or would 
that
> > end up being a source of hilarity like Outlook message recall emails 
to
> > mailing lists? They would making searching for embarrassments easier 
than
> > simply leaving the original tag unchallenged.
> >
> > 2. Allow people to ignore tags from other instances on their instance,
> > and to not propagate those tags to other instances.
> >
> > 3. Require that tags are confirmed, and simply leave tags unconfirmed 
on
> > the other instance if the tagged user declines to confirm them. This
> > avoids the embarrassment flagging problem of 1.
> 
> Yes, this is a bit the way foaf:knows works. You can claim you foaf:know
>  anyone. This does not require them to link back. For a third party an
>  unconfirmed foaf:knows will have less weight (since people can claim 
they
>  know anyone).

I'm quite partial to a combination of solutions suggested by Rob Myers, 
Henry Story, Odin Hørthe Omdal and Ted Smith.

From what I understand (note: IANAC IAAL[1]) it'd be possible to have a 
trust-bases tag system by using FOAF for user2user trust, and GPG for 
server2server (and user2user?) trust. The more trust a tag (or user) would 
have, the more present it would be and vice versa.

Legally speaking there still can be a problem of e.g Aaron running and 
maintaining a GNU Social instance where he (or e.g. Ben as a user hosted 
on it) would write "Chantalle is a whore, here's a bunch of pics" with 
photgraphic "proof" (whether true or fake). In some cases it's "just" a 
tort, but in some cases stuff like that can be even a crime. Again: I'm by 
far not against free speech, but although such stuff is (hopefully still, 
albeit decreasingly!) borderline cases, we do have to take this potential 
into account. The question is how do we handle it. Of course a possibility 
would be to state in the ToS[2] that each user is legally responsible for 
his/her own postings, but we'd have to check how far the host (e.g. Aaron) 
can waive such responsibility in diverse legal systems.

That being said, it could be possible to solve the problem with some 
_sane_ ToS and the trust-based tagging system. I agree not everything 
should be solved by technology (and not everything should be solved by law 
either). But the FOAF+GPG trust system seems to me like a good example of 
technology offering a tool for the solution.

Such a system would also enable trust or reputation of a user and his 
actions. It could be then up to each GNU Social instance or host (e.g. 
Aaron) to decide whether to block users who have an abnormally low 
trust/reputation, just show the users' trust/reputation and let other 
users' decide whether they trust it or not or completely ignore the 
reputation system.

The user reputation system can lead into another problem then. As happened 
in Second Life, it could happen that mafia-like groups would form who 
would blackmail people in order not to vote their trust/reputation down. 
This, I imagine, can be avoided by only allowing trust/reputation to be 
influenced by people marked as "FOAF:knows".

I hope what I write makes sense (see [1] again). I really don't want to be 
the sourpuss, but I think such crucial issues should be tackled beforehand 
...even if they have only limited connection to open source, they have a 
huge connection with and influence on freedom on the internet!


Cheers,
Matija
-.-.-
[1] I Am Not (much of) A Coder, I Am A Lawyer
[2] Terms of Service
-- 
gsm: +386 41 849 552
www: http://matija.suklje.name
xmpp: address@hidden