Comments on: Transparency or FAIL

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:53:08 +0000

I see a lot of merit in editorial process, but I think there are middle grounds. For example, major conferences (in academia and industry) invite speakers to give non-juried papers, relying on the speakers being incented to protect their own reputations by delivering good talks. If you don’t already have such a reputation, then you face a more arduous editorial gauntlet.

But all of the above take for granted that you know who the author is, and that an author’s reputation is persistent. That, in my view, is a major missing piece in so much online social media–most notably, comments on blogs.

By: Seth Grimes

Seth Grimes — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 14:12:21 +0000

Daniel, you are indirectly lauding what’s best about juried or edited publication: that there’s some form of editorial process in play that involves vetting and filtering and perhaps even, if not fact checking, verification.

By: Daniel Tunkelang

Daniel Tunkelang — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 12:13:33 +0000

Full transparency is aspirational, but there there are systematic steps we can take on the way there.

For example, blogs could require site registration or authentication through OpenID, TypePad, etc. That isn’t perfect, but it at least makes it harder to impersonate someone without an audit trail–as opposed to the current situation, where I have no particular evidence as a reader–or a blogger–that you are who you say you are.

Similarly, the FTC regulation may not be perfect, but it would establish penalties for passing off paid endorsements as sincere reviews. While I lean libertarian, I do see some merit in disclosure laws. Indeed, what the FTC is trying to do for media is along the lines of what the FDA is supposed to do for food–ensure that what we buy is properly labeled. It’s still up to us to decide if we want to consume what’s good for us.

By: Seth Grimes

Seth Grimes — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:08:06 +0000

For once a term in common use, “social media,” is apt. We all understand that there’s a huge variation in *actual* behavior in human societies and an almost-as-large variation in what is considered acceptable or ethical.

Deconstructing the term “social media,” we simply have a channel or locus (“medium”) for inter-personal interaction. We should not expect social media to be any cleaner or clearer than any other media or channel, which isn’t to say that we shouldn’t work toward acceptable-use conventions.

Required transparency sounds great, but a) it’s not systematically going to happen, b) there will always be cheaters, the folks who knowingly sell tainted peanuts, and c) there will always be gullible, apathetic, and/or busy people who won’t or don’t or couldn’t care.