Web of Trust Audio News Distribution

c0rtex writes "Wearlab (University of Bremen) has designed a cool web of trust voice message routing system with a decaying credibility metric. It supports xmms and winamp. Source available for Linux and win32. "MPN makes it possible to deliver completely decentralized and independent news. Everyone has the possibility to be a reporter, no filtering publisher is required...""

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A name you can rely on

[Anonymous Coward]

Annonymous Coward --
We are legion, come, join us!

biteme

[Nanite]

Sound cool, but what keeps people from spreading false news around? Any enterprising young H.G. Wells want to pull a 'War of the Worlds' all over again?

Nan

Hmmm...

[droid_rage]

One of the key concepts of developing technology that depends on decentralization is simplicity.
Setting this up will not be simple. You have to chose who you trust and how much of what they trust you trust. In order to do that, you have to get some idea what a whole bunch of people like. Getting this up and working correctly will be a headache.
Now, a directed news system based on previous picks and voting a la amazon might not be a bad idea...

REALLY annoying spam

[nsample]

For better or worse (almost certainly worse), spammers will target this sort of medium with a fury. It's a medium for open *audio* transmissions... it's like telemarketing, sans feedback.

Hopefully there will be an additional decision metric that allows users to selectively change their rankings for messages that they've listened to. If I like something, I want to give it a +1 regardless of which ID it came from! Then again, spammers want the capability to do the same thing.

*sigh*

Hmm..like Kazaa (or other P2P)

[PFactor]

I think that crackdowns on P2P-ers will be dramatically smaller than what will happen to those that use this. Once people start using this to "publish" information that [insert evil government of choice here] doesn't want widely publicized, expect all hades to break loose.

Add the "traditional" news outlets (who aren't nearly as flexible and fast moving as they'd like to believe) into the fray and you have tons of people in whose best interest it is that this never take off.

Of course, all the above reasons are why I absolutely LOVE this idea!

Feel my antipopulist contempt

[sam_handelman]

I see two ways this could work, depending on how most people configure themselves.

1) The plurality opinion, among those who care enough to broadcast, dominates what is "credible." Aliens kidnap people. School prayer should be mandatory. The list goes on. The internet is already like this.

2) The service fragments into cliques. You only hear from people who agree with you. Within any given clique, whatever you already believe to be true - this is credible. Nothing else is. The internet is already like this.

The big advantage to this is that it will give anti-p2p lawyers brain hemmorhages. As soon as p2p is a delivery vehicle, even secondarily, for political speech, it is sacrosanct. Untouchable. Yippee.

Re:Why bother?

[smd4985]

I think it would be useful to have a moderated discussion without having to maintain a bunch of central servers.

1) like p2p, it seems to leverage the resources of every partipant on the network.
2) like slashdot, it vests control of what is heard in a distributed way, as certain (all?) nodes will moderate what is listened to.

i agree applications currently seems non-existent, but like all research i think exploring the system is a good idea in and of itself.

In theory, this sounds great

[ekrout]

But who are we kidding, people?

We have seen how long it's taken Linux and its related applications to gain acceptance. When Microsoft executives aren't crying to the press about us "communists" as we've been labelled, we find Linux getting a bad name for itself by information technology research groups like Gardner and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Decentralized news seems nice, but that's until one thinks about financing such an endeavor.

I ask you now, in front of your friends and peers:

- Who will pay the on-air personalities?
- Who will pay the reporters?
- Who would write code updates for free?
- Who would prevent Digital Rights Management (DRM) from becoming the black plague of Decentralized News Services (DNS)?

There are so many great ideas out there, people. So many. And I wish they could all succeed, but the hard facts and Lady Luck don't seem to be on the side of those who ignore capitalistic principles.

This is America. It's not East Germany circa 1940. It's not China under Mao. It's America under George W. Bush, and "because it's cool and geeky" just doesn't cut it anymore.

Money talks, the economy sucks, and free-spirited software movements are on the out and out.

OGG.DLL Where?

[yelligsc]

Alright.. Im stupid. I tried to install this thing, but it keeps complaining about not having an OGG.DLL. Where can I get it?

Scott.

Re:Why bother?

[mackstann]

How could you be active in a discussion that includes people from around the world?

What does this new system give us that we don't already have?

fair enough, but..

Before the internet, how would you get non-local news?

you know, the world didnt go straight from horse & buggy to the internet, there WAS a world before the internet! remember TV news? newspapers? magazines? hello???

Re:biteme

[evilviper]

What keeps a random website from spreading false news? What keeps slashdot from spreading false news? What keeps cnn.com from spreading false news? What keeps anyone from spreading false news? What keeps me from walking up to you and telling you your car is on fire?

I agree, my prediction:

[ImaLamer]

This will let even more people say that you can't believe anything on the Internet.

Now I've even got computer professors telling me that line, and I don't think it's something that can be perpetuated to much. There is credible information.

What is needed is something better, this does nothing to improve on the confidence of users. If we had a system that used already published material, donated to the public domain with all brandings intact (FDL-like?), then anything I serve will automatically carry more weight.

There isn't much wrong with news that is published today - the problem is that mainstream news goes through those editors that control what gets reported. A system needs to be designed which spreads less reported news, and archives news.

Actually it hits on a good idea, decentralization is the key to free news, and maybe users can add their own comments but that doesn't belong in the system. If the system uses "copyrighted" or should I say "published" news then their branding would hold that trust, your own "made up" news would hold your branding so then I would know who to trust. Public key signing comes to mind when thinking of how to keep that "branding" authentic.

But I think an even bigger system is in order. (Right now in fact I was going to look for web-space to lay out my full plans for this system) I think with the amount of information that is out there through PBS, Discovery (and their many networks), et. al. we should/could put together a gnutella-like system to share information in video form.

Taking the strain off of the producers of these videos bandwidth could swing favor to get some published over a P2P system. A system which can bring up videos (streaming... peercast?) on Ancient Egypt or NASA would be a great educational tool and would liken to cable in the classroom.

There is a lot more details that I have worked out, but I'm not going to bother right now.

Basically P2P systems can be more than music and pr0n (not that I complain). We should use these systems because I see an Internet in the future which says double you, double you, who?!

Uh...

[TheAwfulTruth]

Slashdot does it ALL THE TIME. Spreading false and misleading news. And when it happens 90% of everyone here swallows it hook line and sinker. Never bothering to check the actual article or any other sources that may contain possibly contradictory information. Slashdot has posted completely false stories and frequently picks out inflamitory and mostly incorrect stories to feed our insatiable lust for gossip.

Slashdot is itself one of the best examples of why this will fail as a "news" source. Slashdot is a self-feeding FUD machine where people come to hear what they want to hear and to oppress any thought that they do not want to consider. Slashdot is a popular gossip site but is an utter failure as a "news" site.

So if what you want is a giant audio gossip system, It'll go gang-busters. But reliable news? Not possible. You'll get prefiltered news for a particular segment of people. Anyone with an unpopular opinion will be "untrusted" out of the system just like they are "moderated" out of the system here. Popular news for the popular masses is no news at all.

Re:Beware the pseudo-trust

[tunesmith]

Assertion: In order to accept something as truth, trust is required if you can't verify it directly through personal experience.

Is that an absolute or is there a way around that? Your point (trust != truth) is valid but the point it suggests (that it requiring trust is a downside) is not valid. What's the alternative?

Even relying on an "independent third party" to verify a happening only offloads the trust burden. It's still there.

Perhaps a network of verification sources where their combined viability is inversely proportional to the connection between the sources? (If they're in bed together often, then they're not as trustworthy put together.)

Slashdot mod system != Web of Trust

[Glass of Water]

There seems to be some lumping together going on here. A Slashdot-like moderation system is not exactly the same thing as a web-of-trust (unless you would consider every moderator on /. to be trusted by you). The web of trust would be more like saying, "mod all comments posted by my friends +1, and all comments by my foes -1".

This way, a post could be widely popular, but you and your group would be less likely to see it above your threshold if your peers didn't generally like it.

That's a simplification. Naturally, look up "web of trust" on el goog for more information.