
DewDrop – A Formal Language for Social Networks - fiatjaf
https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop
======
jarcane
_I have no idea how this will turn out, but i have some intuition. Suppose you
shorted bitcoins in 2010, selling 10,000 bitcoins you didn 't for $0.10
apiece. You'd earn yourself a profit of $1,000 - and if you didn't pay them
back, you'd be $3,000,000 in debt today. I really think this kind of network
could change the world. If you defect against people trying to make the world
better, by trolling us - you are standing in the way of human progress. We are
building a record book that essentially blocks trolls from the public
discourse - is trolling that group of people really a good idea?_

man what

~~~
PavlovsCat
I have a huge problem with the word troll. Call me oldschool, but to me a
troll is someone who claims to believe something when they really don't, and
that just can never be proven either way. So why even go there? Trolls just
like anyone else make statements, those statements are either off-topic or can
be dealt with. If they're very aggressive, or just wrong in their claims,
there is no need for the additional charge "troll". "Don't feed distractions",
"don't feed negativity", "don't waste time on this, it's red herring because
[insert solid argument here]", having rules for accepted behaviour, those and
more all work perfectly fine, and they have the added benefit of not making
someone an unperson with the word "troll".

The author(s) really just could put two things they said in separate places
together:

> Mob mentalities seize hold of "the villian of the moment", and no person has
> any incentive to stick up for someone who is the 'bad guy du jour' of the
> crowd, regardless of whether or not all claims are merited.

and

> With dewDrop, those making the baseless charges can just be denied, with the
> subject issuing a DISTRUST statement. Anyone who trusts the subject can now
> immediately know to distrust those issuing the baseless claims - as well as
> anyone who trusted them.

... surely you can see how the combination of those two things could be a
problem, right? I mean, what is a "baseless claim", who gets to decide that,
and how?

I've been baselessly called a troll before simply because my claims were NOT
baseless, and I asked others to back up their claims about me. And the best
bit is, the FB page admin let that thread exist as long as someone else
calling me a troll had the last word; but when I replied, insisting that just
calling someone names does not constitute addressing what they said, and that
my points stand, the whole thread got deleted like 30 mins later, and I had to
fish the whole comment thread out of a browser process dump with a hex editor
because I was so dumbfounded.

In my eyes then and now, I wasn't trolling, I was throwing pearls to pigs; I
posted a "wall of text" which I had indeed thought about quite a bit in a
forum where 99% of all responses to anything ever posted is just "you're doing
a great job, keep it up, it would be so great if everybody was aware that
you're just so great". Which is not even something I disagree with, I just
wanted to _add_ to that :/ But oh well, I was banned from posting too, though
that I only realized weeks later when I pondered wether to translate something
for that page, because they asked for volunteers.

So.. sure, I can flag a whole page with ten thousands of likes as "they all
suck at reading comprehension, admin may even be dishonest", but where would
the fact that I can back my claim up, and they can't, that I'm the one fishing
that stuff out of memory which they swept under the rug, fit in there? What if
I don't want to flag a whole page? What if I think someone is absolutely wrong
about topic A, or for some reasons unable to learn, but has no stake in topic
B, or is intellectually honest about it even though they do?

Sorry for rambling, but the anecdote I described actually did hurt me a bit
when it happened. It's the discussion equivalent of getting killed by a drone
without trial, simply not cool. Now imagine one "trusted admin" being able to
simply delete the voice of people from this vague group of everybody
representing "human progress"... ugh!

It's tricky over the web, but in person, the idea is generally, the more
healthy and sane you are yourself, the easier you notice the bad "vibrations"
others send out. It's just we usually are all over the place or unhappy
ourselves, but the less you are, the easier you notice the patterns and
disguises around you. And while we don't have pheromones and body language and
a lot of other things over the web, I do feel something more limited but
similar applies there too, it just can't be formalized easily and tattooed to
people's foreheads or user ID, just like we can't do that with character,
sanity, intelligence, knowledge, and all the other things that go into the one
word "trust".

"I trust this person" is just one simple word for something you could not
fully describe in a book. I trust various people to various degrees, each
relation is completely unique, and I cannot easily or at all transfer my
experiences with a person in one area to another area. I would also never say
"Oh, you need a (dis)trust relationship with person X you never met? Here,
just copy mine". It's like I wouldn't make a copy of my toothbrush for them,
I'd rather help them get their own. Of course that's not entirely true, we
gossip and criticize or laud others in their absence all the time, and we take
that into account; but I would rarely let that keep me from getting to know a
person, at least from even getting a first impression of my own. I know people
do that, but I consider it harmful.

If anything, the very idea that someone would rather talk about the person who
said something, than what they said, would count _against_ them in my books.
I'd say "the" (any) mob itself is standing in the way of its own progress, the
appeal to authority or current consensus, sometimes expressed in just numbers,
and always coming with labels. To put a point on it, the problem is that too
many people can't or don't want to think for themselves or examine evidence,
not how to do it for them (kinda like IMHO the problem is also that people
don't configure the software they use or read manuals, not _just_ what the
best default setup or tutorial would be). Tools can help people reach
maturity, but they cannot replace maturity, which to me implies such things as
critical thinking and _climbing_ that "hierarchy of disagreement", instead of
getting stuck in one of the lower floors.

Last but not least, either you require each physical human to have just one
root identity, or you already have lost to anyone willing to make more than
one account, if not hundreds. If it can be done it will be done, if it can
lead to influencing what people vote or buy, doubly so. This already happens,
sure, it would just be more of that, but the more it was trusted the worse it
could be abused.

If you read this far, thanks, and apologies :)

~~~
MarkPNeyer
long post, i'll do my best:

> what is a "baseless claim", who gets to decide that, and how?

the idea is that everyone int he system can decide for themselves what is
baseless and what is not.

every single statement, every single claim can be evaluated by all parties to
decide, is this true, is this false.

there are plenty of things people have claimed publicly and then recanted -
like, say the made up allegations of gang rape
([http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/06/uva-fraternity-to-sue-
roll...](http://dailycaller.com/2015/04/06/uva-fraternity-to-sue-rolling-
stone-over-false-rape-accusation/)) - the idea is that anyone who latched onto
that ahead of time and said "this is true" gets that tracked and responded to
later.

~~~
PavlovsCat
> every single statement, every single claim can be evaluated by all parties
> to decide, is this true, is this false.

Okay, but then where does this translate to people getting "tagged" as
trustworthy or not, etc.? What effect does that have on statements they made?
Even if it's up to the users -- that text really makes it seem like tagging
people as trolls just because X trusted people tagged them so as desirable or
useful.

To me there are kind of two ways to look at trust (or affinity in general), as
something by which we weighs actions or opinions of another person ("if enough
people I trust label X as Y, that influences how I view them"), or as a short-
hand for how we feel about the individual decisions of another person ("all
these people did ask for evidence when most people were ready to lynch X for
Y, which increases my trust for them"), maybe using that as the first
assumption when faced with new things they do or have opinions on, but
generally just being a "bonus score" after the fact, if you will. In practice
it's a bit of both.

But if you have to follow the chain of arguments anyway, or the reasons why
someone is labeled as something, what use is the label? And if you don't
follow it, and just "assume there is a good reason for the label", you get fun
stuff like a 17yo girl telling a boy she's 18 like he is, them having sex on
her initiative, and him being labeled a sex offender for 20 years even though
she pleaded for him to be left alone. It's not "sex offender for having lied
to by a girl with stuck up parents who was 17 when he was 18", it's just "sex
offender". The same with "troll", "(not) reputable", etc. The truth is as
fine-grained as the actual course of events, and while labels are sometimes
useful, it can be dangerous when they develop a life of their own so to speak,
in our imagination.

> anyone who latched onto that ahead of time and said "this is true" gets that
> tracked and responded to later

By those who came to the conclusion. Likewise, everything who says "hah, it's
not true", get "responded to" by everyone who insists it's true regardless. So
what was gained?

------
amelius
> Incentivize people to admit they have erred - a public record of you
> apologizing shows you try to right your wrongs

But, in any objective discussion, it should not matter _who_ is saying
something, nor should his/her reputation matter. We should stick to the facts
and leave "ad hominem" out of this.

~~~
tempodox
Very good point, I didn't see that at first, although I'm thoroughly
skeptical. My guess is, the author comes from a context where a high level of
social control is customary and desired. My taste is just the opposite.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
> a high level of social control is customary and desired.

a high level of social control is customary because i live in the world as it
is now. but that is NOT the world i desire to live in.

the way things work now, social control is implicit and heavily enforced. by
making it explicit, you can reduce the extent to which it's enforced - and by
speaking in formal languages, you can show that anyone who makes a claim gets
credit for being right, regardless of their station in life or how big their
audience is.

~~~
tempodox
Except that there are just too many areas where “being right” is in the eye of
the beholder. How would you make sure that your formalism is only used in
areas where “objective truth” can be established? It could just as easily be
abused for crusades.

------
tempodox
The introduction points rightly to a broad range of problems in our
internetted communications. However, I highly doubt that any formal or
automated system can help with that. For starters, how would you force users
to use it in a consistent, or even correct way?

Even if we assume it just works, it's only good for people who want to live in
a village where they're always the same person to everyone else. I don't want
that. I want to live in a city where 3 blocks down the street they never even
heard my name or saw my face. I want the freedom to be a “good citizen” in one
circle and an absolute a-hole troll in another. And if that should violate
anyone's minimum requirements for bigotry it's really none of my concern.

[Edit: Wording]

------
Gys
I do not think many individuals have a (personal) benefit by adhering to these
rules.

Also, people like to keep implicit grey areas in their opinions. To have space
for 'I did not mean it that way'. There is a small politician in every one of
us ;-)

~~~
MarkPNeyer
the latest version of this, i'd like to add certainty weights, so you can
express the numerical extent of your confidence in your claims.

------
calebm
Cool idea, but to data mine human communication, software must come to
understand their language, rather than trying to get people to change their
language #ddv2 DISAGREE
[https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop](https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop)

~~~
mtrn
This reminds me of a funny rule, I heard some years ago (in the context of the
Semantic Web): If you allow people to supply their data, they either won't do
it or they'll do it wrong. #ddv2 DISARGEE
[https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop](https://github.com/neyer/dewDrop)

------
panic
This sounds similar to FOAF --
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_(ontology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOAF_\(ontology\))
\-- and more generally similar to concepts from the semantic web. Why not
build on these existing formats?

------
erikb
If you put in rules to follow people simply won't. Especially trolls. That's
kind of part of their definition, isn't it?

But what people forget is that you can communicate without text boxes as well.
There are already social non-verbal communications in place.

Simple examples are liking something, sharing it, seeing a group post or chat
message (with or without responding). Being online or not is also a way to say
you want to communicate or not.

It is possible to force people into a non-textbox communication by giving them
buttons instead. Sometimes both options (text and button) already is enough
for people to use the button because it's simpler.

There are also experiments to fight trolls by only giving specified
communication buttons instead of text boxes, e.g., in the online card game
Hearthstone.

One problem you can't fight that way is the problem of interpretation. In the
example of Hearthstone the winner of a card game might say "Thanks" hoping to
end the game with a polite statement, while the opponent who lost might
interpret it as "haha, look at how I beat your ass, noob".

Spamming and Trolling is also still possible, because you can make anything
annoying by doing it too often. E.g., someone you just added to your FB
friendlist goes through your history and likes every single status message,
uploaded picture and shared link you posted.

------
donatj
This puts way too much weight into offense inherently being negative. All
offense is is something striking way outside your sensibilities, and you not
even attempting to process what was said. This culture of punishing people for
having differing opinions is a genuine road to hell.

------
MarkPNeyer
author here - i was wondering why this got picked up.

i've been working on the respect matrix
([https://github.com/neyer/respect](https://github.com/neyer/respect)) which
is a simpler version that gets the kernel of the idea present in dewdrop.

------
sgt101
This is very insightful and a great bit of innovation. I believe that the
biggest impact of this would be in internal projects and collaborative groups;
managing the dialogs and controlling noise - building consensus and shoring up
what is known to be true (or false). It's very difficult to build a pyramid of
knowledge in a corporate today.

------
fiatjaf
This could be done right now in Twitter. People would just tweet these
statements and a server would calculate public ratings and statuses.

