The issue then is that you're likely to get a balkanization of the webs of trust - echo chambers. How we can support cross pollination of these webs is the issue. I don't have an answer for that, but being able to trace news sources at least helps though.

First, this is missing the point a little bit - people don't care about the truth. They actively seek out channels of bias. If everyone were so conscientious as to be seeking the truth society would have far fewer problems.

Second, there is no such thing as 'web of trust', it's an academic idea.

Third, it's unnecessary. We already have pretty good institutions.

FYI I just checked the commentary on Fox to see where there plebes minds are at this morning, and this was the 4th comment on the top article:

"The military must restore President Trump to the presidency.

Any pockets of military resistance should be dealt with.

Our country needs military law and God's chosen President, President Trump.

President Trump for life!!!!"

A few comments down:

"MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW MARTIAL LAW

FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

STEALING AN ELECTION IS AN ACT OF WAR! FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT

STOP THE STEAL"

This kind of rhetoric is not uncommon now, and this is on a mainstream news outlet, it's only a little bit of accidental violence from words to deeds.

Far from being academic, webs of trust have existed since the dawn of time, for example marriage with other tribes to strengthen trust. On the web, twitter retweets are a loose example in that people retreat what they find useful, building trust between users over repeated retweets.

I don't know the answer to this btw but the current institutions don't appear to be enough, from potentially influenced elections and referenda, to trying to silence whistleblowers (Assange, Whitehouse leaks etc)

Isolating the issue though ie. Being able to verify optionally signed posts goes some way towards building better Web. Curated posts by Facebook have no indication of agenda or veracity, same as for most of twitter.

Something like Radicle or Spritely might be the way forward, more research needed :)

https://spritelyproject.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25313010

It turns out that there's a sizeable contingent of people who do want to talk to people on the other side, and if you build it, they will come- and be surprisingly civil to each other, given you might expect them to assault each other on the streets in other circumstances. Of course, as mentioned in the above article, one problem with building a space where people can talk civilly about their differences is that you end up talking civilly to unpalatable folks, and people on the outside really don't like that and will try to destroy you- even if what you're seeing here, people de-escalating by talking to each other, is a miracle in the making.

The culture war and the Motte have problems, of course. I'd just like to see a Cambrian explosion of spaces with a similar ethos, to explore the design space.

Ironically this sounds just like the kind of argument Thomas More would have made against Erasmus. And he’d have referred to Münster just as you refer to Rwanda.

If you used your 'free press' to attack a local Prince, he would have you killed, so what are you even talking about?

'Banning all books' is something different than 'banning people trying to overthrow the government'.

It sounds an awful lot like you are calling for an explicitly elevated class of people, with the sole authority to interpret the literature. Sort of like a priesthood.

We have to find a new way through this problem.

Censorship is hardly "a new way." And this problem only exists if enough people pay attention to it. It's not the freedom of speech that is the problem, it's traditional media that amplify every debate instead of projecting nuance, and it's algorithms that optimize for engagement over connection.

It seems that the most ardent supporters of unrestricted free-speech are the most optimistic in their belief in humanity to come to a stable, moral consensus if we all just say whatever we want.

The Rwandan genocide shows the darker truth that we're just as likely to talk ourselves into horrific violence and war over arbitrary divisions. Cultural and societal pressure over what's acceptable to discuss seems like a very real, and very useful bulwark against that possibility.

"One of the most virulent voice of hate, the newspaper Kangura, began spewing forth attacks on the RPF and on Tutsi immediately after the October 1990 invasion. It was joined soon after by other newspapers and journals that received support from officials and businessmen linked to the regime. "

"Until 1992, Radio Rwanda was very much the voice of the government and of the president himself.... Before the daily news programs, Radio Rwanda broadcast excerpts of Habyarimana’s political speeches. This national radio sometimes broadcast false information, particularly about the progress of the war, but most people did not have access to independent sources of information to verify its claims.

In March 1992, Radio Rwanda warned that Hutu leaders in Bugesera were going to be murdered by Tutsi, false information meant to spur the Hutu massacres of Tutsi."

[later Radio Rwanda becomes less partisan:]

"With the new direction at Radio Rwanda and the voice of the RPF increasingly strong, Hutu hard-liners decided to create their own station. They began planning their radio in 1992, incorporated it as Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) in April 1993, and began broadcasting in August 1993...."

"Although nominally private and opposed to Radio Rwanda, RTLM in fact was linked in a number of ways with the national radio, with other state agencies and with the MRND. RTLM was allowed to broadcast on the same frequencies as the national radio between 8am and 11am, when Radio Rwanda was not transmitting, an arrangement that encouraged listeners to see the two as linked, if not as identical. The new station also drew personnel from Radio Rwanda, including Nahimana, who played a leading role at RTLM after having been dismissed from ORINFOR, and announcer Noel Hitimana."

Source: https://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/rwanda/Geno1-3-10.htm

Second - that the 'government' was in control of some of the radio has nothing to do with the argument - that's an example of 'political speech', particularly lacking institutional controls of the press.

The genocide was not arbitrary, of course there were leaders and those pushing for it. There were political forces moving millions of machetes into the country to be used in 'the uprising'. But when it happened, it was almost universal, like a Zombie film.

President Trump, using 'direct channels' (Twitter/FB) to spout lies about election rigging, is able to do this completely without any fact checking. He can say almost anything he wants, and a certain % will believe him. He has made veiled hints at violence.

5-10 Million people believe that the election has been rigged, and the constitution has been usurped. Those are Revolutionary terms, and they have guns.

This story reads like an election in a crappy African Republic where there is zero institutional credibility.

A 'decentralized web' mostly lacks any ability to decipher fact from truth - it's expensive, it requires integrity, transparency, oversight - which is why we have many institutions to do that right now, and it becomes a real problem when they start to bend.

Personally, it's more that I'm pessimistic about giving governments the power to imprison people for expressing opinions that governments don't like.

The government of Quebec fined a comedian $30 000 for making a joke about a handicapped person.

I think the issue is that 'Freedom of Expression' ought to exist - it's #1 in Canada and #2 Ammendment in the US, but there's no such thing as 'unrestricted' speech, and, institutional controls are going to have to be in place.

If you're plotting with your buddies to walk into the post office and murder someone ... well I'll bet most people think your Signal channel should be snared.

If you want to call a Female Trans person a 'He' because that' what they are biologically, even if they present themselves as a She ... well, most people think that should be legal, but there are absolutely people with power who want to make that a form of hate speech.

On Twitter right now, I'm thankful that they are adding notes to indicate that specific actions of election fraud.

But they have also indicated they will ban you for 'dead naming' or 'misgendering' a Trans person.

So you know the Actress 'Ellen Page' is now trans, so 'he' is now 'Elliot Page'. Fair enough. But if you literally use the term 'Ellen Page' or refer to them as 'She' - you could be banned. Which is ridiculous.

But it seems like there should be some level of compromise that can address both risks. We restrict other natural freedoms in all sorts of ways in modern society, why not free speech at all? As an example that's repeated so often it's practically a cliche: even with the second amendment in the US, citizens are still restricted from owning nuclear weapons.

A new class of weapon was invented and society decided that no matter what they said in the past, this was too powerful to treat like any other weapon until now. Seems like this new form of hyper-speech could qualify for a similar approach?

I agree, but let me refine: Dissenting opinions in civil society are arbitrated by civil courts.

So we need the 'huge' entities to commit working together with civil society. That means they need to lobby towards their own regulation. AT&T allegedly did it in the 20th century. Lobbying for more constraints on your own company is only contradictory if the company considers itself infallible in perpetuity, i.e. a benevolent dictatorship.