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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...""
...now we can have /.-style moderation of the news...
Al-Qaeda Destroys White House, Pentagon (-1, Troll)
Alcohol and Calculus don't mix. Don't drink and derive.
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...
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*
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!
Don't believe anything I say. I crash test crack pipes for a living.
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.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
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.
smd4985
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.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!