Berners-Lee Wants Truth Ratings For Websites

holy_calamity writes "While introducing the new World Wide Web Foundation Tim Berners-Lee made also asked for a system of ratings to help people distinguish truth and untruth online. 'On the web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly,' he said, saying that 'there needed to be new systems that would give websites a label for trustworthiness once they had been proved reliable sources.'"

Comments

Re:A rating system can't overcome stupidity

[Arthur B.]

And how do you educate people without trustable knowledge ?

Re:Fancy way of saying PageRank doesn't work...

[Chris Rhodes]

The onion is far more accurate than your average editorial page.

Research shows ratings would have inverse effect

[IdahoEv]

... for conservatives, at least.

Consider this research, which I saw yesterday - possibly the most depressing thing I have read in terms of seeing rational politics and governance in my lifetime. Conservatives are more likely to believe something that supports their belief system after it has been refuted by experts.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/14/AR2008091402375_pf.html

For example, when shown a clip of George Bush in 2003 claiming Iraq had WMD's, 35% of conservatives agree. When shown the same clip plus the 2004 Duelfer report (compiled by a Bush appointee) which demonstrated that Iraq did not have WMD's, suddenly 64% of conservatives believe the weapons were there.

The same effect was seen with statements about tax revenue. In general, when shown expert testimony that contradicts preestablished beliefs, conservatives' beliefs go the other way: experts in general have negative credibility with half the country.

This was not true of liberals: they tended to be unswayed or slightly convinced by expert testimony.