back to article Doc 'Cluetrain' Searls' privacy engine project is just the ticket for IEEE

David “Doc” Searls, coauthor of 1999's cyber-utopian Cluetrain Manifesto, has persuaded the IEEE to launch one of two new projects seeking to inject a dose of ethics and privacy awareness into the world of technology. The IEEE announced the two efforts today. One, initiated by Searls, is IEEE P7012, which aims to create a “ …

  1. MacroRodent

    Who rates the raters?

    > Its standard would define “semi-autonomous processes using standards to create and maintain news purveyor ratings for purposes of public awareness”.

    The problem with both this and Elon Musk's project is getting sufficiently objective ratings. You can bet any ratings database with public input is going to be the top target of "troll factories", seeking to bend the ratings to favour their fake news outlets!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: Who rates the raters?

      And who rates the raters who rate the raters ?

      1. onefang

        Re: Who rates the raters?

        I had an idea long ago for a PGP style web of trust, that was generalised and included negative trust. Who rates the raters, you do. You pick who you trust, and who you don't trust, for a variety of things.

        I trust Alice's taste in comedies, but not her taste in chocolates, and I think she has no concept of how politics work. I don't trust Bob at all. I trust Jonno has a good idea about who to trust in the local city council. Jonno trusts Charlie's knowledge of traffic congestion, but doesn't trust Charlie to know anything about tree planting. We all plug such things into our web of trust.

        Alice tells the world that this new comedy movie is great, that turns up through my web of trust as a recommendation to watch that movie. Alice raves about how great some particular chocolate tastes, I'll avoid it. The city council holds a vote about building a new road. Charlie thinks it's a great idea, which info wanders through Jonno's web of trust to mine, and I have no other reason to vote against it, so I'll vote for it. Bob's been campaigning against this new road, I feel more confident that voting for it is a good idea.

        Who rates the raters who rate the raters? Everybody does, but since you picked who you trust and who you distrust, you get an individualised trust score for people you don't know.

  2. tom dial Silver badge

    I much prefer to do my own rating, based on education, general knowledge and general skepticism, augmented as necessary by further research on specific questions.

    I see no reason to think that those who will accept the rubbish on some web sites will benefit significantly from the proposed news rating system, if they even are aware it exists.

    1. Pseudonymous Howard

      I fully agree.

      Everybody who really needs such a rating system would either just not know it or believe it is an instrument of THEM to suppress the 'truth'...

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Machine-readable Privacy Terms

    Nice idea, but first you have to persuade the monoliths to accept that the user has the right to dare to negotiate.

    That aside, I reckon the objectives can substantially be met with a list (exhaustive, of course) of privacy-related proposals written in clear language, each accompanied with a check-box to signify approval. That's both Human- and Machine-readable.

    1. Oengus

      Re: Machine-readable Privacy Terms

      each accompanied with a check-box to signify approval

      With the default being "No Approval" or "Protect privacy" and a master checkbox to rapidly select/deselect all in a single click.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Or....

    we could do something crazy like making the T&C's less than say 200 words?

    Oh and letting Joe Public know they are meaningless and in Europe at least, they are completely unenforceable.

  5. Detective Emil

    Which do I trust more?

    The IEEE or Elon Musk? …

    Boy, that was easy.

    1. ardj

      Re: Which do I trust more?

      Find it hard to understand why Musk's generous offer was not immediately lost in gales of laughter throughout the world

  6. mnot

    P3P redux

    Sounds like the bastard child of P3P and DNT; this should be fun.

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