[foaf-dev] Re: Social Networks that use FOAF

[Story Henry]

On 25 Mar 2008, at 13:15, Anthony Steele wrote:
> Michael Wechner wrote:
>
>
>>
>> I am not sure if you actually want to pass this information to your
>> "trusted" friends, because maybe they won't use it properly.
>>
>> But what I could image would make sense is if Bob trusts Alice and  
>> hence
>> passes her his phone number, but wants to tell Alice not to pass this
>> information to anyone else and for this one would need some standard.
>>
>> Is this the usecase which you had in mind?
>>
>
> sadly I don't think that there is any technological solution to  
> this. If Bob tells Alice something, there is really no way to stop  
> Alice repeating it if Alice wishes - Alice could forward it, cut and  
> paste it, let someone read it off the screen over her shoulder,  
> print it out, etc. etc.

agree

> It's a social networking lesson that we learn at an early age: If  
> you tell your friends your secrets, first be sure that you can trust  
> your friends not to repeat them.

There is an interesting little twist to this.

If I tell someone Jane a secret and she tell this to someone else  
Anna, then Anna has to trust that Jane told the truth. The further  
this goes on, the less reliable the information.

Same with the semweb. If I publish my foaf file, then I am taking  
responsibility for what is being said there. People will link to me or  
not depending on their trust in the information I publish. In fact if  
I make false statements, people will be under pressure to unlink from  
me, because this will mess up the meshups gathered from this  
information by other people along the road of linked data. [1].

This also means that saying something about someone else is a  
responsibility. If you say something about me, say you give out my  
address, then you are responsible for keeping that information up to  
date, and maintaining it. The more information you have to maintain,  
the more responsibility you have. Now if the information I publish is  
accessible to only a select group, then there is no way for people to  
verify that the information you are publishing is correct, and so you  
will have to defend my private information. But since it is private  
information, that only I can defend, say who my friends are, then you  
are in a position of having to defend something that you cannot  
defend. And hence linking to you is bad karma.

In short these issues might, like wikipedia, work themselves out  
through peer pressure. That is how the web works. I don't link to  
people I don't trust.

	Henry


[1] http://blogs.sun.com/bblfish/entry/beatnik_change_your_mind


> Anthony

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