Tell us about yourself:
My name is Michael Heumann from Sebastopol Ca.
I am the founder of TruthFilter.com, KnowledgeCenter.com and WisdomPedia.org. I and my team have been working on methods for combining collective knowledge into reliable information resources since we founded KnowledgeFilter Inc. in 1999. We have 3 patents in the space, the first of which was granted in 2006 and now powers Amazon’s pro and con review system.
Tell us about your project:
Our latest project, TruthFilter, is a system and method for “Crowdsourcing the Truth” while teaching media literacy to a potential army of citizen fact-checkers. TruthFilter uses color coded annotated links to provide an instant visual readout on content reliability while allowing east access to sources of evidence. While our “corroboration engine” technology was originally developed for science and education, todays huge threat to our democracy posed by misinformation cries out for a major media player to launch a system like ours.
We are seeking a media alliance to take over our patent portfolio and build these initial ideas out at scale. For more information visit www.truthfilter.com and watch the 2 minute video on the top of the home page. (This video was produced almost 3 years ago and is more relevant now than it was then). Seeking feedback, ideas , and networking.
Overweb Concept Category
Overweb False Claims Concept
Tell us about yourself:
I’m a full time social worker in the city and county of San Francisco, CA.
Tell us about your project:
I’m volunteering to help welcome people and find teams.
Overweb Concept Category
Overweb Dating Concept
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I am actually a normal guy who likes games and movies way to much. I also like to teach and build really cooooooooool stuff. Stuff that melts minds:) I consider myself an artist first and foremost though.
Tell us about your project:
Working on creating the first spatial OS. At it’s core it has a game engine, browser, apps, and social network. It will be open source, free, and power meta humans!! Just simply to troll for good and make my family and world a bit brighter. 2020 sucked we can all agree? Let’s fix stuff just for the sheer adventure and fun of it. Also we going super meta and shooting for making TEA. EARL GREY. HOT. a reality.
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Overweb Game Concept
Hello @matthew,
great to meet you!
Citizen.Fact sound very interesting would love to hear more about it. In connection to that maybe this project by another community member could be interesting for you: Introducing Oliver, WorldBrain.io, Memex and Storex, Democratising Knowledge
Great that you have such a clear goal for the Overweb Challenge with the website and desktop client.
How are you approaching this algorithm you are referring to?
@JollyOrc has been looking into how to break such bubbles but looked more at methods utilising human community management teams. (Social Media is broken, let's do better!).
What do you see as the key to your algorithm? What as the biggest challenge?
Tell us about yourself:
No problem
Tell us about your project:
Yes
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Overweb Open Concept
Welcome @concordis,
Thank you so much for the concrete example you give about the reported dissonance in scientific “consensus” about the climate crisis.
How are you going about this outreach to the community of climate scientists and how about sharing and spreading your findings afterwards?
A few months ago we tried out a webinar to connect interested people directly with data scientists and resources they developed to discuss Covid data and their interpretation. We are planning and iteration of “Masters of Networks” as a follow up for this in April. There we would like to combine those resources with our SSNA network visualisation method. (SSNA is what we use here to combine huge amounts of data with ethnographic qualitative research methods. A preliminary report can be found here: NGI Ethnography Preliminary Findings - October 2020)
Would you maybe be interested in participating in the Masters of Networks event?
Welcome @SuzieH,
Great journey and diversity you are describing! You personally might enjoy this coulourful part of the wider community here: Blivande: Growing a sustainable ecosystem. House Blivande is a space in Stockholm that combines artists, Makers, coders and alternative explorations including a very alive Tantra workshop community in the “Noden”.
The truth filter sounds very interesting! How do you get at those pro-con evaluations?
I am sure many people here would love to hear more about
Could you maybe make a post about that, so people can respond and engage with it directly?
In fighting words?
I think there should be no algorithm in social media. Us humans have more than enough methods and mechanisms to connect ourselves, even if there is no computer telling us who to like: We interact with and find each other in comment sections, by recommendations from friends, or because we visit the same party.
The assumption that we can create a neutral algorithm that fairly and effectively tells us whom to like and what content to watch is doomed to fail in my opinion.
Not because it is hard to write an algorithm that figures out what I like, but because it is hard, nay, impossible to write that algorithm so that it works for everyone, is bullet-proof against spammers and such, does not silence minorities and conforms to all the conflicting sets of ethics and propriety out there.
So, social media (that means: Tools to connect humans and that allows them to share day-to-day thoughts, ideas, and musings, the equivalent of the town square or pub counter) should not have algorithms. And I think it should also not be the arbiter of what is right or wrong information.
Tell us about yourself:
Hi, I’m Christian Buggedei, ornamental hermit and product person at polypoly.coop and the founder of darcy.is
Tell us about your project:
The one project tries to put all personal data back onto our devices and instead of having the data come to the algorithms, the algorithms should come to you!
The other project has the tagline “social, done proper” and hopes to eventually build a decentralised but safe and moderated online space.
Overweb Concept Category
I have no idea - I’ve just read about it! 
really impressed by your experience and track record in developing true knowledge for/on the internet!
This topic is near and dear to many here! How do you go about/think about motivating your "army of fact-checkers? Do you still have collaborations with education institutes from your previous development work and tried introducing it in that context? How do you safeguard against bad actors e.g. a bunch of people being sent from a right-wing forum, for example, to rate election meddling reports suddenly as trustworthy? Is the strength in the numbers and diversity of the people contributing?
Yay! Great to see you here @SilviaElena. Let’s find some collaboration dates for these amazing and interesting people! 
Hey @futurememe! Yes, let’s have some earl grey hot and live long and prosper!
You might like to have a look at the Culture Squad Forum where lots of artists share game ideas and project/grant opportunities as well as at the Sci-Fi Economics Lab and the Worldbuilding Akademy which is developing and open-source scifi world for authors and economists to explore together to develop new concepts of future economy where no man has gone before and even further ;).
Doesn’t this seem like a statement that runs counter to the evidence? If the last 20 years have shown us anything, it is that humans seem to intuitively prefer to be shown results by an engine that’s given a little statistical data to sort through those results.
And besides - where do we draw the line on what an “algorithm” is? Simple sorting by date is an algorithm. Sorting by date and giving priority to content from people you follow is another algorithm. Add to hide content that you have already seen and you have another algorithm. Are you suggesting that social media should have none of these features?
Or are you only talking about “predictive” algorithms that make choices based on who the algorithms assumes you are based on your similarity to some profile? If so, should we also forego algorithms that giver priority to content from your geographical location (thus making the assumption that you will care more about that than about things that happen 3000 km away), given that you have shared that with the service?
Definition first: When I write “algorithm” I mean “a method of defining the content and order of the feed where the exact mechanism is not immediately understood at gut level by the average member of parliament”. So, “here is everything from your contacts in chronological order” is not an algorithmic-based feed, but “here is the things we think you are interest in” is.
That said: Humans intuitively prefer a lot of things that aren’t good for them. And a lot of things that are probably perfectly fine in small doses are bad when they become a habit (think alcohol and addiction). Facebook et al have perfected the dopamine triggers that have firmly pushed the use of newsfeeds into the “harmful” category.
The other thing is: Yes, I think for a social platform, it is not helpful to have any automatic influence on what is displayed, regardless of reason. There can (and probably should) be filter buttons that I can visibly toggle to “show only unread things” or “show things near me”, but that needs to be a conscious choice, not something that happens by magic.
The real challenge is this: How could such a platform compete with a platform that is engineered to be sticky and addictive? And I think it can only do so by being a more pleasant space to be in.
And the problem we end up with is that the “average member” does not really exist when the user-base is the entire human population. If you need to be at the level of a member of parliament to understand how to configure your social media feed, where does that leave the rest?
The problem any technologist that is trying to design for “everyone” is faced with is that people’s expectations differ and understanding differ so much that the average becomes a useless data point.
For example; if I had a personal assistant that had been at my side for 20 years, they might curate a list of articles and correspondence for me to read each morning. I would have a “gut level” understanding of how they did that: they know me well and thus know what is important to me. As long as their curation makes me happy, I would not really inquire deeply into their methodology - which would probably be very hard to explain and quite intuitive to them.
Now, for a lot of people who are not technologically minded, it might in fact be the intuitive thing to ask that the “algorithm” should in fact do the same thing and try to predict what will be important to them. They don’t want or need to know exactly how this happens - much as is the case with the personal assistant. If the result made them happy, their “gut level” understanding of how this works would be “the algorithm knows what I like and picks things that it thinks will be important to me”. Is that the “wrong” sort of “gut level” understanding?
Hi Maria
The idea is that, like with Genius Annotations, anyone who questions an article or posting can send it to TruthFilter for evaluation by the crowd. If we can get a company like FaceBook or Google or a media outlet like the NYT or Washington Poist to host such a site, I think the participation would quickly grow to scale. The benefit to them is that they would not have to be the arbiter of truth and the crowd would be engaged to do some of the heavy lifting of fact-checking research and source evaluation.
As to your second question- this is a good one and needs to be addressed… One of the concepts of the system is that it does not allow opnions, just facts. If something is submitted as a fact and is really just an opinion stated as a fact, it will quickly be flagged as such and automatically move toward the “warning red” text color. I’m hoping that the side by side pro and con evidence display that pops up on link rollover would quickly reveal attempts to falsely rate a lie as truth. Needs some real world testing! Hoping to get the attention of an organization with the resources to run with this.
Thanks for your input!
Michael Heumann
Founder / CEO
KnowledgeFilter Inc.
TruthFilter.com
KnowledgeCenter.com
WisdomPedia.org
Cell Direct: (707) 484-3973
email: michael@truthfilter.com
At least here in Germany, the average member of parliament is more like the lowest common denominator in terms of IT knowledge you can find. So, I meant this as “even a dummy should be able to understand it” 
(this is the replacement of the tired “so easy, even my grandma can do it!” trope. Because a) that is ageist and b) also sexist. Because one grandma in my family actually did cryptography during the war. Also, Grace Hopper. Also, actual members of congress.)
And yes, designing for “everyone” is very hard and for certain cases near-impossible. But there does need to be a ground level - and the classic, Facebook-style algorithmic feed is not that.
The other thing is that you can always ask your real-life-human personal assistant “why did you show me this?” Try that with Twitter.
But all that is aside the point. The point is that designing feeds that are devoid of harmful biases is really, really, really hard. And that it is even harder for us humans to recognize that bias before we get negatively affected by it. THAT is why I am arguing against such things.
Tell us about yourself:
I’m also working on a global sensemaking layer for information exchange. Looking at alternatives.
Tell us about your project:
https://hyperknowledge.org
Overweb Concept Category
Overweb Sensemaking Concept
Tell us about yourself:
Systems thinker and all-win designer developing systems that support distributed cooperation and value sharing for the good of all. Also, a writer, artist, and filmmaker. www.benjaminlife.one
Tell us about your project:
Meta-politics - general inquiry into civic participation systems, digital commons spaces, and integral dialogue.
Overweb Concept Category
Overweb Sensemaking Concept
Tell us about yourself:
I am a web and mobile app developer and I have been working on technology to build agreement fight misinformation for over 10 years.
Tell us about your project:
Reason Score (ReasonScore.com) is a process and technology to walk a group of people through a process to build agreement and understand all the information from all the participants in an efficient way and to think transparently.
Gulli Bot (GulliBot.com) is a character that uses the Reason Score process to facilitate agreement on contentious issues on the internet.
I have several other projects in the space of people understanding complex information.
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Overweb False Claims Concept
Tell us about yourself:
@liambroza
Tell us about your project:
LifeScope.io
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Overweb Open Concept