On Wednesday 13 May 2009 22:48:53 Evan Daniel wrote: > On Wed, May 13, 2009 at 4:28 PM, xor <xor at gmx.li> wrote: > > On Wednesday 13 May 2009 10:01:31 Luke771 wrote: > >> Thomas Sachau wrote: > >> > Luke771 schrieb: > >> >> I can't comment on the technical part because I wouldnt know what im > >> >> talking about. > >> >> However, I do like the 'social' part (being able to see an identity > >> >> even if the censors mark it down it right away as it's created) > >> > > >> > "The censors"? There is no central authority to censor people. > >> > "Censors" can only censor the web-of-trust for those people that trust > >> > them and which want to see a censored net. You cant and should not > >> > prevent them from this, if they want it. > >> > >> This have been discussed a lot. > >> the fact that censoship isnt done by a central authority but by a mob > >> rule is irrelevant. > >> Censorship in this contest is "blocking users based on the content of > >> their messages" > >> > >> The whole point is basically this: "A tool created to block flood > >> attacks is being used to discriminate against a group of users. > >> > >> Now, it is true that they can't really censor anything because users can > >> decide what trust lists to use, but it is also true that this abuse of > >> the wot does creates problems. They are social problems and not > >> technical ones, but still 'freenet problems'. > >> > >> If we see the experience with FMS as a test for the Web of Trust, the > >> result of that test is in my opinion something in between a miserable > >> failure and a catastrophe. > >> > >> The WoT never got to prove itself against a real flood attack, we have > >> no idea what would happen if someone decided to attack FMS, not even if > >> the WoT would stop the attempted attack at all, leave alone finding out > >> how fast and/or how well it would do it. > >> > >> In other words, for what we know, the WoT may very well be completely > >> ineffective against a DoS attack. > >> All we know about it is that the WoT can be used to discriminate against > >> people, we know that it WILL be used in that way, and we know that > >> because of a proven fact: it's being used to discriminate against people > >> right now, on FMS > >> > >> That's all we know. > >> We know that some people will abuse WoT, but we dont really know if it > >> would be effective at stopping DoS attacks. > >> Yes, it "should" work, but we don't 'know'. > >> > >> The WoT has never been tested t actually do the job it's designed to do, > >> yet the Freenet 'decision makers' are acting as if the WoT had proven > >> its validity beyond any reasonable doubt, and at the same time they > >> decide to ignore the only one proven fact that we have. > >> > >> This whole situation is ridiculous, I don't know if it's more funny or > >> sad... it's grotesque. It reminds me of our beloved politicians, always > >> knowing what's the right thing to do, except that it never works as > >> expected. > > > > No, it is not ridiculous, you are just having a point of view which is > > not abstract enough: > > > > If there is a shared medium (= Freenet, Freetalk, etc.) which is writable > > by EVERYONE, it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to *automatically* (as in "by > > writing an intelligent software") distinguish spam from useful uploads, > > because "EVERYONE" can be evil. > > > > EITHER you manually view every single piece of information which is > > uploaded and decide yourself whether you consider it as spam or not OR > > you adopt the ratings of other people so each person only has to rate a > > small subset of the uploaded data. There are no other options. > > > > And what the web of trust does is exactly the second option: it "load > > balances" the content rating equally between all users. > > While your statement is trivially true (assuming we ignore some fairly > potent techniques like bayesian classifiers that rely on neither > additional work by the user or reliance on the opinions of others...),
Bayesian filters DO need input: You need to give them "old" spam and non-spam messages so that they can decide about new input. But they cannot help Freetalk because they cannot prevent "identity spam", i.e. the creation of very large amounts of identities. > it misses the real point: the fact that WoT spreads the work around > does not mean it does so efficiently or effectively, or that the > choices it makes wrt various design tradeoffs are actually the choices > that we, as its users, would make if we considered those choices > carefully. > > A web of trust is a complex system, the entire purpose of which is to > create useful emergent behaviors. Too much focus on the micro-level > behavior of the parts of such a system, instead of the emergent > properties of the system as a whole, means that you won't get the > emergent properties you wanted. > Yes, the current web of trust implementation might not be perfect. But it is one of the only solutions to the spam problem, if not the only. So the question is not whether to use a WoT but rather how to program the WoT to fit our purposes. Well anyway, if someone has an alternative to WoT, please tell us, but you cannot say "do not use it" if you have none. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: <https://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/devl/attachments/20090514/1b3913bb/attachment.pgp>
