Ask HN: A 3rd party service to validate Twitter/Facebook accounts are humans
FB + Twitter have done a horrible job preventing bots from infiltrating their systems.
I'm thinking a 3rd party system could be used to validate accounts.
I think we could do it with a web of trust though it would take a long time for the trust to propagate.
The idea is generally that the user validates their account by tweeting to a profile that they've created on a 3rd party site. Let's call it botkiller.org.
The two accounts both link to each other.
A -> B and B -> A.
Only bidirectional accounts are considered.
At this point you've ONLY validated the account. Not the nationality.
You have to physically meet someone else on botkiller.org and each user would have to have an app from botkiller.org.
The app shows up on user A's phone and user B scans the QR code.
A looks at B's drivers license and verifies that it's legitimate.
If we know that A is a US citizen and they are asserting that B is a US citizen then can flow trust from A to B.
Now users can NOT use this system of course but validated users can have more influence as you know they're not a bot.
One issue is someone could just PAY A to falsify B.
A couple issues that could resolve this are for A to use a notary so that B would be guilty of perjury by issuing an affidavit where the user states their information is correct.
This would cost $$ of course.
Another idea is to have multiple users validate each other and possibly for the app to detect this in real time so that if you're NEAR a user the phone beeps and ask you to verify them.
I mean a system like this COULD work but the real governor is going to be whether people would actually use it and how do we market it so that they participate.