ice_nine

If you're gonna call BS, just do it!

I am curious to know more about this space because it's all very new to me. What failed solutions were tried in the past? Which issues does Truepic fail to address? And is it even possible to address these failures?

Articles like these make me eager for advances made in the 'authenticity' market. I recently learned of a company called Truepic[0] that specializes in photo and video verification.

From the New Yorker article I read:

"Truepic, a startup in San Diego, aims at producing a new kind of photograph—a verifiable digital original. Photographs taken with its smartphone app are uploaded to its servers, where they enter a kind of cryptographic lockbox. “We make sure the image hasn’t been manipulated in transit,” Jeffrey McGregor, the company’s C.E.O., explained. “We look at geolocation data, at the nearby cell towers, at the barometric-pressure sensor on the phone, and verify that everything matches. We run the photo through a bunch of computer-vision tests.” If the image passes muster, it’s entered into the Bitcoin and Ethereum blockchain. From then on, it can be shared on a special Web page that verifies its authenticity. Today, Truepic’s biggest clients are insurance companies, which allow policyholders to take verified photographs of their flooded basements or broken windshields. The software has also been used by N.G.O.s to document human-rights violations, and by workers at a construction company in Kazakhstan, who take “verified selfies” as a means of clocking in and out. “Our goal is to expand into industries where there’s a ‘trust gap,’ ” McGregor said: property rentals, online dating. Eventually, he hopes to integrate his software into camera components, so that “verification can begin the moment photons enter the lens.” [1]

[0] https://truepic.com/

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/12/in-the-age-of-...

Not OP but if I had to guess, once you have a 'legal right' to submit false information it paves the way for a lot of unwanted behavior and would help the spread of disinformation. If a service is harming you and you're thinking about ways to legally address the issue, why not just go after the service itself and come up with legal repercussions / regulations for their actions?

Your question led me to this NPR article that briefly talks about the legality of lying on the Internet that's worth mentioning (https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2011/11/15/142356399...). It seems that when you agree to the Terms of Service with services like Facebook, you agree to not spread misinformation or misrepresent yourself (https://www.facebook.com/communitystandards/integrity_authen...).