I'll go further. We need at least two webs of trust.
Would you trust a Democrat to fact-check Trump's claims of election fraud? Would you trust a Republican? In fact, you should trust the Democrat if they say the claims are true, and the Republican if they say the claims are false.
Ideally, we'd get one set of fact-checkers that both sides trust. In practice, that may not be possible. But at least, if we have separate fact-checkers for each side, if they agree, then we have a fairly good basis for suspecting that they're right.
What do you do when the Republican fact checker repeats what the leader of his party tells him to say even though it is fact-free?
A majority of Republicans believe Trump won the election (!) because that's what Trump is saying. There is little reason to think a Republican fact checker would contradict Trump. Indeed, any fact checker who did would be ostracized as a RINO, much as has happened with Fox News since they acknowledged the outcome of the vote.
Partisan fact checkers would only give the Republican party a safe space to continue to lie about matters of objective fact, such as who won the last election.
Frankly, the fact that 'what is truth' can be framed as a partisan issue in America speaks to much, much deeper societal problems than organized fact checking can fix. This is an attitude that is much more in keeping with that found in countries like Albania or North Korea rather than in another advanced democracy.
> There is little reason to think a Republican fact checker would contradict Trump. Indeed, any fact checker who did would be ostracized as a RINO, much as has happened with Fox News since they acknowledged the outcome of the vote.
Those two sentences contradict each other. And the second makes my point. When Fox News says that Trump lost, you can probably trust that particular fact-check. ("Confirming testimony from a hostile witness", in law-speak.)
Since Fox News started fact-checking Trump, Trump's followers have stopped treating Fox News as a reliable source and are voting with their feet towards OANN another very far right sources. They're clinging to lies (politely: disinformation) even in the face of evidence to the contrary from a source that they formerly considered reliable.
That is my point.
Conservatives (or, at least, Trump followers) will turn their backs on sources of information that they considered trustworthy if those sources contradict the leader de jour.
I wouldn't trust anyone who uses partisan lines to assign trust. And, in a transparent WoT system, I would be able to see them doing this with an easy SQL query. I would then remove any #trust in this individual, and this particular WoT's trust level would be worthless (in my graph.)
That's a good point. I think more than one Web is a great idea and desirable.
As far as your questions:
I would trust some people who identify as Republican, but not others. I would trust some people who identify as Democrat, but not others. Out of the two sets, I would trust the ones whom I personally know, and not anyone else, no matter who they say they are.
In the following scenario, I would trust both a Democrat and a Republican fact-checking Trump's claims of election fraud;
[Me] #trust [My friend Alice, whom I trust to assign trust responsibly] #trust [Alices's friend Bob, whom Alice trusts] #trust [...] #trust [Democrat fact-checker] #approve fact-checking report.
Depending on the Bacon number and how many other similar connections there are, I would trust them more or less.
If there are no connections, then I wouldn't trust them beyond the distance I can propel their supposedly human body under my own power in Earth's gravity.
Would you trust a Democrat to fact-check Trump's claims of election fraud? Would you trust a Republican? In fact, you should trust the Democrat if they say the claims are true, and the Republican if they say the claims are false.
Ideally, we'd get one set of fact-checkers that both sides trust. In practice, that may not be possible. But at least, if we have separate fact-checkers for each side, if they agree, then we have a fairly good basis for suspecting that they're right.