What's real anymore ?

That's probably too big a title topic to cover thoroughly right now, but as before maybe this is just post #1 of something I'll keep coming back to !

A recent article whose bi-line was Ads posing as blogs creating generation of skeptics caught my attention on the weekend. It talks about companies posting content to sites like YouTube in a stealth marketing move. This is just one of the latest examples that threatens to erode the integrity of the entire internet (if there every was any in the first place). How long will it be before people just don't believe anything they read on the internet ? Could it be possible that a marketing villain could even bias even well known facts by bombarding sites like Wikipedia with marketed infused falsehoods ?

My Dad's spidey sense kicked in when he first began to surf the net - "how do I know that the information I'm reading is true ?". I don't think I ever gave a thorough answer, but relied on "you learn to trust certain sites, e.g. The New York Times". However, with the amount of reader and viewer created collaborative content these days, even traditional respected sources must fear some degradation of their online integrity.

YouTube combined with powerful photo, audio and movie editing tools of today can easily create this same problem with images and sound.

There is talk about technology playing a role in fighting this problem and I think it may be possible. I work for Entrust who happens to be the first company selling Extended Validation Certificates for internet sites. In layman's terms, how you learn to trust e-commerce web sites will change over the next 12 months as smart online users will look beyond the simple lock and look for indicators of higher levels of trust validation, e.g. your address bar turning green in IE7. It mention this because I don't think it's much of a stretch to think of root anchors of trust (the BBC perhaps in combination with Entrust) providing some validation on the integrity of online content. Make sure I can credit for this idea if one of your geeks runs with this ! See our company web site for more info on EV Certs.

Do you trust my content ?