Premise: We are at the precipice of an extended era where inauthenticity vs. authenticity will be difficult to discern, that that involves multiple forms of content including biometrics and more. 

In isolated pockets, governments are becoming aware of this - however it’s going to be really difficult for pluralistic societies like the U.S. where any of the Estates that traditionally would have a role to play in verifying the authentic vs. inauthentic nature of something have had public trust in them as arbiters eroding. And it doesn’t help that both politics and advertisement rely on presenting things as 100% authentic when they’re often only somewhat so (or, to be more generous, mix facts with lots of beliefs). 

Not supporting autocracies, however they have a bit of a “home field” advantage here because there is only one singular narrative - and anyone who questions it can be fired/isolated, imprisoned/disappeared, or killed/executed. Tools of such regimes, to include filtering, censorship, and repression - will be used to ensure only one narrative (authentic or not, mostly likely the latter) is seen by a majority of their population. Pluralistic societies will have it much harder, and the last ten years will pale in comparison to the challenges of sensemaking in a world flooded by both media and mediums of questionable authenticity. 

Back in 2019-2020, I did my darnest to connect Pablo and an additional People-Centered Internet expert with Salesforce that has a lot of CRM data with the proposal that SF could provide a feature where, as part of the CRM, “out of band” questions could be included to do some sort of additional level of trust that the entity on the other end was who they claimed to be. Unfortunately that pitch was overshadowed by larger concerns that SF’s software, give some of its features, could be misused in ways not intended by them (think about ways akin to Cambridge Analytica) and they were trying to figure out how they could incorporate features to prevent actors from misusing/abusing their software in ways not intended by them as a company. 

2024 is going to be hard. Manipulation of what people appear to see, hear, sense - and thus know - is becoming sadly easier. 

Meanwhile understanding of the importance of triangulation, triangulation, triangulation from different perspective to discern authenticity vs. inauthenticity remains time-consuming and hard. Perhaps we need to consider standing up private sector Dun & Bradstreet-like entities for identity and other important adjudicatory functions - however that doesn’t immediately solve the issue of how to help the public in a would experiencing a flood of questionable content, information, and identities? And who “watches” the adjudicators?