Information Viruses

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What are Viruses?

Medicine: Viruses get into the cells and change the cells internal data in a way, that the cell produces new copies of the Virus further on. A clever Virus would try to not damage the cell too much, so that it can produce at much copies as possible before it gets destroyed.
Computer Science: When programs were written, that attached themselves into another program, so that the latter would produce new copies of this program, these were called "computer viruses". Most of these "computer viruses" do severe damage to the computer, after having attached itself to as many other programs as possible.
Information: What I like to call "information viruses" here, are mostly known as "fake virus warnings". Every now and then an email gets sent, warning about a computer virus, that just doesn't exist.
But information viruses are not limited to this. They could use any false information to replicate itself, e.g. self fullfilling prophecies could be seen as information viruses, too. The most often cited example for this was a false warning about fuel running short. This false information was spread by Newspapers and by mouth. People got to the gas-stations to refill there cars, and bought some fuel extra. The result was, that fuel really ran short for some time.

What can be done against "information viruses"

Interestingly the only means against information viruses is ... information.

You need to know enough to recognize false information right at the beginning. Then it will not be spread any further.

Where can this information originate?

Todays most obvious information repositry would be the internet. It is the most effective means for information viruses, so it could be the most effective means for fighting against information viruses.

What is needed for this?

The problem is, that most information in the net can not be trusted. So what is needed, is a trust-net.

Every single information posted has to be followed back to its originator, and it must be possible to prove, who has written this. So information should be signed using, e.g. GnuPG.

Everyone who reads some information has the ability to add a trust-sign to this information. Saying I have read this, and I have reason to believe, that this is true / untrue / I don't know. This trust-sign has to be personalized, too. Naturally, sources for your additional or contradictory information should be added.

Every person should have a trust-level assigned. The higher your trust-level, the higher the impact of your trust-sign.

In other words the bazaar model of software-design, as used by Free- / OpenSource Software should be used for arbitrary information, too.

This page is brought to you by Ingo Hohmann <ingo@2b1.de> .

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