The rampant growth and usage of social networking sites are obvious. The volume of people using Facebook has gone pass 400 million. However, Facebook has some fundamental issues with information. Social networking sites are often overlooked when it comes to information integrity. There could be a million claims made on Facebook but really who verifies. Can we trust this information? Could we verify a random claim by someone we never heard of? Often strangers in these platforms would seek to become friends by just extending invitations. Teenagers are known to just accept anyone by the pictures.
Here, I would like to suggest that we use crowdsourcing to solve this verification problem. The solution to this is easy. If I claim to be working with United Nations, then my friends from Facebook will have to verify this information. Even questions like if I was at work this morning or was I wearing a green top during the Xmas party could be ascertained. The more friends opt to verify, the stronger my claims get. This way you have social proof.
In addition, others (non-friends or new friends) can request for verification as well. The request can then be fulfilled by my friends which otherwise will leave my claim very thin. This form of information verification works; this is what crowdsourcing all about. In fact, trust levels in social networking forums could increase as a result from a simple practice like this. This not only improves Facebook but also prevents many fraudulent claims and unwanted crimes leading from it.
For example the murder of a teenager, Nona Belomesoff, would never have occurred [1]. An animal lover who wanted work with WIRES (Australian Wildlife Rescue Organisation) fatally became friends with Christopher James Dannevig via Facebook. Christopher claimed to be working with WIRES and had promised Nona an internship at WIRES. Nona trusted Christopher based only from the information on Facebook. This information was never verified nor had Nona an avenue to verify this information unless if she had called WIRES. This somehow would prove to be unpopular within the social realms. A pragmatic solution would still be to handle all Facebook issues within Facebook and not outside.
Alternatively, a socially driven verification system such as this would have helped Nona by exposing Christopher's false claim. Nona could have placed a request for verification and waited. The absence of verification from his friends would be the first signal about Christopher's deception. In fact, Christopher's claim would be exposed by actually people from WIRES (which has an account with Facebook), or others by sheer crowdsourcing power.
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