The Unspoken Issue With “Verified” Data

Recently, I’ve found myself caring less about how verification systems are designed and more about how they’re used. During most of the discussion, people tend to express what is actually possible, whether this data can be signed or whether one can verify it and what ensures them that the data does not change while being moved between systems. Those are important problems and modern systems have started to get quite good at solving them. But there’s another layer that has less often been touched on, which is how people make sense of and respond to verified data once they finally have widespread access to it.

“Verification creates a sense of clarity at a glance, which is helpful when reading up-to-date information published to the web.” Signed and independently checkable AV, feels concerning reliable. It reduces the need to trust