Comment by observationist

3 days ago

You could take a picture or video with your phone of a screen or projection of an altered media and thereby capture a watermarked "verified" image or video.

None of these schemes for validation of digital media will work. You need a web of trust, repeated trustworthy behavior by an actor demonstrating fidelity.

You need people and institutions you can trust, who have the capability of slogging through the ever more turbulent and murky sea of slop and using correlating evidence and scientific skepticism and all the cognitive tools available to get at reality. Such people and institutions exist. You can also successfully proxy validation of sources by identifying people or groups good at identifying primary sources.

When people and institutions defect, as many legacy media, platforms, talking heads, and others have, you need to ruthlessly cut them out of your information feed. When or if they correct their mistake, just follow tit for tat, and perhaps they can eventually earn back their place in the de-facto web of trust.

Google's stamp of approval means less than nothing to me; it's a countersignal, indicating I need to put even more effort than otherwise to confirm the truthfulness of any claims accompanied by their watermark.