So the idea is just like a blue tick. If you don’t see a short code, that’s a scam. Unless, of course, we’ve met face to face and exchange our address code on WhatsApp or whatever. But otherwise, it’s always assumed to be a spam. And this is a marked reversal, because previously we assume it’s a human until it shows bot like behavior, but now bot has human like behavior, so that doesn’t work anymore. So we have to go back to the blue tick, to the digital signatures, to short codes, to verified codes, and so on. And once we do that, then we can rebuild this provenance and all the related technologies so that it doesn’t matter how content is evolving to be lifelike. Because then we have two broad classes. One is the trusted institutions and numbers. One is the friends and families who have met, and everybody else is a bot.

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