Sources of the Trust Test

What can — and cannot — be done to TTG videos was determined by the defaults, practices, needs, and principles of these four sources

  • 1. The actions that are “baked in” on billions of smartphones

    Any worldwide requirements for videos have to accommodate the default actions of smartphones, which are the source of billions of videos generated around the globe every week.

    For example, every smartphone instantly does a wide range of color and brightness corrections even while the video is still being recorded — and thus non-misrepresentative light-related corrections are allowed by the Trust Test (V4).

  • 2. The practices of trusted news organizations

    Trusted news organizations increasingly publish citizen-generated videos of spot-news events, so the practices of those publishers are a helpful guide when establishing requirements for trusted videos.

    For example, a news organization would not jeopardize its credibility by doing anything considered “doctoring” but might trim the ends off a lengthy video — and thus trimming is allowed by the Trust Test (V3).

  • 3. The behavior of billions of smartphone users

    Obviously the point of the Trust Test is to ensure that that every TTG-qualified video is “a record of what the camera saw and heard during the recording period” — but real-world usage behaviors have to be accommodated or few people would adopt the TTG standard.

    For example, even though a news organization might not crop a citizen-generated smartphone video, cropping is routine among smartphone users posting videos to multiple platforms that have different format preferences — and thus cropping is allowed by the Trust Test (V3).

  • 4. The principles of ttg.photos

    Numerous principles relating to image manipulation and viewer trust are explored in detail in the “TTG Plus” section of the ttg.photos website.

    For example, many of the Viewpoint pieces at ttg.photos apply equally to making trusted photos and to making trusted videos.