I've been trying to manifest Web of Trust coming back to help people navigate towards content that's created by humans.

A system where I can mark other people as trusted and see who they trust, so when I navigate to a web page or in this case, a Github pull request, my WoT would tell me if this is a trusted person according to my network.

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jacquesm 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You need a very complex weighing and revocation mechanism because once one bad player is in your web of trust they can become a node along which both other bad players and good players alike can join.

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thephyber 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Trust in the real world is not immutable. It is constantly re-evaluated. So the Web of Trust concept should do this as well.

Also, there needs to be some significant consequence to people who are bad actors and, transitively, to people who trust bad actors.

The hardest part isn’t figuring out how to cut off the low quality nodes. It’s how to incentivize people to join a network where the consequences are so high that you really won’t want to violate trust. It can’t simply be a free account that only requires an a verifiable email address. It will have to require a significant investment in verifying real world identity, preventing multiple accounts, reducing account hijackings, etc. those are all expensive and high friction.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Build a tree, cut the tree at the first link, now you get rid of all of them. Will have some collateral damage though, but maybe safe to assume actually "good players" can rejoin at another maybe more stable leaf

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jacquesm 6 hours ago | parent [-]

It's a web, not a tree... so this is really not that simple.

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embedding-shape 6 hours ago | parent [-]

Yeah, that's the problem, and my suggestion is to change it from a web to a tree instead, to solve that issue.

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jacquesm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That does not work because you won't have multiple parties vouching for a new entrant. That's the whole reason a web was chosen instead of a tree in the first place. Trees are super fragile in comparison, bad actors would have a much bigger chance of going undetected in a tree like arrangement.

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theshrike79 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

What is a web if not multiple trees that have interconnected branches? :)

	▲	embedding-shape 5 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In the end, it's all lists anyways :)

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theshrike79 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Then I can see who added that bad player and cut off everyone who trusted them (or decrease the trust level if the system allows that).

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thephyber 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I would go even further. I only want to see content created by people who are in a chain of trust with me.

AI slop is so cheap that it has created a blight on content platforms. People will seek out authentic content in many spaces. People will even pay to avoid the mass “deception for profit” industry (eg. Industries where companies bot ratings/reviews to profit and where social media accounts are created purely for rage bait / engagement farming).

But reputation in a WoT network has to be paramount. The invite system needs a “vouch” so there are consequences to you and your upstream vouch if there is a breach of trust (eg. lying, paid promotions, spamming). Consequences need to be far more severe than the marginal profit to be made from these breaches.

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IsTom 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Unfortunately trust isn't transitive.