Maybe they should implement a graph based trust system:

You need your favourite academic gatekeeper (= thesis advisor) to vouch for you in order to be allowed to upload.

Then AI slop gets flagged and the shame spreads through the graph. And flaggings need to have evidence attached that can again be flagged.

They already had a basic form of this for a while [1]

> arXiv requires that users be endorsed before submitting their first paper to arXiv or a new category.

[1] https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

The endorsement system already works along that line: https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

It's probably not perfect but in practice, it seems to have been enough to get rid of the worst crackpotty spam.

You mean like endorsement? https://info.arxiv.org/help/endorsement.html

I've often thought that similar trust systems would work well in social media, web search, etc., but I've never seen it implemented in a meaningful way. I wonder what I'm missing.

Science reduced to people with a phd?