[tene]

I've considered this several times before, with similar concerns. The solution that seems like it would mitigate these problems is to have contextual social ratings, rather than global ratings. If I indicate the people that I trust, and transitively trust, then I can see indications of misbehaviour from my social network, rather than "some abusive asshole is rating people poorly for not indulging him enough".

Unfortunately, this reminds me of PGP's web of trust, and that never really took off. It may be that it failed entirely due to other issues (pgp's terrible UI, encryption is hard and nobody cares), but it's not a great sign.

[geofft]

Someone (Airbnb?) was trying to use Facebook login as a similar web of trust, as a proxy for real-world social pressure to be a reasonable human being. I don't think PGP really says anything here, positive or negative, when we have Facebook, which is far far bigger and much more tuned to actual, ongoing social connections.

(and this coming from someone with a key in the strong set, and no Facebook account)