[sgk284]

Interestingly enough, seemingly to compensate for this phenomenon, almost every new platform that requires people to interact with each other has a built in trust and reward system with ratings (e.g. Uber).

And for physical businesses, we have things like Yelp. We are effectively trying to anticipate our opponents behavior through a trusted intermediary.

There was a Black Mirror episode on giving every person on the globe their own rating. It seems that may be the actual destination that we're headed for.

[nothrabannosir]

> There was a Black Mirror episode on giving every person on the globe their own rating. It seems that may be the actual destination that we're headed for.

"Nosedive".

One of the scariest things I've ever seen on screen. I joke about how realistic black mirror is but that episode was too much. Beyond uncanny. It was incredibly hard to watch and I hated every second of it. Awful. Cannot recommend it enough.

[cJ0th]

Trust, however, is not a miracle drug.

For one thing, people can build trust with the intend to abuse it after a longer period of time. An abuser, for example, could plan to offer 20 "good rides" on Uber until s/he strikes. For another thing, many people have learnt to skillfully simulate trust which may pose a problem for you. For instance, you may believe to be in a loving relationship but all of a sudden you find out that the other person isn't interested in you at all and just didn't want to be alone etc.

[rossdavidh]

The book "Phishing for Phools" has a good chapter on "reputation mining", which is essentially that, with the added wrinkle that you can buy a company that has a good reputation and cut corners until the customers wise up. I'm looking at you, InBev.

[rout39574]

I believe the term of art is "Extracting the value from the brand".

[swsieber]

Chrome extensions have been abused this way many times.

[ouid]

I don't trust yelp reviews ever since I learned that you can pay to remove bad ones.

[tgragnato]

A clear economic incentive to cheaters or a way to give a weight to mistakes? Does yelp use an algorithm to weight the thing or use the mechanism only as a source of income?

> Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate

The economic incentive to encourage cheaters is the reason why the "trusted intermediary" should always be verified.

[ouid]

are you quoting me? I don't speak latin.

[tgragnato]

No, I'm quoting Occam. The literal translation is "don't evaluate the possibilities if it's not necessary".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor

[threatofrain]

But someone wishing to get an advantage wouldn't just rely on that metric (IMDB, Yelp, Amazon ratings). There will be a mismatch between some personal metric and your own value system, and the difference is value you can reap.