[jacquesm]

Friend of a friend verification could side-step that, if there is a good way to penalize bad actors willing to violate the principle.

[rpcope1]

I guess we're coming full circle back to red offbrand Hacker News

[zvqcMMV6Zcr]

I don't think any web-of-trust systems ever worked. It might be a bad example but PGP tried to make it a thing for over 30 years.

[vintermann]

If by worked you mean "worked so well they replaced all the big actors" then sure, nothing has worked.

But plenty has worked on a smaller scale. Raph Levien's Advogato worked fine.

There's also a reason most new social networks start up as invite only - it works great for cutting down on spam accounts. But once they pivot to prioritizing growth at all costs, it goes out the window.

[jacquesm]

PGP is niche. This would be far more mainstream. If you applied it to HN I could probably verify > 50 people already. For PGP I wouldn't know anybody...