<div dir="ltr"><div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Subject changed as nobody seems to be talking about it...</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, May 7, 2021 at 4:52 PM Salz, Rich via cryptography <<a href="mailto:cryptography@metzdowd.com">cryptography@metzdowd.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div lang="EN-US" style="overflow-wrap: break-word;">
<div class="gmail-m_522964800023448307WordSection1">
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Don’t feed … oh heck.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<ul style="margin-top:0in" type="disc">
<li class="gmail-m_522964800023448307MsoListParagraph" style="margin-left:0in">If NewEgg and its reviewers were strongly pseudonymous, and their product links<u></u><u></u></li></ul>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">were hashes to immutable data or a third party signature to mutable data, it would<u></u><u></u></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal">work even better.<u></u><u></u></p>
</div>
<div>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Why would it be better and in what ways? Please be specific, and don’t just do a hand-wave about it being the way of the future.</p></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Ah but how would people get anywhere without an asymmetric burden of proof?</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The WebPKI exists, it is a known quantity. People know what it does and does not do. The financial system exists, it is a known quantity, people know what it does and does not do.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Bright shiny object is proposed. This is purportedly better than what exists because <insert ideological commitment here>. But we are not allowed to compare it with what exists. Every flaw in what exists and is deployed is held to be fatal. Every issue with what is being proposed is held to be irrelevant because it is 'developing'.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Some of us have been waiting over a decade for BitCoin to answer the original issues identified in the design. So far there is no evidence for BTC being capable of change and rather a lot of reason to think it is immutable as the blockchain. </div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Yes, NewEgg is acting as a Trusted Third party to the extent it does or does not curate the reviews it presents. Anyone buying online has to be very cautious of malicious reviews.</div><br></div><div><br></div><div> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div lang="EN-US" style="overflow-wrap: break-word;"><div class="gmail-m_522964800023448307WordSection1"><div>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead of being able to easily see that my colleague Jon, whom I trust, wrote something. I know have to maintain my own directory of digests to names? And not just me, but everyone? Please explain what the *<b>benefit</b>* of this is.<u></u><u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><u></u> <u></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t want the whole world to post things pseudonymously. I want to filter based on the identifiers that I can understand and already have decades of knowledge about. But you seem to want to throw that away. Again: why?</p></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I don't think it remotely practical for every individual user to curate opinions data. But Facebook has shown itself to be incapable, self-service and on occasion outright malicious in its monopoly on curating opinion on its platform.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Why does Donald J. Trump get to appeal his Facebook ban to a tribunal of Facebook's choosing while the likes of Loraine Murphy banned for left wing activism cannot? The quality of treason is not strained... etc.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Know what else Alice isn't going to be curating herself? Her malware identification vectors. Being on the net requires us to trust other parties. And why is that a surprise to anyone? We can choose who we trust and to what extent but in an environment of 6 billion participants we must end up trusting at least some of them.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Here is what I am thinking about </div><br></div><div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">1) Curating opinion is a trusted function.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">2) Alice has neither the skills, the information nor the inclination to curate herself.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Therefore: Alice must be able to outsource curation of opinion to a service of her choice.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">And of course, the choices Alice and Bob make are likely to be very different to those taken by Neville the NAZI. Alice and Bob don't want to see any of the rubbish posted by Neville and friends, they consider him to be an unpleasant troll and they don't want him commenting on their posts or to see anything they write. And so they choose one curation service. Neville choses another.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">I want a social media experience where I can interact with the people who respect me and respect my principles and not spend a moment having to respond to blatant lies. I don't want to see any ads either and I am willing to pay a reasonable fee for that experience.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">No, king Zuck, the fact that you want me to see something doesn't mean I want to see it. The fact that you don't want people to be down voting other people's bigoted spews doesn't mean I want to read them.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The rough sketch I am working from has everyone publishing posts to one or more personal feeds and subscribing to one or more curation services.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">So to post on my feed you must not be on my personal block list, must have a sufficiently high reputation score from at least one of my curation services or pass moderation.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">The curation services don't need to know the content being rated. All they need is the feedback people give to that content. And when searching for content, they are searching for opinion that I am likely to give the highest score to.</div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small"><br></div><div class="gmail_default" style="font-size:small">Under the covers, this is probably going to mean lots of content identifiers, lots of characteristics and some great big honking AI engines at work. The only crypto I can see in the system is the threshold encryption already in the mesh to protect the data at rest.</div><br></div></div></div>