Oddbean new post about login | logout Web of trust works for a social use case however people use microblogging/ blogging platforms for other things. Journalists will follow people they don’t necessarily agree with to see what is happening on their beat. Scientists who used Twitter a lot before it’s downfall also may not have trusted everyone they followed but they were using the connections to see what else is happening in their field or adjacent fields - this is especially true when there’s a paradigm shift happening in science.
That's a fair criticism. Maybe a separate personal account/key where they only follow closer more trusted connections can somewhat offset this? Perhaps they lose some influential WoT follows bonuses from their work key but get a more accurate trust graph from their personal? Or better yet, an option for follow lists that don't get accounted for the WoT score can be implemented in the WoT spec.
This isn't really an argument against WoT, but maybe an argument that it's a poor name. All I trust people in my graph for is that they're real people. This leaves room for difference of opinion. More nuanced representations of WoT like what nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7etyv4hzumn0wd68ytnvv9hxgtcpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qgnwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxtcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qyt8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kytcprpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuendwsh8w6t69e3xj730qyf8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68yv339e3k7mf0qyw8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnzd96xxmmfdecxzunt9e3k7mf0qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qpqu5njm6g5h5cpw4wy8xugu62e5s7f6fnysv0sj0z3a8rengt2zqhs54wfss is working on could represent more substantial "trust".
This is a good point. For now, I consider the phrase “web of trust” to be a very broad one that encompasses a wide variety of purposes and methods. It’s been over 3 decades since pretty good privacy was released and we still haven’t wrapped our heads around it as a community, as evidenced by the fact that the big tech companies still exist. So a big, broad, loosely defined term works for me. Recently (last month or two), I’ve been using the term “WoT Score” in a very focused way, to differentiate it from other scoring systems like the Influence Score which is what I’m advocating now that I have a working demo of how to calculate it and use it. Tapestry, concept graph, and grapevine are umbrella terms I use to describe my own approaches, with a glossary of 20 or 30 or so associated terms and concepts, written in draft form and at varying states of editing in my github repos. It will be interesting to see how the terminology around WoT develops over time. I anticipate the terminology will evolve as the use cases become more apparent.