Reputation, whether it’s called “social credit scores” or something else, is necessary and unavoidable. Just like money, it becomes dystopian when it’s controlled centrally, but not when it’s decentralized.
btc != the dystopia of fiat, and likewise: decentralized reputation != the dystopia of centralized reputation.
The challenge, therefore, is how to decentralize it.
(I don’t know if you were implying otherwise. Just a point I felt was worth making. 😊)
Thank you! 💜
How does this effect privacy in your opinion?
How does decentralized reputation affect privacy? That’s a complicated question. But in the long run, in a good way, without a doubt.
For starters, think about what it’s going to replace. Just like bitcoin is going to be better at privacy-preservation than what it replaces (fiat), decentralized reputation is ultimately going to be better than things like CCP-style credit scores. But it’s more than that: the entire structure of surveillance capitalism will be replaced. The way I conceive of it, decentralized reputation is an inextricable part of a bigger picture: decentralized knowledge curation. If we want alternatives to centralized sources of news, we’re going to need tools to help us know where to get that information, from whom, on what topic, in what context. We won’t be able to do that without decentralized reputation.
It’s complicated, because with decentralized reputation and decentralized knowledge curation, you are going to be giving up some of your privacy, to some of the people, some of the time. The difference is that you’ll have exquisite control over which information, which people, under what circumstances, and why you give it up.
