Nostr Web Client

Could nostr be used to solve fake reviews spam?

I was just thinking about this a bit and think maybe it could?

Right now, every platform has an issue with fake reviews. No matter what they say, fake reviews are leaking into all sorts of platforms - predominantly into Amazon.

New platforms based on Nostr could implement Web of Trust mechanisms where npubs are used to calculate a trust score (an aggregate score of all the pubs who commented on a product / service, whatever it may be). This score could be used to show confidence levels in the notes.

The platform implementing this could offer different criteria for confidence levels (so the user can always be in control of which criteria matters to them).

For example, the user could select “aged npubs with x number of followers” or only npubs who post on this platform frequently, or any combination of any other factors (following, network of people I follow), that may indicate a quality response (perhaps an image of the product).

Obviously, the spam will continue, but at least the user will be armed with ways of differentiating which npubs may be spam and which aren’t.

Thoughts?

Water Blower 2y ago

Some Traditional platforms also use web of trust. The problem is not all have payment history. For example Yelp has no payments.

But on Nostr we can implement 2 scores. A global score and a personal score based on user setting only. Even better is to use LLM to explain the global score by reading all comments.

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Discussion

david 2y ago

If nostr implements 2 scores like you mention (global and personal), the personal score will eventually eclipse the global score in power and importance. It’s something that can only be implemented properly in a decentralized system like nostr. Centralized systems are simply unable to provide personal scores for various reasons, which is why we’ve never seen their power unleashed.

A global score is nothing different than a particular personal score that is centered around whoever represents the community. eg when Google calculates PageRank scores for websites, it’s basically a system of “personal” scores, except that the only score we ever see is Larry Page’s (Google’s) “personal” score, and none of the rest of us ever get to see our personal scores. So the global score = Larry’s personal score. And in a broader sense, “global” score always = the “personal” score of an individual or entity.

I wrote years ago about personal vs global scores here:

https://github.com/WebOfTrustInfo/rwot1-sf/blob/master/Principle-of-Relativity-for-WoT.md

Water Blower 2y ago

Very insightful take!