Readings
Discussion Questions
- How different is dating from other introduction problems today?
- How central is reputation to the problem of CMI? To what extent is reputation scalable?
- How generalizable is the concept of computer-mediated introductions? Could a search engine be a form of CMI, but for websites, not people? What about advertisements, such as political advertisements?
Notes
Lecture 15
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G1
- dating is long term, but other introductions are more short term
- could star ratings work for dating? probably not...unless looking for hookups
- could penalize new daters who have a bad first date
- reputation is the primary factor in CMIs
- record of many positive interactions -> increased trust
- human->website intro, goes back to narrative auth
- website->website, could use star rep system
G2
- uber closest to online dating, but time duration is very different
- amount of trust in dating is much higher than every other CMI
- stars definitely influence interactions
- behavior depends on context (kid at school vs at home)
- search engine is a form of CMI
- no matching in the actual ad, but ad targeting is a kind of CMI
G3
- dating differs in how much info you have to reveal versus other CMI
- reputation is central to CMI - uber, ebay, etc
- ratings are not so objective in dating
- reputation exists all over the place - e.g., online search
- CMI is definitely part of online advertisements
G4
- dating is a game problem: incentives for honesty, minimal communication, and deception depending on the party
- what are acceptable lies in an online profile?
- applies to other CMI problems
- advertisers are willing to fudge the truth!
- reputation is the most important factor in CMI
- how you calculate trust is very important, flaws will be exploited by adversaries
- search engines & advertisements, both CMIs
Dating: put out info to get a good match, limit info to maintain safety
search engines have different incentives but still there are opposing goals
- web sites don't need to make trust judgements of search engines, different from dating and other CMIs
Question: how could you game dating app reputation systems?
- get your friends to join <- difficult to stop
- sock puppet accounts <- only if auth can be gamed
Why do we care about reputation? When is it important?
- we use it to mitigate risk
(placing ourselves in a vulnerable situation)
- risk & relative power
Reputation is problematic with the Internet today, I think.
- AI
- fraudulent reputation signals (e.g., paid reviews, sock puppets)
- bots, automated attacks on reputation systems
If reputation doesn't scale in an evolutionarily stable way
- efforts to scale reputation will be attacked and circumvented over time