Is there some kind of circle of trust established-- you know, good old fashioned key-signing plus vouching for people? 10 years ago I would have bet big money that by now people would have well-established cryptographic identities online, verified by a larger circle of trust. Does this exist, or is that a dated idea without a whole lot of merit?
Or maybe that's what LinkedIn was supposed to be before it turned into something that to me feels much more impersonal and spammy.
The only issue with the web-of-trust is that all it takes is trusting someone that turns out to be untrustworthy to bring it all down. Do you really think that the same people that click-through whatever dialogs popup without reading them (just because "it's in front of what I want to see" or "I just let it do whatever it wants to do so that I can get about my work") are going to properly evaluate their trust in someone before just signing away? People today are even less vigilant about the internet because loads of them have grown up with it, and won't learn the 'internet is dangerous' lesson until it bites them (the same with: "don't trust all your data to a single provider" and "always backup all of your data to multiple places, as well as off-site").
Or maybe that's what LinkedIn was supposed to be before it turned into something that to me feels much more impersonal and spammy.