Thanks for your response here. You mention that it isn't an "absolute reputation system" -- that makes sense. I'd like to know more about that because I think I'm misunderstanding the proposal.
I understand that it isn't a single dimension (like HN or Reddit karma) -- it seems your proposal is more or less a "tagging" system, but anonymized so that other users wouldn't be able to say, look at my profile and see how other users have tagged me. But other users or operators could apply a filter to exclude comments from users based on those tags? I feel like my understanding must be incomplete because that wouldn't be very anonymous -- e.g. if I applied a filter to exclude users tagged with "gopher-enthusiasts", and suddenly stopped seeing messages from a certain active members of a community I was in, that would "out" those users as "gopher-enthusiasts". So I assume the system you're proposing is more sophisticated than that. Can you clarify?
Based on my reading of what was proposed, I'm particularly concerned about these scenarios:
1. Say you have a community centred on the goldfish keeping hobby. It happens to be the largest such community -- many thousands of members. And (to use the example given by OP), suppose a large contingent of moderators (or perhaps even the server operator themselves) are super averse to guns enthusiasts, to the point where they'll either ban anyone they learn to be a gun enthusiast, or persistently tarnish any members' reputation score (for lack of a better word) until they leave, or simply won't allow anyone who is also in a gun community to participate (does this reputation system give others insight into what communities I'm in?). This is problematic because there aren't many other goldfish communities worth participating in -- all the experts participate in this one, and as a newcomer to the goldfish keeping hobby, I won't get very far "voting with my feet" here. Presumably the overwhelming majority of participants won't care or even necessarily notice that guns enthusiasts are "filtered" from the group.
Nothing stops this particular scenario from playing out today, but I guess my concern is that the proposed system would make this scenario super easy for operators to implement -- I would be filtered from the group without anyone knowing anything about me other than that maybe I had some association with a gun focused group at some point
2. Say you're having a mental health crisis, and you end up saying some stuff in a channel with many participants that you regret later. How does that impact your global reputation, and for how long?
3. Say you're a Marxist and participate in Marxist discussion groups. What kind of metadata will the reputation system generate about you? Is it possible that it'll put you on the same filter/tag lists as "terrorists" and people who advocate for the overthrow of governments, even if you don't personally hold such beliefs?
4. (Mostly a rehashing of #3) Say you're involved in some (legal, consensual, 18+) fetish community. Are you now globally on a filter list for sexual deviants that will keep you from joining, say, a parenting community?
> 1. Say you have a community centred on the goldfish keeping hobby. It happens to be the largest such community -- many thousands of members.
[...]
> 4. (Mostly a rehashing of #3) Say you're involved in some (legal, consensual, 18+) fetish community. Are you now globally on a filter list for sexual deviants that will keep you from joining, say, a parenting community?
Would these be good usecases for having two identities?
This is a complex issue. I'm not sure if Matrix's reputation system can be used to "call out" individuals or groups, like Twitter callouts (or blocklists/blockchains) operate. However, I have the experience of seeing someone on Discord being called out on Twitter for being a pedophile (though I didn't see that because Discord doesn't let you subscribe to reputation services which comments on users as you see them), and then reregistering under a different Discord identity and joining servers without saying the original identity. So this is already happening.
Twitter now shows posts liked (not just retweeted) by those you follow. I've heard that has led to "like policing", in addition to avoiding people based on who they follow.
Are reputation feeds going to be subject to threats of libel lawsuits if used for false reporting?
As Yoric says (btw, Yoric: check your DMs ;P), #1 and #4 sound like a good case for maintaining different personae.
For #2, i guess you'd need to petition whoever maintains the blocklists who were blocking you. Or give up and start a new identity.
For #3, Yeah, there's a risk here that somebody enthusiastically starts building a reputation list for The Best Marxist Content and puts the hash of your user ID on it. Someone then reverses the hash via dictionary lookup or similar and proves that you were on the list, and promptly tries to arrest you. Frankly that risk exists already today, though. We may need to try to think of better pseudonymisation approaches than just hashing though.
I understand that it isn't a single dimension (like HN or Reddit karma) -- it seems your proposal is more or less a "tagging" system, but anonymized so that other users wouldn't be able to say, look at my profile and see how other users have tagged me. But other users or operators could apply a filter to exclude comments from users based on those tags? I feel like my understanding must be incomplete because that wouldn't be very anonymous -- e.g. if I applied a filter to exclude users tagged with "gopher-enthusiasts", and suddenly stopped seeing messages from a certain active members of a community I was in, that would "out" those users as "gopher-enthusiasts". So I assume the system you're proposing is more sophisticated than that. Can you clarify?
Based on my reading of what was proposed, I'm particularly concerned about these scenarios:
1. Say you have a community centred on the goldfish keeping hobby. It happens to be the largest such community -- many thousands of members. And (to use the example given by OP), suppose a large contingent of moderators (or perhaps even the server operator themselves) are super averse to guns enthusiasts, to the point where they'll either ban anyone they learn to be a gun enthusiast, or persistently tarnish any members' reputation score (for lack of a better word) until they leave, or simply won't allow anyone who is also in a gun community to participate (does this reputation system give others insight into what communities I'm in?). This is problematic because there aren't many other goldfish communities worth participating in -- all the experts participate in this one, and as a newcomer to the goldfish keeping hobby, I won't get very far "voting with my feet" here. Presumably the overwhelming majority of participants won't care or even necessarily notice that guns enthusiasts are "filtered" from the group.
Nothing stops this particular scenario from playing out today, but I guess my concern is that the proposed system would make this scenario super easy for operators to implement -- I would be filtered from the group without anyone knowing anything about me other than that maybe I had some association with a gun focused group at some point
2. Say you're having a mental health crisis, and you end up saying some stuff in a channel with many participants that you regret later. How does that impact your global reputation, and for how long?
3. Say you're a Marxist and participate in Marxist discussion groups. What kind of metadata will the reputation system generate about you? Is it possible that it'll put you on the same filter/tag lists as "terrorists" and people who advocate for the overthrow of governments, even if you don't personally hold such beliefs?
4. (Mostly a rehashing of #3) Say you're involved in some (legal, consensual, 18+) fetish community. Are you now globally on a filter list for sexual deviants that will keep you from joining, say, a parenting community?