Federated Reputation

Federated Reputation an internet social infrastructure idea

This could be used for web sites of all sorts, as well as fedi instances and users.

It starts with the idea of a Federated Reputation Provider (FRP), which is a site that allows an individual (or group) to rate internet entities in terms of trustworthiness and other key characteristics.

Each FRP would then select other FRPs they trust and federate them. Any given FRP would then present the opinions of that FRP's owner combined with the opinions of others they trust. (Note that an FRP wouldn't have to be a fedi instance or even a fedi user. It could probably be done without even a domain-per-FRP.)

From that, it becomes possible to create browser plugins which show you a trust-rating on sites you visit, and (especially) warn you about low-rated sites -- based on the FRPs you choose. It could even take ratings from several FRPs and combine them, to reduce the concentration of power even further.

Similarly, a fedi instance or individual users on an instance could automatically block or filter users/instances whose ratings fell below a certain threshold.

This could also be used to federate spam-blocklists, which should:

• reduce the amount of damage done by a single false-positive listing
• reduce the time it takes to get new spammers listed and false-positives removed
• increase the level of attention spent on listings, and hence their overall accuracy