I define trust as believing with high certainty that a person will act in good faith. Trust is a local and global concept: it’s the sum of individual behaviors over time. How do we bootstrap trust online? What are our individual units of behavior and how should they be added up to inform trust?

It depends on the role too! Some people have great ideas but are terrible at judging other people's character - so if I invite someone because I like their posts, that seems very different than saying I invite someone because I think the people they would invite are also good.

Fwiw, I like the Trust equation. Trust = (Credibility + Reliability + Intimacy) / Self-orientation https://trustedadvisor.com/why-trust-matters/understanding-trust/understanding-the-trust-equation

As you said there's global and local concepts of trust. Just like a relationship there's global standards of what breaks trust (maybe kissing someone else) but then local that "override" it (maybe some couples are ok with that). [Oh know... A thread]???

I’m not sure what the answer is but I’m glad it’s being asked. I have concerns about using something like report numbers as an indicator for online trust (without human review).. I don’t have the data but seems to me that some demographics are more likely to be reported than others just for existing

Are you thinking about this in terms of how to moderate the network? If so, the specific type of trust I'd think about is what someone else will do with access to 1) your content or 2) your attention.

This is a very big idea. In online spaces, I think sometimes there's a flattening of humanity. It's impersonal because it's text and a PFP. I think both 'trust' and 'good faith' must be modeled. But first, people must accept that individual units of behavior exist over time as patterns.

This ofc presupposes trust is a good thing to optimize for, and not a sneaky loophole.

Trust is definitely consistent action over time IRL. Same for online no?

Dont remember where I saw it but in a forum they had a counter in the positive and negative. The more times that person said something credible (advice in this example that was correct, or right) people would vouch for it by hitting plus 1 to it (not referring to StackOverflow but similar)

Most western cultures are low trust societies. Starting from below the bottom there. I think trust has to be built and maintained one block at a time. It's hard to rebuild once lost as well. Very complicated topic.