Re: the introduction problem, was Email and reputation (was Re: Service outages planned for April 25)

[Keith Moore <[e-mail]>]

On 5/14/22 13:14, John Levine wrote:

>> * Anyone with an introduction from someone I have authorized to give
>> introductions
> That's exactly web of trust, and we have seen why that doesn't scale,
> because your contacts' preferences aren't yours.  ("Gee, he seemed so
> nice and it would have been rude to refuse.")

Actually it's not quite the same as web of trust in the PGP sense.   
People routinely understand that just because Alice and Bob know each 
other does not mean that either Alice or Bob should disclose the other's 
contact information to a third party without the other's permission, or 
at least without a very finely tuned sense of the other's boundaries.  
If one of them does disclose the other's contact information, that's a 
betrayal of trust that has consequences, especially if done too many 
times.  Introductions of this kind have been used for centuries at 
least.  I don't see a scaling problem with this idea unless you somehow 
expect that all legitimate sending of messages between strangers should 
require prior introductions.

PHB's proposal adds a layer to that which is Alice must be authorized by 
Bob to introduce Bob to someone else.  Presumably that authorization can 
be withdrawn by Bob at any time should Alice betray that trust, or 
should Alice and Bob become more distant.

PGP's web of trust wasn't trying to solve the same problem at all.   
Among the many problems with PGP's web of trust was that the kind of 
trust needed to certify strangers' credentials to one another simply 
isn't transitive.   But I don't see how PHB is trying to make his 
introductions transitive.

Keith