Improving Cybertrust Is Necessary?
from the is-it-really? dept
We've discussed this issue a few times before, but no one ever seems to agree about it. Clearly, transactions of any kind flow much more smoothly when both sides have some sort of "trust" in each other. However, for years, no one has been able to figure out a really good way to really demonstrate a way to create that trust online. Now, this article is saying that building better online trust is necessary to keep growing the internet economy. The thing is, articles like this one assume that we somehow need to build "trust" into the network - and I don't think you can really do that. There's a reason that building up trust takes time - and that's because it's not something you signal with a 1 or a 0, but is built up from a variety of sources over time. I buy goods from Amazon because I trust them to deliver the goods that I've bought. However, that trust was only built up over time, after I knew others who successfully bought from Amazon and had tried it with a few small purchases many years ago. You can do things like have eBay-style feedback mechanisms - but all of those things can be gamed as well (as shown by many recent eBay scams involving sellers who appeared to have a ton of positive feedback). In the end, I agree that trust is very important in making transactions flow smoothly, but I'm not sure that trust can successfully be built into the network itself. There may be mechanisms to better query your circle of friends to see who they trust - but it's still going to have to be a judgment call by the end user on whether or not they trust the other side in a deal.
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