Research Team - InvisiBits

12/15/2015

Reputation is a social mechanism by which we come to trust one another, in all aspects of our society.

In a very real sense, reputation enables friendships, commerce, and everything else we do in society.

It's old, older than our species, and we are finely tuned to both perceive and remember reputation information, and broadcast it to others.

Reputation now involves technology.

Feedback and review systems. eBay rankings

Amazon reviews

Uber ratings

Google PageRank

Wikipedia articles

Our reputations are, at least in part, based on what we say on social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

In a small town, everyone knows each other and lenders can make decisions about who to loan money based on personal reputation

However it has issues Prone to personal preferences Discrimination against outsiders The system does not scale

Solution – use technology – specifically use credit reports and scores Allows us to borrow money from totally unknown

people

Even technology based systems are not perfect. It can be attacked technologically.

Someone could hack the credit bureau’s database and enhance her reputation by boosting her credit score.

She could steal someone else’s reputation.

Social engineering attacks could fool someone by hijacking the reputation of someone else.

Anyone who can figure out how to game these reputation systems could artificially boost their reputation.

Fake reviews Amazon, eBay, Yelp, etc. (This is a very difficult problem to solve when there are humans available to write reviews for you for less than a penny.)

Fake reputation in social media– buying Twitter followers, Facebook likes

Aristocratic behavior: the rich get richer phenomenon – very difficult to enter the market (e.g. a new product in Amazon)

Our biases towards what we review For example, you have got a ½ price meal at a restaurant

– for the price you paid, you give a 5 start, but in reality, it may not deserve a 5 star rating

Demographics of people could have different tastes. For example, not so techies may like the recent movie Ex-Machina compared to those who are in the tech world.

You may want to show off that you bought something expensive or you went to an expensive restaurant; even though the experience was below par, the human nature is that we tend over-rate them to peers.

Difficult to capture discriminatory behaviors For a product review, you may write a bad review

because a bad seller or a bad carrier – which does not necessarily mean that the product is bad.

It is an arms race between Those trying to artificially enhance their reputation

Those trying to detect those enhancements

Researchers have been addressing this topic for many years – it is far from solved.

Despite all the negatives mentioned earlier, we will continue to rely on these systems.

They empower us in so many ways. People can achieve a level of fame and notoriety much

more easily on the Internet. New ways of making a living.

Uber, Airbnb Popular bloggers, YouTubers

It helps us make better decisions based on the experience others had. Amazon reviews for products. Yelp reviews for restaurants.

Resilient reputation systems: stay ahead of the parties those try to game the systems. E.g. detect fake reviews and feedbacks

Support democratic behavior (not sure if this is ever possible). E.g. better opportunity for new comers

Reputation federation: take into consideration real social network reputations. E.g. real FB likes, Twitter followers, etc.

Take into account our biases towards reviews and segregate them accordingly. E.g. demographics, context, etc.

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/11/reputation_in_t.html

http://edge.org/conversation/gloria_origgi-what-is-reputation