From: Rich Graves <llurch@networking.stanford.edu>
Date: Tue, 20 Aug 1996 12:10:51 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Re: search engine improvement
In-Reply-To: <199608191931.VAA02971@digicash.com>
Message-ID: <Pine.GUL.3.95.960819173400.2971F-100000@Networking.Stanford.EDU>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


On Mon, 19 Aug 1996 bryce@digicash.com wrote:

[good ideas about distributed ratings systems]

> There is the interesting issue of whether this will cause
> self-reinforcing "degeneration", where people (or an
> "affiliation"-keyed group of people) accidentally overlook a
> worthy page early in the game, and then, using each other's
> behavior to influence their own, reinforce that mistake.

It probably will. But people like being degenerates.

Another interesting issue for privacy is setting the granularity of the
information. If you know that only a few people have visited site A, and
you tell the distributing service that you like site A, then the rating
service has the potential to become a way to track people (to a certain
margin of error). Were I running such a service, I wouldn't hand out
information until enough static had accumulated to provide anonymity.

-rich