Are there known decentralized techniques for true ostracization? A way to mute/block/shadowban an individual or group in a way that makes it prohibitively expensive for them to enter a decentralized social context (including via alts) but without requiring strong authentication of anyone else? Ie a “I am not X” gra
The only thing I can imagine is a system in which you can only participate after building enough reputation over time. If you lose your reputation you can come back with an alt, but it will take you a long time.
Seems like a zero-knowledge type problem. How can I prove I’m not a certain excluded person X without revealing who I am? One approach is to use an alibi. Alice proves she’s not Bob by proving she was somewhere else when Bob was known to be somewhere.
while not exactly in line, what happened in mastodon after the motherboard article drove traffic is an example of the 'nuclear option' any instance that didn't place a code of conduct on its landing page was widely viewed as a 'free speech' instance and placed on a shared instance blocklist
this blocklist was at one time included in the github repo, and was purely ideology driven ie some instances that wouldn't even have been able to federate due to various fediverse minutiae were included on it solely based on being a 'free speech' instance
otherwise you can look back to the forums era, banned posters often developed a new persona and re-registered, i suspect AI will. get good enough to the point that even the most skilled actors wouldn't be able to hide their identity
Oh dear. A decentralized social context is always contingent and local, so you'd be talking about trust for reach and visibility. These would need to be predicated on a detailed, reconstructable accounting of mutual recognition and context to make subversion and defection costly to those who do not enforce ostracism.
Oh there are, though not reputation systems, not voting systems, but a third secret thing.
Passport control comes to mind, as an irl analogue (i.e. “No fly” lists and whatever procedures support that system). I wonder if finger printing (Touch ID) and facial recognition could come to be used to the same effect? But I think even passport control has issues with identity confusion. It’s not error proof.