PTE BTK Nyelvtudományi Doktori Iskola Kommunikáció Doktori Program Babarczy Eszter: Community Based Trust on the Internet Doktori értekezés Témavezető: Horányi Özséb egyetemi tanár 2011. 1 Community-based trust on the internet Tartalom Introduction .................................................................................................................................................. 3 II. A very brief history of the internet ........................................................................................................... 9 Early Days ............................................................................................................................................... 11 Mainstream internet .............................................................................................................................. 12 The internet of social software .............................................................................................................. 15 III Early trust related problems and solutions ............................................................................................ 20 Trading .................................................................................................................................................... 20 Risks of and trust in content ....................................................................................................................... 22 UGC and its discontents: Wikipedia ....................................................................................................... 24 Mechanical peers and false perceptions: the Twitter revolution .............................................................. 29 Internet identity risks ................................................................................................................................. 44 IV. The first trust mechanisms online: lessons of Ebay and the Prisoners’ Dilemma ................................ 50 The role of communities ........................................................................................................................ 61 Geo-cities: community and the exit option ............................................................................................ 63 World-of-mouth reputations .................................................................................................................. 64 A reputation economy? .............................................................................................................................. 66 V. Online tribes: the relevance of rich membership in creating trust ........................................................ 73 Hacker ethos: a meritocracy of peers ........................................................................................................ 87 Exploiting trust online ............................................................................................................................ 94 Internet cowboys and the creation of the Internet community utopia ..................................................... 96 Founding fathers and the Facebook model .............................................................................................. 101 Core members and seniors ....................................................................................................................... 107 VI. Conclusions – the uses of game theory in explaining internet reputation mechanisms and internet communities ............................................................................................................................................. 110 References ................................................................................................................................................ 145 2 Introduction Trust has many definitions and can be applied in many settings (see Tilly, 2010; Hardin, 2002 and 2005; Sztompka 1999; Gambetta 1996). Most people trust their relatives and close friends. I trust my washing machine (not to break down). I may trust the government or any of its institutions or services. I often trust vendors, postmen, repair men, kindergarten teachers, etc, to perform the services I buy from them. I might have trust in my future, or the future of my children. Scholars trust publications that have a high impact value, and trust colleagues who publish in such publications. People trust television news although they might feel deep distrust for journalists. To put it in a more succinct form, trust can be applied to natural persons (including self), persons-in-a-role (roles), institutions and content of any kind. In English we might use different terms for these varieties of trust. Self-trust would be properly called self-confidence. Trusting your child's abilities or future can also have the linguistic form of „being confident about” them. You can say you find this or that publication reliable. You can also say you know you can always count on your family. Scholarly journals might have a good (or bad) reputation; the same applies to individual scholars, certain commercial services or firms, etc. Some journalists, community leaders or business partners can be regarded as trustworthy. In this chapter I'll stuck to the word „trust” for the simple reason that English synonyms might reflect useful nuances but in other languages – such as my mother tongue, Hungarian – these nuances are either lacking, or apply to different concepts and situations of trust. However, I will add “trustworthy” , and a concept that has no English equivalent – in Hungarian it is “bizalomgerjesztő”; meaning that something or someone looks or seems dependable, or inspires trust (more about this will be discussed in the last case study). Interestingly, it is used mostly in a negated form: someone or something does not look dependable or inspire trust. In trust-research standard survey techniques usually distinguish generalized trust; an attitude that characterizes the person (trusting or not trusting) on a scale, a personality trait that might of course reflect previous experiences, and trust or institutional trust that applies to specific situations where trust (and its degrees) reflect a relation between trustee and trusted. It is also assumed that generalized trust is an indicator of the willingness to take risks (in general), while institutional trust implies an awareness of a specific risk with reference to the specific 3 relationship or action between the person and the institution, role or other person that she/he has some affair with. On the internet, an example of high generalized trust (or interpersonal trust) could be the attitude of a teenager on an IRC channel, chatting with “nicks” or online personae and giving away information concerning herself. The other form of trust implies some form of transaction where an internet user wishes to use a service or buy something from a stranger and takes precautions against being cheated or any other harm that might hit him. Early internet trust research focused on transactional trust (including artificial agents). Paul Resnick proved that there was a price premium for high reputation sellers on Ebay – meaning that people are more willing to buy, even at a higher price, from people who have a “good trust history”. I use this term to indicate the similarity of Ebay reputation and credit histories that most US banks keep, or, for new clients, ask for to establish the creditworthiness of an individual. In this sense, granting credit or granting trust in a given transaction are very similar, despite the difference of the setting and the mechanics of establishing a “history”. If we go further (both in time and in generalization), we can link early word-of-mouth referrals in long- distance commerce, Chinese guanxi, the Zagat dining guidebook and social networks – in a way, these are all techniques, or can be used as techniques, to establish “histories” that are relevant to judging the trustworthiness of a person, a service or an institution. A word of caution is needed here. Ebay reputation mechanisms, word-of-mouth in commerce and – to some extent – guanxi are solutions to what game theorists call “the prisoners' dilemma”. Zagat and Facebook are not PD-related. Not all “trailing” solutions to trust can be analysed in terms of strategic interactions – on the contrary. In the next chapter I'll try to argue that although eBay is seen as a pure form of iterated n-person PD, this is an oversimplification. If we wish to understand where trust is needed, how trust works and what specific risks and techniques dealing with these risks arise on the internet, we have to go beyond game theoretical models. When I submitted my dissertation proposal – in 2002 – I did not foresee how long it would take for me to finish writing. What was all excitement in 2002 became commonplace by 2010. On the other hand, since 2002 several new services have been created that both pose and/or solve new problems of trust and reputation. During the weeks I typed up my dissertation, at least three new services were launched – and these are only the services I that came to my attention while also writing a dissertation that took up most of my resources that I usually dedicate to monitor online developments. 4 In this paper I develop three hypotheses and put forward arguments to support them. If I use some empirical research, this is usually second-hand or ad-hoc research that I conducted on the internet. The arguments I develop here are theoretical