Trust is all you need · R5D

August 07, 2026

Trust is all you need<br>And all we've lost

Correction: Web of Trust, not Chain of Trust.

The last couple years' all-encompassing problem has been trust.

The only (consumer-grade) software which materially heightened my ability to establish trust in social networks: Keybase.

If it's not clear why a Keybase-type solution has the potential to solve this nihilistic web we find ourselves in: content may be stamped with keys, keys which can be trusted or untrusted. Then your own trust signals can be shared with peers, and vice versa, forming a web of trust. Largely for the purpose of flagging low-quality barfed out slop; but also just being an open social network in its own right, the one that we've deserved but never manifested.

Slashdot's Friend/Foe system is exactly this, minus the web of trust, and minus the ability to overlay identity on other social networks. Keybase got all the way there, then it died.

Yes, indeed, this has all sorts of social problems attached, many of which are problems even without a trust network.

If I had the time and energy, I'd focus on 2 problems:

How do we reach the heights that Keybase did? (Revive it or start smaller?)

Can we use Keybase's trust model to jettison slop which exists on other web pages?

Feel free to feed those questions to the barf machines, and use the stones to destroy the stones.