The Reputation Society: How Online Opinions Are Reshaping the Offline World
Edited by Hassan Masum and Mark Tovey
Foreword by Craig Newmark

In making decisions, we often seek advice. Online, we check Amazon recommendations, eBay vendors’ histories, TripAdvisor ratings, and even our elected representatives’ voting records. These online reputation systems serve as filters for information overload. In this book, experts discuss the benefits and risks of such online tools.

The contributors offer expert perspectives that range from philanthropy and open access to science and law, addressing reputation systems in theory and practice. Properly designed reputation systems, they argue, have the potential to create a “reputation society,” reshaping society for the better by promoting accountability through the mediated judgments of billions of people. Effective design can also steer systems away from the pitfalls of online opinion sharing by motivating truth-telling, protecting personal privacy, and discouraging digital vigilantism.

About the Editors

Hassan Masum is a policy and technology strategist and Affiliate Researcher at the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo.

Mark Tovey is an Affiliate Researcher at the Waterloo Institute for Complexity and Innovation at the University of Waterloo. He is the editor of Collective Intelligence: Creating a Prosperous World at Peace.

This book was inspired by the “Symposium on Reputation Economies in Cyberspace” I helped organize at the Yale Information Society Project in 2007, and I’m excited to see the results of that event finally get published.

I’m also happy to note that I co-authored one the chapters in the volume with Anthony Hoffmann, a PhD student at UW-Milwaukee School of Information Studies. Our contribution is titled, “Privacy, Context, and Oversharing: Reputational Challenges in a Web 2.0 World“:

When personal information is shared online, it may spread farther and faster than expected or inappropriately push intimate details to near-strangers. Zimmer and Hoffmann address the twin risks of information spreading beyond its intended context and the oversharing of personal information.

You can purchase the book at Amazon, etc. Enjoy!

As one of the organizers, I spent much of the day either running around, or, when sitting in the room, thinking about what I needed to be running around for next, so I wasn’t able to take extensive notes or blog about it myself.

I did, however, have the great pleasure of chairing an amazing panel on Privacy and Reputational Protection, featuring Alessandro Acquisti, Danielle Citron, William McGeveran, Dan Solove, and Jonathan Zittrain. Rebecca has an excellent summary here. My key takeaway points from the discussion were:

• How do we manage the paradox between users’ stated privacy preferences and their actual actions?
• How do we (or should we) make online spaces safe from malicious group attacks (i.e., the dog poop girl and Kathy Sierra cases). How would we reconcile this with the desire to support free expression online?
• Should technological or regulatory steps be taken to make it difficult to find certain information, especially old reputational data (i.e., should databases learn to “forget” that a person made a mistake some years ago that has little bearing on her current reputation)?
• What duties do information aggregators or intermediaries have in providing a feedback loop to allow subjects to correct, annotate, or provide context to items which impact one’s reputation (i.e., the ability for subjects of news articles to provide comments at Google News)?
• Finally, what is the magical mix of law, regulation, and technological solutions to all these concerns?

Thanks to everyone for helping make this conference a great success.

Spots are still available, but filling up quickly. You can register here, and we’ve added a new discounted student registration fee of $45.

I hope to see many of you there!

This event will bring together representatives from industry, government, and academia to explore themes in online reputation, community-mediated information production, and their implications for democracy and innovation. The symposium is made possible by the generous support of the Microsoft Corporation.

A distinguished group of experts will map out the terrain of reputation economies in four panels: (1) Making Your Name Online; (2) Privacy and Reputation Protection; (3) Reputation and Information Quality; and (4) Ownership of Cyber-Reputation. See below for more detail on each panel; a current list of confirmed speakers is available at the conference website.

Online registration is available now at: https://wems.worldtek.com/RepEcon. There is a $95 registration fee, which includes lunch. Yale students and faculty and embers of the press may attend for free.

Panel I: Making Your Name Online

Moderator: Jack Balkin
Panelists: Michel Bauwens , Rishab A. Ghosh, Hassan Masum, Beth Noveck

This panel will discuss the shifts in the reputation economy that we are witnessing, largely the transition from accreditation to participatory, community-based modes of reputation management. Some of the questions the panel will address include:

• What are the new norms for cyber-reputation?
• How do these depart from offline models?
• How can reputation in one online system be transported to another?
• How do SNS and reputation connect?
• How do you bootstrap and cash out?

Panel II: Privacy and Reputational Protection

Moderator: Michael Zimmer
Panelists: Alessandro Acquisti , Danielle Citron, William McGeveran , Dan Solove , Jonathan Zittrain

Cyber-reputation management is based on transactions in information that is often sensitive and is always contextual. This brings up many questions about the need to protect one’s privacy and reputation within and outside this system. Some of the questions the panel will address:

• How is participation in cyber-reputation systems related to defamation and free speech?
• What happens when cyber-reputation spills over into offline activities and relationships like the political process, job applications, or school admissions?
• What happens when your second life meets your first?
• Requiring divulgence of real name or other personal data. Is opting out possible?

Panel III: Reputational Quality and Information Quality

Moderator: Laura Forlano
Panelists: Urs Gasser, Ashish Goel, Auren Hofman, Darko Kirovski , Mari Kuraishi

Evidently, unlike traditional reputation mechanisms that relied on small group acquaintances and formal accreditation mechanisms, the cyber-reputation economy is heavily mediated by technology. This raises the risk of breaking the delicate checks and balances that are necessary for the system to ensure quality of both the informational outcomes and the participants’ reputation. This panel will try to highlight the connections between the way the new systems are built, and the outcome they produce. Some of the questions the panel will address:

• How can we assure quality in online reputation economies?
• What is the connections between the system design and the quality information?
• How good are the alternative accreditation mechanisms and how easy are they to hijack?
• How can employment discrimination law adapt to the realities of online reputation?

Panel IV: Ownership of Cyber-Reputation

Moderator: Eddan Katz
Panelists: John Clippinger , Eric Goldman, Bob Sutor, Mozelle Thompson , Rebecca Tushnet

The data and information that are collected in online reputation systems are both valuable and powerful. The ability to control this information, store it, process it, access it, and transport it are crucial to the maintenance of the reputation economy. This panel will address the important set of questions that concern the ownership of this information. Some questions the panel will address:

• Who owns one’s online reputation? Who owns the metadata?
• How portable is online reputation? Should it be transportable from one system to another?
• How is reputation connected to the interoperability question? Should we have international standards governing reputation?