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PCs falsifying Rep blogs

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Mon, 2009-11-02 19:36

Moracai

PCs falsifying Rep blogs

So, here's how I'm assuming how the Rep system goes: Anyone can make a positive or negative remark on anyone else's relevant Rep score. That is accompanied with a comment, so that people can recognize the "needy" ones (so that the game system works as written). Assume that the characters decide to falsify comments. Not too often, because I'm assuming an automated date appears on the given comment (unless somehow hacked, but lets not go there, yet). Given enough downtime, the characters can up each other's rep scores quite significantly, by saying on each other's comments that "this guy is great, he did this or that favor for me! Yay him!". How can I go around this problem? I know that Rep is *supposed* to be a very abstract system (enter the handwavium/GM fiat), but how I can mechanically prevent/minimise this type of behaviour, without flat-out saying: You can't do that, because I don't want you to do it? Please, give your anwer some good thought before posting, coz I have explored quite a few options already. 1. One positive/negative comment per user doesn't really work, IMO. 2. The abstracteness of the system doesn't really work as an argument, because there are concrete (=nonabstract) guidelines (Making a level x favor / failure to make a level x favor) in the book on how go to go about increasing one's Rep. 3. Tracking the resources whether the favor in question has really been made or not doesn't work. There are some very intangible favors which cannot be tracked. 4. Putting the commenter to a "lie-detector" test (tracking the bioscans for signs of stress) doesn't work either. No way of picking those up from a synth or info morph. Besides that would be against many of the factions beliefs, IMHO. 5. Simply not giving PCs the downtime to do it would work, but that's just so heavyhanded railroading that nobody would want to play. 6. Assuming that solution 5. would be in effect there still would be the matter of just hacking the Rep scores, which is a kind of a problem too in itself. Where the data is stored? Muse? On hab computers (which would present another problem. How to transport the data when egocasting?)? On ego? All of these can be hacked. 7. Not giving the PCs the chance on some bogus grounds like "but you are of the same troupe" to modify each other's Rep scores would only result in them doing that through false ID egoes. plz, hlp

Mon, 2009-11-02 21:16

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

I don't think a single rep blog is exactly what determines the rep of a character. It would have to be a Massive blog. There are something like a quarter of a billion @-listers out there 5000 positive comments by 5 different people probably wouldn't have much effect. If it did have an effect it would be pretty obvious that 5 people really like the character and so it would be pretty obvious that 5 people are 'Stuffing' that characters rep, (to coin a phrase), and I'm pretty sure the system is immune to gaming on that micro level. Rep gaming does happen. There's some cannon info in the book that I'll reference later. I'm pretty sure there's a crime syndicate partially devoted to that occupation. My impression was that it is a large scale opperation-something like the asians on WoW who get paid to spend 18 hrs a day making tiny amounts of WoW cash to sell on E-bay. It's not something that could be accomplished by several characters in down time. However; I am getting ideas about how to write an adventure around it. Maybe a big, 'long con' scam like that old Paul Newman/Robert Redford movie. [edit] Also I'm realizing that the system for trading favors for rep is also an abstraction. It's unrealistic to think about any of the mechanics of the New Ecconomy Literally. Based on sheer numbers and membership it's kinda silly to think of someone gaining a rep point just for buying a round of drinks. The other 249,999,998 people in your network really don't care about that level of favor.[/edit]

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2009-11-02 21:17

Octomorph

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

My take on the rep system would be that it would take into account both the number of people providing rep (positive and negative) and the commentor's own rep with the appropriate network. On the one hand, you might have a lot of positive comments/votes from people with relatively low rep, but that provide credibility due to the distributed nature of the votes, while on the other hand you could get an equivalent impact from just a few (or even one) vote from someone with a very high rep with that faction/network. I would say that votes are tallied by identity with some algorithm which discounts overly frequent voting for the same person by the same people (and could even apply negative rep in cases of abuse). Of course, identity can be spoofed, but chances are that if you get caught, your rep with that network (or possibly others) is going to take a major hit - is it worth it? Hope that helps

Mon, 2009-11-02 22:01

Moracai

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

These replies were very helpful, thank you very much! OneTrikPony, I think your numbers on how many people there are in the Sol system is a bit off. Full half of transhumanity probably ain't @-listers ;) (Page 38, Solar System After the Fall) But that doesn't make your point any less valuable :D

Mon, 2009-11-02 22:39

OneTrikPony OneTrikPony's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

holy Crap! Humanity really got screwed. For some reason I had the number 1.2 billion in my head. Thanks for the correction, page references are always aprieciated. I guess I better hury and get around to creating that census table from the System Gazeteer. Speaking of references: pp84 "Pax Familae" "Common ventures include...reputation network gaming..."

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Mea Culpa: My mode of speech can make others feel uninvited to argue or participate. This is the EXACT opposite of what I intend when I post.

Mon, 2009-11-02 23:45

Moracai

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Thanks for the reference!

Sat, 2009-11-21 15:38

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

The only rep network that really relies on a closed system of discretely identifiable "rep blogs," or however you want to think about them, is Firewall. And Firewall is small and close-knit enough that you can't fake Firewall rep. For everyone else, rep scores are not one social network or anything that simple. They represent the totality of information about a character -- their public footprint within a given realm. What the different groups value and therefore pay attention to varies by purpose, too. So for CivicNet, your credit rating, resume, employment history, references and the like will be very important. For RNA, published papers, patents held, contributions made to open source projects, and so forth will all determine perceptions of you. For Guangxi, there's the old school street whispers and "shit, don't fuck with that dude!" kind of talk that goes on. Et cetera... Add to this social networks, other media, and the huge amount of data you can get on someone just by doing some Research tests, and the short answer is that you can't really fake rep. If you've closely observed a social network like Twitter, you quickly learn to tell the difference between people who have substantial connections and those who are just going around gladhanding everyone to get more follows. In a society where Networking is a core skill on your character sheet, people's bullshit detectors have only gotten more finely honed.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Fri, 2009-12-11 16:46

remade

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Haha :) Nice idea. I'd use/burn some criminal/media rep to boost the other - i bet there are some specialists for this task :)

Fri, 2009-12-11 20:08

RobBoyle

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

I think it's safe to say that the various rep networks would have some basic security measures in place, from simple controls like having AIs that monitor mesh IDs and the electronic signatures that go with positive/negative comments, in order to prevent gaming a rep score with sock puppets, ballot-stuffing, or similar measures. As someone else noted, there would likely be algorithms so that a 1000 positive comments from the same 5 sources would impact your rep less than a 1000 positive comments from a 1000 sources. It's possible that positive/negative comments might also be weighted based on the commenter's own rep score -- major props from a Nobel prize winner could get you more rep than major props from the slacker who sculpts bong pipes down at the cult compound. It's also very likely that different rep networks work differently, with different algorithms and controls. Fame most certainly weighs rep comments by the commenter's own fame/rep, whereas the A-List is probably more egalitarian and less likely to give any particular person's comments more weight than anyone else's. Keep in mind that penalties for gaming/hack networks would be quite severe in terms of damage to your rep. If you get caught, your rep is going to be screwed for a long time to come. At least under that ID :) At some point down the line, we do plan to provide some more detail on how rep networks work and the various ways they can be gamed/hacked. We're still doing some research on that front. Part of that is seeing what ideas various players and GMs come up with for how this stuff might work and be exploited!

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Wed, 2009-12-16 01:45

#10

TheRawrnstuff TheRawrnstuff's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Also, a thing that came to mind; You know the software that asks you upon installation that "would you like to help us make this software much more fun"? Supposedly the software sends every now and again some info for the distributor or whatnot about the usage of the software? Get it? These kind of worms could lurk in any augmented reality gadget or similar programs, not even considering asking permission.

Thu, 2009-12-17 18:59

#11

jackgraham jackgraham's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

It's likely that for some networks, there are people out there who actively police them... for rep rewards of their own! Debunking someone else's falsified rep would be a great way to gain rep yourself. So if you have a problem with players trying to do this, having them run afoul of someone who makes their business to catch just that sort of thing could be a good lesson.

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J A C K G R A H A M :: Hooray for Earth! http://eclipsephase.com :: twitter @jackgraham @faketsr :: Google+Jack Graham

Thu, 2009-12-17 20:53

#12

Zophiel

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Two thoughts spring to mind with that last comment. First, there's an adventure, or at least a fun subplot in this. Someone hires a criminal syndicate to help them fake their rep. If its a PC then they have to contend with fooling the social monitors. If its an NPC, the PC's might be those social monitors. Much mesh back and forth trying to track who is really who and what really happened. Second, while rep is semi-formalized there eventually comes a point for someone with false rep where they need a favor and everyone who can help says "I've never heard of you. Who did you say is vouching for you again?" Failed networking rolls can go very very badly on scum barges.

Mon, 2009-12-21 06:50

#13

Deflare

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

As others have said, much of what makes the rep system work is that all the other participants have rep as well. Say you have four egos that are trying to pump up a fifth. An even cursory inspection of that fifth person's recent feedback will make it glaringly obvious that they've gotten a lot of praise from a very small number of people or from a lot of anonymous accounts for little reason; that's going to get fishy damned fast, and people are likely to neg-rep #5--along with their four friends, if those four friends can be tracked down (and chances are that someone's going to have enough free time to track them down). I'd had thoughts along similar lines, but in the opposite direction--namely, what keeps two feuding transhumans from driving each other's reputations into the ground? Mostly the fact that other people are watching and paying attention to this stuff--with only a few thousand people in a given habitat and tens, maybe a handful of hundreds of thousands* at most in each set of social networks, there's not a hell of a lot else to do. And even if someone isn't paying attention, chances are they've set loose some AIs who will. If something fishy's going on, then they'll spot it right quick. ...Though admittedly, two petty, feuding jerks will probably have their reputations fall into the tank anyway. Counterfeit rep isn't unheard of, but it takes a lot more skills and resources than a small posse of yahoos can muster--rather a lot like counterfeiting money. That posse will be found out within days, and neg-repped into oblivion. Hell of a way to get the Black Mark negative trait for that network. *No, not half of transhumanity is an autonomist. However, given how flexible the rep rules are, I could well see half of transhumanity having some sort of cred with the autonomists, even if it's just @-rep 1 to represent someone going, "I liked this guy's AR bedroom designed, and used it in my own!" after the data somehow got from Venus to the Saturnine system.

Wed, 2010-01-13 10:39

#14

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

We are already seeing something similar in how people try to game search engine algorithms. At first it was enough to have a lot of keywords that fitted searches to get a high ranking (resulting in pages with lots of hidden lure text). When Google arrived rank became dependent on being linked to by other pages. Now people set up plenty of pages pointing at the page they were trying to prop up. However, the page rank algorithm takes the importance of linking pages into account, so just generating a million pointless pages doesn't help. Instead the gamers began trying to get blog comments and legitimate-looking pages to link. Google and the other search engines responded by refining the algorithm, and so on. In EP this process has been occuring for many decades, probably without ever reaching an equilibrium. Advertisers design their mesh presences to entice search AIs, search AIs learn when they are fooled, the advert AIs generate new presences and so on. The same dynamics has been happening in reputation networks. The networks are probably very resilient but not perfect - there are ways of gaming them, but they won't last long. Then you need a new scam. An interesting example of how to make reputations automatically is WikiTrust. It calculates a trust rating for each Wikipedia author based on how rarely their text get changed by others. A vandal or bad writer will get a low rating, while people who write things people keep get high ratings. It can even colour the text of articles to show the trustworthiness of the author of each particular part. This system is tricky to game because you need to invest a lot of time and effort into writing good stuff (or at least unchanged stuff, like a million articles on obscure subjects) and if you start to misuse your trust rating it will likely start dropping. But I have no doubt it can be gamed - and that if it is, someone will update the algorithms. Another interesting reputation system (this time fictional) was the society in Alastair Reynold's "The Prefect" where people made a living from being good at predicting demarchist votes. Since their predictions were logged and gave them increased voting power when proven correct, as a society they had significant pull. This made them popular among marketers and lobbyists who provided most of the habitat income. However, in order to function they had to ensure that their votes were correct, so they couldn't allow themselves to be too biased. In EP I expect a lot of rep is auto-generated or auto-estimated. Imagine local specks logging the facial expressions of people who interact with a person, estimating the average mood change and posting it online. Sure, few give much weight to that measurement, but it is part of the total rep. Just as a hundred other auto-channels. Some of which might be part of rep-manipulation schemes.

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Tue, 2010-02-23 20:37

#15

Bloodwork

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

If each rep score is tied to a specific ID, then what about false IDs? Do they start at zero in everything? When someone is fluctuating their mesh ID, are they unable to use their rep scores because no one knows who they are?

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That which doesn't kill you usually succeeds on the second attempt.

Wed, 2010-02-24 06:51

#16

Arenamontanus Arenamontanus's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

That is how I would handle it. After all, if your rep is traceable to the new ID then it is a no-brainer to figure out who you are. Of course, you could tell your trusted contacts: "It is me, LeClerc!" and if they are trustworthy you can use your rep with them - but that only works on a one-to-one basis, and if you do it too much the ID will start leaking. One of my players' character borrowed an alternate ID from some researchers. They had a paleontologist persona they used as cover when going off-site to party. Same ID, different people - and since it was a persistent character he even had a bit of rep. The character conscientiously made sure the persona returned with slightly better rep than before.

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Wed, 2010-02-24 23:15

#17

RobBoyle

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Bloodwork wrote:
If each rep score is tied to a specific ID, then what about false IDs? Do they start at zero in everything?

Yeah, they'd be a fresh start. However, it's worth noting that an ID with zero rep in any networks might come across as suspicious, so I'd imagine that criminal networks that sell IDs probably also have a business where they game the reps of those fake IDs so that you're not starting from nowhere. Heck, they probably set up entire communities of fake IDs that they then have "interact" with each other, giving each other both positive and negative feedback, to make it look more natural. Speaking of 0 rep in a particular social network -- in some ways this may be worse than having bad rep (in the form of some negative marks on your rep score). Someone with 0 rep is a complete unknown, there's nothing to base judgement on yet. Sort of like how having no credit is worse than having bad credit. Then again, there is probably an active group of mesh users who still value privacy, and who still make a habit of keeping their mesh activity anonymous and using throwaway IDs, accounts, etc. Or maybe they only share their real ID and rep score within their circle of real friends, and outside of this they run anonymously. There might be some leeway given to people who intentionally have 0 rep for this reason.

Bloodwork wrote:
When someone is fluctuating their mesh ID, are they unable to use their rep scores because no one knows who they are?

Yeah, if they're hiding their mesh ID to be anonymous, then they'd be concealing the means for people to look up their rep.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Thu, 2010-03-04 12:37

#18

Octomorph

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

In a scenario I was involved in, where I had purchased a backup ID, I also purchased rep for that ID, separate from the rep score for the primary. More expensive, but I figured it would be the only way to make effective use of networks when using that ID.

Sat, 2010-03-06 22:16

#19

The Doctor The Doctor's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

RobBoyle wrote:
Yeah, they'd be a fresh start. However, it's worth noting that an ID with zero rep in any networks might come across as suspicious, so I'd imagine that criminal networks that sell IDs probably also have a business where they game the reps of those fake IDs so that you're not starting from nowhere. Heck, they probably set up entire communities of fake IDs that they then have "interact" with each other, giving each other both positive and negative feedback, to make it look more natural.

It might also be a common strong-arm tactic by organized crime: "We will space your morph and put your cortical stack through a hydraulic anvil if you do not pay us... or we could knock 15k off of your debt if you pump the reputations of the following identities up for the next year..." Or, come to think of it, mesh malware. Viruses that do nothing but hide in the background and every once in a while write a favorable review of $identity{'fake'} to make them look active and like real people.

RobBoyle wrote:
Then again, there is probably an active group of mesh users who still value privacy, and who still make a habit of keeping their mesh activity anonymous and using throwaway IDs, accounts, etc. Or maybe they only share their real ID and rep score within their circle of real friends, and outside of this they run anonymously. There might be some leeway given to people who intentionally have 0 rep for this reason.

This may be common on the @-list social networks, in particular among mesh hackers who also lead "straight and narrow" lives on top of it all. There is little better cover than respectability...

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[img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/info_userbar.jpg[/img] [img]http://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/argo_userbar.jpg[/img] [url=https://drwho.virtadpt.net/graphics/blankbadge.png][img]http://drwho.vir...

Tue, 2010-03-09 07:58

#20

azrael

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Hi all. My following comments pretty much assume that rep works more in a way described in a post I've just made ... (http://www.eclipsephase.com/my-take-how-rep-systems-work). I hope that the issue with fake network accounts trying to game the system would be mitigated with my suggetions for now networks work. Specifically the signup process, not bothering with meshIDs, the 'web of trust' concept and needing trust-validation from X other people over a certain level to enable your rep to get to that level. Then I would expect the network to utilise algorythms to work out who is giving you a thumbs up/down and to decrease the weight of their thumb if they use it too often on you (oo er), and to increase the weight of the thumb from more trusted users and those with high rep scores, etc.

Fri, 2010-03-12 06:05

#21

Spoonfunk

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

My assumption was that each person logged a person's rep when they came into contact with that person and had the ability to influence their rep score for better or worse. These logs are constantly updated while that person exists within the given mesh network. Much when a person is tagged on a photo in facebook or something. Now whether or not the person gains rep depends on how many people have influenced the rep, what rep levels they were to begin with, and whether the reputation fit within the perimeters of the given reputation system (for example the characters gaining criminal rep for doing criminal activities etc etc). Now like any system of course it can be broken. In actuality considering how short of a time it has been used primarily as an economy in some habitats, I would say that it can be broken off its hinge much like checks or credit cards were and still are abused to this day. Consider this however. Its not without its drawbacks or ways of getting caught. For one there is the situation where the character fakes his reputation and suddenly has to live up to his rep in order to keep from getting caught. Let's say that he boosts his rep in firewall rep to get more gear and favors. Well now that his rep is jacked so high he gets all the extreme danger missions ("What's the worry pal a badass like you should be able to solo an earth run easy!"). It would also be only a matter of time before people got to know you and saw through the fake rep. It's like if I told everyone that I knew that I had a gold plated BMW in my garage. I could only pass off the lie for so long before someone found out that I was full of it. Finnally consider this. reputation and post-scarcity economies are based of value drawing from you the person as seen by your peers and chosen social instution (or lack their or). This is made possible by the fact that material possessions can be easily created and distributed. As a result their is not worth associated with material things in a general sense. So what would be the point of jacking up your rep score from the perspective of a character that lived in a society where material possesions meant very little and social connection was everything. Yeah you could purchase those rare items, but would you even place value in such things unless you needed them on hand. Even then you are jepordising the more valuable asset of social connection if you do get caught. I would say that the average person would view the idea of falsifying your rep like the thought of robbing a bank so you can eat at mcdonalds for the rest of your life. Yeah sure you can do it but what would be the point. Thats my take on the rep system anyway.

Fri, 2010-03-12 08:13

#22

Sepherim

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

RobBoyle wrote:
Speaking of 0 rep in a particular social network -- in some ways this may be worse than having bad rep (in the form of some negative marks on your rep score). Someone with 0 rep is a complete unknown, there's nothing to base judgement on yet. Sort of like how having no credit is worse than having bad credit.

Hm, this opens an interesting question I hadn't thought about before. What happens if one with 0 rep loses rep? I imagine that they stay in 0 so they become socially invulnerable to that same rep's social attacks. And, building upon your comment, it could be nice to implement a negative rep, scoring down when you reach 0. That way, it would make it complicated for them to even ask for trivial or low favors (which they could ask if they asked over their range of 0 with the appropriate modifiers). Another option, that could be used together with the other, would be to damage another rep that both the offender and the offended share in common, even if it is not the one being used. Afterall, the offended could speak ill of the player in reps where he doesn't have a 0.

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The mind is information... hack it! [IMG]http://i80.photobucket.com/albums/j166/Sepherim/Otros/F_Rep.jpg[/IMG] +4 http://tribulaciones.es/

Fri, 2010-03-12 08:56

#23

Byzantine Laser Byzantine Laser's picture

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

What about the other end of Rep falsification--knocking people's reputation [i]down[/i]. If you could frame somebody for a major crime (though this will be rather difficult to pull off, with all of the ways digital proof of what happened could be floating around), wouldn't their Rep take a pretty noteworthy drop? Even if they managed to eventually prove their innocence, I don't see their scores naturally rebounding as a result. Unless, perhaps, people have the ability to rescind negative scores they give people, but even then it would be complicated. Could maybe make a good extortion racket. "I see you're in good with circle-A. It'd sure be a shame if somebody was to send them evidence that you had plans to bomb Locus' security systems... Maybe you should buy some Rep insurance."

Fri, 2010-03-12 12:55

#24

Decivre

Re: PCs falsifying Rep blogs

Sepherim wrote:
Hm, this opens an interesting question I hadn't thought about before. What happens if one with 0 rep loses rep? I imagine that they stay in 0 so they become socially invulnerable to that same rep's social attacks. And, building upon your comment, it could be nice to implement a negative rep, scoring down when you reach 0. That way, it would make it complicated for them to even ask for trivial or low favors (which they could ask if they asked over their range of 0 with the appropriate modifiers). Another option, that could be used together with the other, would be to damage another rep that both the offender and the offended share in common, even if it is not the one being used. Afterall, the offended could speak ill of the player in reps where he doesn't have a 0.

I generally keep track of negative rep. Essentially, if you run your rep too low (I'd say to -10) you become blacklisted and completely lose your score. It'll take something very significant to get it back from there. Of course some might be more strict and make it anytime you have rep means that you are blacklisted. That also works.

—

Transhumans will one day be the Luddites of the posthuman age. [url=http://bit.ly/2p3wk7c]Help me get my gaming fix, if you want.[/url]