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Don't go willy nilly creating rep-networks. Consider Network Effect. Why doesn't every country, or every religion create their own separate social networks? Because it's more advantageous to join the bigger already estabilished network. So unless there is a special reason to estabilish it's own social network (secrecy: Eye-net, Guanxi; politics: @-net, Civic-net; Cliques: Fame, RNA, Gatecrashers, Ultimates). If that's not the case it is better to just mantain your presence on bigger networks, like some churches and other political organizations do now.

It seems that we are presented with two tiers of social networks by Posthuman Studios: a top tier on which I can imagine people without game-relevant levels of rep having profiles/pages/tracked searches and the like (CivicNet as it would be basic to functioning within or with the PC, Fame to follow one's favorite media properties and stars, Research Network Associates in order to access knowledge and research, even the @-list as the AA functions similarly to a polity) and a secondary tier on which I imagine only those with rep have profiles (there's not much reason for anyone other than criminals, clients, and cops to use Guanxi, or Firewall agents to use the Eye, or ultimates to use EvTac, or gatecrashers to use Gatecrashers). Communion, YodSpace, and iMecca are all on that second tier (and I don't even see them being as important to the Jovian Junta, Horeb, the Sufi nomads, and Salah as CivicNet and the @-list are to the PC and AA ~ though iMecca might maybe ~ precisely [i]because[/i] they are too broad). YodSpace would have been as a reaction to the disproportionate loss of theists in the Fall, actually. Jews have managed to maintain a sense of shared culture across 2000 years without a homeland (ah, Imperator Hadriane, I love you as much as an anarchist can love an emperor, but destroying the Second Temple was fucked up) and in the face of multiple pogroms and genocides ~ why wouldn't they leverage social networking after yet another mass murder like everyone else did? iMecca is similarly an expression of an identity that has often unified a community across political boundaries. Communion, on the other hand, was founded after the Council of Liberty when the Jovian Catholic Church schismed from/with the Anarchic Roman Catholic Church in Exile over the issue of apostolic succession after the Fall and the murder of the Pope and College of Cardinals by the TITANs. ARCCiE needed some way to give their congregation(s) cohesion without a church hierarchy above the level of bishop; Communion was their answer. It turned out to be useful and desired by other denominations as well, including the JCC, and so was rather quickly opened to all Christians. And, yes, plenty of monotheists and other religions (you'll note I'm not positing Buddhist, Taoist, Ifá, Scientologist, Asatrú, Bōn, Shinto, Cao Đài, or Wiccan social networks, for instance) do just keep to their presence on the other social networks, as you say.

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As it is said in your article social networks divide the world as much as they connect it, by closing people in bubbles of their own reassuring propaganda. And it is so because of the filter algorithms that bring you your news on social networks. And they depend on the ideology of people that created/maintain the network. I could see that in the inner system c-rep algorithms are manipulated to maintain the order and suppress PCs political oposition. In the outer system there could be algorithms that support intermingling of ideas and sense of unity against those filthy hypercapitalists. RNA would support interdisciplinary research and promote open source movement, Fame is degenerated incest child of Facebook, Instagram and RedTube etc.

You approach some element of what I was getting at! Thank you. I have a couple disagreements, though: I kinda imagine the @-list in its rarely-seen unhacked form (see below) to be more along the lines of a mailing list or FetLife's newsfeed ~ or my Facebook feed now that I've downloaded F.B. Purity ~ an unsorted, purely chronological list of events. Or, at most, a Reddit-like simple up/down-vote kinda thing. RNA, on the other hand, would probably use some variant of citation analysis as its base algorithm. Fun fact: I have a friend currently getting his Ph.D. at University of Santa Cruz working on improved statistical tools in order to correct for the distorting effects of what some have called “invisible colleges” (groups like the ulcers ~ cuz assholes are good and fun and useful ~ that surround Kenneth Zucker who obsessively cite each other in a big ol' circle jerk without the fun bits) on traditional citation analysis. I wonder about the politicization, Firewall interaction, and adventure possibilities that could result from similar research in Eclipse Phase ~ who stands to benefit and who to be harmed? The Eye probably uses some combination of Snopes-style verification practices and hyper-advanced intelligence analysis as its algorithm; it's the most likely to be a full-blown AGI. Guanxi is the fun one ~ it needs to serve two masters: verifying identity and rep to provide utility for criminals and obfuscation and disinformation to provide safety to those selfsame criminals. How might all that be achieved? Might the stress of the paradox cause an emergent AGI, I wonder? What would it do before its emergence was noted? How might society react to its emergence? Does this count as an x-threat? What about Gatecrashers, EvTac, Communion, YodSpace, and iMecca? I still don't have a good idea yet of how their algorithms work . . . . And the description of Fame's could be more specific and detailed . . . .

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Instead of a dominant algorithm for a network, EP like futures might allow users to craft their own... or share them with friends on networks... then their muses could sift and sort data, check sources, references and validity. Picking up trusted algorithms is part of the rep system.

I like this in terms of CivicNet, the @-list, and (surprisingly) Guanxi. I see hypercorps publishing official patches to CivicNet (which hypercorp controls the code on that anyway?) which either or both overtly and covertly shape user's content feeds towards that hypercorp's products (and in the PC, employment is a commodity and product) and goals. The @-list would be similar, with crowded lists of available patches of widely (and wildly) variable quality and trustworthiness published by any number of hackers that accomplish any number of things. Guanxi, on the other hand . . . maybe these kinds of algorithm patches are how the network serves both masters? A patch that serves to sift out the info from the disinfo? Does that actually work? And/or maybe there are also patches to help you place certain jobs or employers as preferred or off-limits? There would be a similar paranoia to network patch culture on Guanxi as on the @-list, as the specter of patches written by law-enforcement agencies always looms.

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Advertisements and propaganda would do everything to disguise itself as genuine worthwile content.

Which, I would assert, serves as a useful and intriguing exaggeration of the current state of things to explore. How do societies adjust to accommodate and process that scenario? On a deeper level: if the act of making meaning can be said to be central to life, intelligence, and freedom ~ three points which are arguable but with which I agree ~ then a truly disinformed mind can be said to be a truly free, truly alive, truly intelligent mind for only then are you the only one making meaning in your life. However, there are two open questions concerning this idea: Is it digital or analog (is it only “truly” in that sentence or can it be “more”?)? and What about bad actors? Disinformation was originally designed/described as a tool for control after all. Can freedom be found by diving into the control being enacted upon you? Not what I was originally thinking about, but I am reminded of John Constantine's plan to save himself from lung cancer at the end of [u]Dangerous Habits[/u].

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I guess when clickbait is the modus operandi of every advertiser, the revival of journalism would take place, where people gain enormous amount of rep for sifting through the mud and trash of informational overload to find the gems of true value, be it the prose of an philosophical poet or latest hypercorp coverup.

Ooohhh! I like this! The hunt for the real alongside the hunt for cool. Deeply engaging the Situationist critique of the Society of the Spectacle. Battling recuperation and finding your way through the conflict of detournement v. truth. There's a whole campaign here!

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As previously stated, the niche reps would be too small to do anything meaningful unless you're on a Hab where its King. Like, in EP there is a lack of theists.

You know, I just don't buy that as possible. Obvi, everyone should play and shape Eclipse Phase to their liking ~ if New Atheists wanna play it as their Reason-uber-alles wish fulfillment, I'm all for it! I can and will even find ways to have fun and help the group have fun playing in that world ~ but I don't think the statistics work out. In 1910, there about 1,750,000,000 humans on the planet and 291,290,000 Catholics (NOT all theists or even all Christians), which means 16.6% of the world population, or about 1 in 6 people. A century later, in 2010, there were 6,916,183,482 people and 1,078,790,000 Catholics, or 15.6%, or about 2 in 13 people. By the Fall, let's say the world population has grown to about 12,000,000,000, which is about the upmost cap for estimates of Earth's carrying capacity (though that number doesn't account for synthmorphs, biomorphs with different or orthogonal life-support needs, infolife, forking, or additional resources available from offplanet colonies and habs). Let's further be super generous and say that Catholicism has lost 7 percentage points, for 8.6% of the population or 1 in 12 (remember it's dropped 1% in the last century and EP is a little more than a century in the future). That gives us about 1,032,000,000 Catholics. Being unbelievably generous, let's say the Fall killed 95% of Catholics ~ that would leave 51,600,000 Catholics. We're only given populations for Solano and Liberty City in the Republic that I recall, and those total only 8.5 million. Assuming all Jovians are Catholic (which is bullshit), that only accounts for about 1 in 6 Catholics in the solar system ~ ignoring reproduction and forking! And that's again only counting Catholics, not all Christians or all monotheists or all theists or all reliions!

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have a Theist Rep (I wouldnt break it down to different religions), would be useful.

And, actually one of the two social network campaign ideas I had before writing this thread involved exactly that: a new social network, al-Kitaab, being put forward by a coalition of Sufi nomads, Caođàiists, Baha'i, Unitarian Universalists, Jews for Jesus, Sikhs, and just plain interfaith workers as an alternative to Communion, YodSpace, and iMecca that would serve all People of the Book. Note also that Cao Đài and Sikhism have historical and theological connections to non-Abrahamic faiths, Baha'i puts forth the unity of religions as a fundamental tenet, and the UUs are, well, UUs and thus super-rad. The other had to do with a sex-worker-led movement to improve the lives of sex workers called the Companions and their effort to start a new network called the Wave, with accompanying xxx-rep. What? ;-D