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Well, it's been established by PGP being deployed that the web of trust did not work well at all. So that option is out.

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Web of Trust is still used in small, focused circles, for example kernel.org developers: https://www.kernel.org/doc/wot/

Yes but "small focused circles" is essentially the extent of where WoT works. It doesn't scale to larger or loose communities.

And that's fine. It is a great way to bootstrap a small circle of trust that can be used apart from any large centralized infrastructure.

It seems like everyone is trying to find a way to make a global trust network (keybase, LinkedIn, etc.), when all you need most of the time are small circles of trust (dev groups, activism organizations, etc.).

I think the decentralized nature of WoT is actually a better way of structuring things, since it makes mass surveillance much more difficult.

For small communities, yes. But I doubt it works even for just a large set of communities. Possibly a small set if you're careful. But WoT is too broken in reality.

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