> Bad speech drives out good, too.
Ah, right. I think I got it now. That's where the issue is.
It could be that this web of trust just cannot work unless it covers most of the world. If it would, I believe it would be just a technical aid, a machine-coded representation of an already established "organic" web of trust.
But it must start from zero, and it cannot grow as it would be lethally poisoned, becoming a place composed mostly of controversial vouches. Could be very true. I need to think about this.
One immediate thought is that even a graph of only the "bad voices" (for arbitrary definition of bad) can be perfectly useful, as a sort of noise ("fake news", "lunacy", "bullshit" - however we want to call it) filter. It's not that a web of trust spreads opinions, it spreads relations to their opinions. And a signal that someone vouches directly or indirectly (although "vouching" is not a good term for this case) can be perceived arbitrarily. So maybe it's not that bad. It may be bad by reinforcing echo chambers, but it could also be good in pointing out the connections, those bridges between the factions where arguing is not moot.