Trust transitivity in social networks
Oliver Richters, Tiago P. Peixoto

TL;DR
This paper analyzes how trust propagates in social networks using a simple transitivity metric, revealing conditions for global trust spread and comparing community- and authority-centered trust scenarios in the PGP web of trust.
Contribution
It provides an analytical framework for trust percolation in networks and compares different trust distribution models in real-world systems.
Findings
A non-zero fraction of absolute trust is necessary for global trust propagation.
Trust percolation exhibits a discontinuous transition at a critical trust level.
Authority-centered trust schemes are more efficient but favor fringe nodes.
Abstract
Non-centralized recommendation-based decision making is a central feature of several social and technological processes, such as market dynamics, peer-to-peer file-sharing and the web of trust of digital certification. We investigate the properties of trust propagation on networks, based on a simple metric of trust transitivity. We investigate analytically the percolation properties of trust transitivity in random networks with arbitrary degree distribution, and compare with numerical realizations. We find that the existence of a non-zero fraction of absolute trust (i.e. entirely confident trust) is a requirement for the viability of global trust propagation in large systems: The average pair-wise trust is marked by a discontinuous transition at a specific fraction of absolute trust, below which it vanishes. Furthermore, we perform an extensive analysis of the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)…
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