Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

We have Andrew Chalmers offering tequila for signing his unverified key. We have Martin Krafft offering fake ID for signing his unverified key. They talk about how clever they are and how they're making valid points in subverting the web of trust process. They justify it by talking about trusting 'reputation' over trusting an anonymous but identifiable person, or being an "experiment". And my considered response is "whoop-de-doo". It's the web-of-trust equivalent of claiming that sexist jokes are 'free speech', defending violent anarchy as 'subverting the police state', or claiming that stomping on someone else's project is an 'experiment' in destruction. It's still peurile.

The ultimate proof of this is to extrapolate what would happen if everyone did this: the web of trust would die. Is this what these people really want? If you don't want that, then don't do it. If you do want that, then please don't pretend that you're only doing it to make some highfalutin intellectual point. Shut up and try to behave. It's not a web-of-friends, it's a web-of-trust-of-identity. I may not be a friend of Arjen Lentz, but I'll sign his key to say that he's proved to me that his key identifies him. And, frankly, Chalmers and Krafft make me want to ignore them rather than befriend them.