The article discusses the role of reputation systems in fostering trust among strangers on the Internet. These systems, such as eBay's Feedback Forum, collect and distribute feedback about participants' past behavior, helping to build trust and encourage trustworthy behavior. Despite challenges like eliciting feedback, ensuring honesty, and distributing feedback across different platforms, these systems have proven effective in maintaining trust and enabling successful transactions. The authors highlight the importance of long-lived entities, visible feedback, and the use of feedback to guide trust decisions. They also note that while reputation systems face theoretical and practical difficulties, they appear to perform reasonably well, much like democracy, which is often criticized but still functions effectively.The article discusses the role of reputation systems in fostering trust among strangers on the Internet. These systems, such as eBay's Feedback Forum, collect and distribute feedback about participants' past behavior, helping to build trust and encourage trustworthy behavior. Despite challenges like eliciting feedback, ensuring honesty, and distributing feedback across different platforms, these systems have proven effective in maintaining trust and enabling successful transactions. The authors highlight the importance of long-lived entities, visible feedback, and the use of feedback to guide trust decisions. They also note that while reputation systems face theoretical and practical difficulties, they appear to perform reasonably well, much like democracy, which is often criticized but still functions effectively.