bitvid/docs/moderation/web-of-trust-examples.md

Web-of-Trust: Detailed Flow + Examples

This document expands on docs/moderation/web-of-trust.md with a concrete view of how trust seeds, admin lists, and F1 thresholds interact during moderation scoring. It is intended for operators and developers who need to reason about why a piece of content was blurred, autoplay-blocked, or hidden.

Key concepts (quick recap)

• Trusted seeds: A baseline set of pubkeys used to bootstrap trust for anonymous/default visitors. Seeds come from the Super Admin and active editor lists; fallback seeds are used only if those lists cannot be hydrated.
• Trusted contacts (F1): The viewer's follow list (plus seeds for anonymous/default visitors). Only F1 accounts count as trusted reporters.
• Admin lists: NIP-51 30000 lists, specifically:
  • bitvid:admin:blacklist → hard-hide when subscribed.
  • bitvid:admin:whitelist → boosts Discovery ranking but never overrides moderation gates.
• Thresholds:
  • Blur thumbnail: DEFAULT_BLUR_THRESHOLD trusted nudity reports.
  • Block autoplay: DEFAULT_AUTOPLAY_BLOCK_THRESHOLD trusted nudity reports.
  • Hide author: DEFAULT_TRUSTED_MUTE_HIDE_THRESHOLD trusted mutes.
  • Hide video: DEFAULT_TRUSTED_SPAM_HIDE_THRESHOLD trusted spam reports.

Precedence (what wins)

1. Personal blocks first: If a viewer blocks an author or reporter, the author is hidden and that reporter's reports are ignored.
2. Admin blacklist second: If the viewer is subscribed to bitvid:admin:blacklist, entries there are hard-hidden and their reports are suppressed before thresholds are evaluated.
3. F1 thresholds last: Only after the first two checks do we apply trusted report/mute thresholds for blur, autoplay block, and hide decisions.

How trust seeds are selected (bootstrap)

For anonymous/default visitors (or when no follow graph is available), the trusted seed set is built as follows:

1. Start with the Super Admin pubkey.
2. Add active editors from the access control list (if available).
3. If (1) and (2) produce no seeds, fall back to DEFAULT_TRUST_SEED_NPUBS.

This means Super Admins and editors are not automatically blocked; they are used as trusted anchors when computing F1-based counts for viewers without a follow list. Blocking still follows the precedence rules above.

Example flows

Example 1: Anonymous visitor, no live admin lists available

• Access control list fails to hydrate in time.
• DEFAULT_TRUST_SEED_NPUBS is used as the seed set.
• A video has 3 nudity reports from those seed accounts.

Result:

• Thumbnail is blurred if DEFAULT_BLUR_THRESHOLD is 1 (met).
• Autoplay is blocked if DEFAULT_AUTOPLAY_BLOCK_THRESHOLD is 1 (met).
• No hard hide unless trusted mute/spam thresholds are met.

Example 2: Logged-in viewer with personal blocks

• Viewer follows 200 accounts (F1).
• Viewer has blocked npub_author_x.
• npub_author_x appears in a video card.

Result:

• The author is hidden immediately (personal block precedence).
• Reports from npub_author_x are ignored in trusted counts.

Example 3: Admin blacklist + trusted reports

• Viewer is subscribed to bitvid:admin:blacklist.
• npub_spammer is listed there.
• A video from npub_spammer has 1 trusted spam report.

Result:

• The video is hard-hidden due to the admin blacklist.
• The spam report count does not matter because blacklist suppression runs before thresholds.

Example 4: Trusted mute hide

• Viewer follows 25 accounts.
• 20 of them have muted npub_author_y.
• DEFAULT_TRUSTED_MUTE_HIDE_THRESHOLD is 20.

Result:

• The author is hidden (trusted mute count ≥ 20).
• The badge reads: Hidden · 20 trusted mutes and a “Show anyway” override is available.

Example 5: Mixed nudity + spam reports

• Viewer follows 50 accounts.
• A video has:
  • 2 trusted nudity reports
  • 3 trusted spam reports
• Thresholds are: blur=3, autoplay=2, spam hide=3.

Result:

• Autoplay is blocked (nudity reports meet autoplay threshold).
• Thumbnail is not blurred (nudity reports below blur threshold).
• Video is hidden (spam reports meet the spam hide threshold).

Troubleshooting checklist

• Confirm the viewer’s follow list (F1) is populated and hydrated.
• Verify admin list subscriptions are active for the viewer.
• Check whether any personal blocks exist for the author or reporters.
• Compare trusted counts to the configured defaults in config/instance-config.js.

See also

• docs/moderation/web-of-trust.md
• docs/moderation/README.md
• docs/instance-config.md