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Exactly wrong. Stasi files are held closely by the state.

This network would be public, and everyone would be able to see what the scum are up to.



Say again how many Yelp reviews are genuine and how many are planted by SEO outfits?

I doubt that 20 % of Stasi informers were double agents, if you led the Stasi on there were consequences.


It may be irrelevant to your analogy (it'd be more difficult to identify "personal bias" in reviews of people, after all), but the "20% of Yelp reviews are fake" meme is highly misleading. The study in question looked at what percentage of Yelp reviews were hidden, by Yelp, for looking "fake."[1] This provides us with little additional information on the percentage of visible Yelp reviews (which is what most people will assume you're talking about when you say "Yelp reviews") that are fake.

It's a bit like noting that 96% of Harvard applicants are rejected and concluding that "96% of Harvard students didn't deserve to get in," with the caveat that by "Harvard student" you mean "a student that applied to Harvard."

[1] http://people.hbs.edu/mluca/FakeItTillYouMakeIt.pdf


If everyone had Stasi files, it wouldn't really be better.




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