The commodification of trust

The internet and digital technologies created a new category of trust producers. Online reputation management services (such as Uber or Airbnb), distributed ledgers, and AI-based predictive systems offer familiarity, control, and insurance by structuring social, economic interactions via technical systems. Balázs Bodó writes that even though these infrastructures are widely used within public and private institutions, we have no reason to trust them. He argues that we must increase the trustworthiness of technological trust infrastructures — and stop using them if that is not possible — lest commodified forms of trust endanger the social and economic relations that they mediate.