@Aljoscha (this is starting to ramble so feel free to ignore)

to me, Scuttlebutt has always been intentionally focused on small-world network topologies. however, we haven't been able to yet reach the small-world networks ideal, i reckon mostly because pubs have dominated (and centralized) the social graph, hence "rethinking pubs as a second device", new user invites, why i'm against public pubs, and why i want to make it easy for anybody to host their own pub.

on another note, i agree it's silly to think people won't be selfish, however i'd say Scuttlebutt is about exploring the game theory of infinitely-repeated games with non-repudiable messages. if you defect, it should be widely known that you defected, so other agents can respond appropriately (by defecting against you). if we can't coordinate our social networks against bad actors then how do we expect to coordinate to solve societal problems?