[shotnothing]

> for example, only people with gmail accounts that are over 5 years old and who use them at least 3 times per week to eliminate fakers—-but keep this a secret

tbh this is just a bandage, its just going to get botted once people discover the pattern (a lot of premium bot farms do offer mature or hacked gmail accounts anyway) and its going to be worse for legitimate discovery

[pembrook]

Then you quietly change the rule, and get years of success until it's widely gamed again.

The point is, there's experimentation that could be done and there's absolutely solutions that could be found.

Early Google did tons of experimentation with the search algorithm to maintain the integrity of the results. There was definitely an active game of cat and mouse back then that Google actually cared about staying on top of.

But as a decades entrenched monopoly, Google lost all incentives to tinker with anything anymore. The "operational" folks took over and any change to the search algorithm is now a multi-year endeavor involving thousands of stakeholders.

[kadoban]

> Then you quietly change the rule, and get years of success until it's widely gamed again.

You won't though, unfortunately. Too many people know the rules to keep it a secret, especially given that corruption exists.