The Axiomatic Approach and the Internet

Abstract: Ranking, reputation, recommendation, trust, and viral marketing systems have become central parts of the new on-line economy. These systems aggregate agents' reviews of products and services, and of each other, into valuable information, as well as use social networks to facilitate purchase.

Our work along the last ten years shows that an extremely powerful way for the study and design of such systems is the axiomatic approach, originating from and expanding on the classical theory of social choice. In this talk we discuss some representative results of our work.