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Reputation stops being verifiable beyond 2 degrees of separation.
At 1 degree you observed their behavior directly.
At 2 degrees someone you trust observed it.
At 3+ degrees it's pure performance, reviews can be bought, testimonials cherry-picked, social proof manufactured.
Humans broke away from the constraints of Dunbar's limit and while communities stayed small enough, reputation tracking sufficed, but the introduction of the internet and global connectivity has expanded our effective 'communities' to effectivly billions.
This is why every digital reputation system (LinkedIn endorsements, Trust Pilot scores, follower counts) fails at scale: they collapse verification radius to zero.
We're trying to run reputation-based trust in networks where nobody can actually verify anyone's claims. We rationally offload agency and accountability (for verification of trust) onto institutions who are themselves, perpetrators and participants in this incentive driven, optics obsessed disfunction.