Sociable P2P:
social information and P2P systems

P2P systems: context

Rationality
- bandwidth, CPU are scarce resources
- anarchy - every peer for itself
- homo economicus - self-interested; utility-maximizing; strategic
- result: free-riding
Anonymity
- the faceless agent: no other channels of association
- cheap identities
- result: incentive to switch IDs; Prisoner's Dilemma
Can we try to weaken these by system design?
- For better, or for worse?

Properties of the sapiens behind the P2P client
- interests
- relationships
- non-rational motivations
Motivating cooperative behavior
- "familiarity breeds cooperation" - reducing uncertainty
- selective altruism - more likely to cooperate with friends
Information-finding based on interests

BitTorrent-style P2P network + social network overlay
- maps a priori social relationships to Tribler nodes
- extracts social relations from Gmail, IM clients
- friends, friends of friends (FoF), everybody else
- presumes existence of identity service to map social identity -> machine identity
Given the existence of a Tribler network:
- Buddycast - collaborative filtering based on peer "taste"
- Cooperative download - donation of bandwidth
Apparently now redesigned as a commercial venture in P2P video distribution