# Trust

> Witness shows how confident the system is and what evidence moved it. How report confidence, reporter standing and event confidence work.

Witness shows how confident the system is, what evidence moved it, and what remains unresolved, instead of declaring what is true. That distinction is the whole design.

## Three things, scored separately

| Score | What it measures |
| --- | --- |
| Report confidence | How much the evidence supports this specific claim. |
| Reporter standing | How reliable a reporter has been over time, scored independently of any single report. |
| Event confidence | How much independent evidence supports the underlying event across every report attached to it. |

Keeping these apart is what stops a trusted account from carrying a false claim, and what stops one contested report from undoing a good reporter.

## How confidence moves

- **Evidence is weighed, not counted.** Signals shift confidence according to how much they actually distinguish a real event from a fabricated one. A signal that is absent counts as nothing, not as evidence against.
- **Corroboration is weighted by independence.** Two people on opposite sides of a square who do not know each other are worth far more than a cluster sharing one source.
- **Confidence attaches to claims, not to clusters.** A report can be confidently placed while a specific assertion inside it stays unresolved, so a real event cannot be used as cover for a false detail.
- **New reporters start uncertain, not penalized.** A first report is treated as unknown rather than presumed bad.

## When evidence conflicts

The system stops promoting a contested claim rather than removing it, and any removal carries a visible reason.

Falsely burying a legitimate report is the worse failure. Ambiguous cases resolve in that direction.

## Moderation handles conduct

Moderation deals with conduct: harassment, illegal content and abuse. What happened is a question for the evidence.

## Standing tiers

- **New account.** Everyone starts here. A first report is treated as unknown, not as suspect.
- **Reporter.** A record of reports that held up.
- **Trusted reporter.** A long record of accurate reports.
- **Verified correspondent.** A long record, with identity verified privately.

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Web page: https://www.thewitnessapp.com/trust
Index for agents: https://www.thewitnessapp.com/llms.txt