A troll-proof layer on top of the web

Are you in a public place? Look around you right now. See that dude, with the blue shirt? The stunning woman in the flowing dress? Yup, that’s them. Part of the troll army. Statistically, 94.7% of the people you see right now - shiny, happy, blissful people - become raving web trolls as soon as they slink in front of the keyboard.

Oh, sure, I used to just brush it off. Something to ignore, a minor nuisance in the face of the amazing global reach of the web, a tax to pay for the freedom of information. We humans just could just thumbs down, mod down, and ‘report as offensive’ until the trolls all went off and found something else to do.

Folks, it just ain’t working.

The trolls are more pervasive than ever. Tried to get a reasonable read on an iPhone app through the reviews? Tried to pick a restaurant through the cacophony of shills and self-haters on Yelp? And, god forbid, ever tried to get an answer through Yahoo! Answers or its ilk?

We need a revolution: a troll-proof layer on top of the web.

It would be an invitation-only service. Someone would invite you, and you’d get an irrevocable, lifetime user id - let’s call it TrueMe - that’s visibly tied to your Real Name (tip of the hat to Amazon.com). Then, as you trolled (pun intended) the web, you would be free to use your TrueMe to leave ratings, reviews, and whatever other flotsam and jetsam across the net. Want to flame someone? Shill a friend’s restaurant? That’s fine, just don’t use your TrueMe.

Ok, so far, so blah.

But here’s the trick. You would be able to invite your friends, family, and reasonably lucid coworkers into the TrueMe ecosystem. And everyone inside TrueMe could mark other people as Trusted or Not Trusted (like people who leave 1 star “what a GREAT app” reviews on iTunes, or obvious marketing shills). Quick, right-click type marking.

Websites would incorporate TrueMe filtering: if desired, you could flip a switch and any ratings or reviews made without a TrueMe tag would … wait for it … magically disappear from your webpage, leaving behind pristine pixels and minimal anguish, showing only cognizant reviews, fully formed sentences, and articulate comments on news articles.

But what if someone sneaks through the system, and a troll gets an invite to the TrueMe ecosystem? This is where the beauty comes in. Every person within TrueMe has a sponsor. Find a troll? Just right-click on them and see who sponsored them, and who sponsored their sponsor, and who they’ve sponsored. Right-click, Mark as Troll, and “Don’t Ever Show Me Trolls from This Dude’s Lineage”.

And then the iTunes App Store would have 42% fewer applications (trolls write code, natch) and 100% more useful reviews.

Thank you, and good morning.