I actually think the solution is a web of trust. I know real humans that I trust the opinions of. I would love to be able to search that distributed network with a rank that decreases with distance.

How is that the solution? How does it address the issue of spam?

By distributing targets. Attacking thousands of pools of a few million/100k users is both much harder and not worth it. Users joining these pools consciously will make them also more selective/aware of choice and easier to hop if they get poisoned - unlike just mindlessly joining the "default" networks. Not magic, not bulletproof, but an incomparably better internet.