Danah Boyd is an insightful researcher. She just wrote a post called “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power in which she takes Google to task for their changing policies and rather abrupt practice of kicking people off of Google Plus. I agree that being arbitrary is an abuse of power when it affects people so strongly (disabling an account removes the use of all services, not just Google Plus). However, there are two kinds of power: shared, and proprietary.
Google, along with Facebook, Twitter, and in fact nearly all Internet-based services (Amazon, eBay, your Internet service provider, etc.), are proprietary. These services are run by companies that:
are private or beholden to shareholders (their “business model”),
have one-sided Terms of Service and Policy documents that users are required to agree to, and
are based on the selective delivery of their user base to their customers (usually advertisers).
A striking characteristic of these businesses is that they have a practice of reducing things to black and white. Our chosen (registered) name “is” or “is not” really us. See Doc’s post A Sense of Bewronging for more thought on this. In a simplified (business) sense, it is an abuse of social power to declare that many of us are not who we say we are, even if we’re known to many others by our chosen registered name.
Contrast this with a shared power model, like a commons, or services that are implemented according to open standards. The underlying Internet protocols (the apache web server, sendmail, TCP/IP, etc.) are not owned by anyone, everybody can use them, and anybody can improve them. These resources are shared—no terms of service is required to use the Internet or email with any device you choose, with any compatible software, from any location that has access. “Commons” is where you can be who you are, no matter what name you go by.
Coaching moment: This may be a non-issue for some. I have friends that use their name to create a “brand” for themselves—so people will recognize them everywhere, and know what they’re about. However, that’s not an option for people in sensitive situations. Think of it this way: Everyone has a moment when they choose not to disclose some bit of information to the world. Sometimes it’s a name. That’s not a bad thing, and it should be a choice.
In order to have the capabilities we might want in the future, a lot of tools, pathways, and “plumbing” need to be created first. Phil Windley and his company Kynetx is one of the tool builders working to create some of the connecting parts. They made a great video called Project Neck Pain illustrating how their tool helps connect our needs. Check out how smoothly this works:
Coaching moment: Two of the assumptions this video: 1) that our guy in the video has a Personal Data Store, and 2) it’s based on the existence of curated references (like the list of doctors) that you might “subscribe” to. Some of these lists may be compiled from the resources of your friends’ networks (a la Facebook, but user-controlled). Others will need to be created, and will be used as people find them valuable. Do you have resources in your network that you’d speak positively (or negatively) about? Would you share that with the world?
A little while ago, Scott Adams wrote his thoughts about FutureMe and how it might become a Facebook killer. Adams pointed out that information about our past–what we’ve already done–is useful, but less so than what we’re looking to do in the future. He suggests a new fourth party (user-driven) service:
The interface for Futureme is essentially a calendar, much like Outlook. But it would include extra layers for hopes and goals that don’t have specific dates attached.
For every entry to your Futureme calendar, you specify who can see it, including advertisers. If you allow advertisers a glimpse of a specific plan, it would be strictly anonymous. Advertisers could then feed you ads specific to your plan, while not knowing who they sent it to. The Futureme service would be the intermediary.
Now imagine that you never have to see any of the incoming ads except by choice. If you plan to buy a truck in a month, you would need to click on that entry to see which local truck advertisements have been matched to your plans. This model turns advertising from a nuisance into a tool. You‘d never see an ad on Futureme that wasn’t relevant to your specific plans.
The biggest benefit of the system could come from your network of friends and business associates. Suppose you post on the system that you would like to see a Bon Jovi concert sometime in the next year. Now your friends – the ones you specify to see this specific plan – can decide if they want in on it. Maybe someone you know can get free tickets, and someone has a van and is willing to be the designated driver. Maybe someone has a contact that can get you backstage passes. By broadcasting your plan, you make it possible for others to improve your plan.
Conversely, if you plan to do something stupid, your contacts have time to talk you out of it or suggest a superior alternative.
The great thing about Adams’ plan is that it shows how our data and online presence can be user-driven–meaning we make choices about who gets to see what. Moreover, by identifying Futureme as an intermediary on the user side, Adams has described a fourth-party service. (I’m guessing that Adams is intending this to be on the user side, or it can’t really live up to the promise of being a “Facebook killer.” I don’t know of any way at this time to be a perfectly neutral intermediary, so he likely has to fall on one side or the other.)
Coaching moment: I’d like to point out a significant distinction here between platforms and relationships. Adams is apparently describing a platform for social interaction and commercial services. This is also the Facebook model. On Facebook, someone else (the shareholders of Facebook) owns your user data and service usage logs. Facebook is in control. As we’ve seen before, it’s one thing to set your privacy wishes, but if Facebook is calling the shots, the rules can be changed anytime. Moreover, you’re always under surveillance whether you knowingly agree to that or not.
Now consider the idea of personal data stores where you control your data in any way you wish, using software tools that you choose, on hardware that you own (or not), at any time or under circumstances that you want. Nobody gets access that you don’t authorize. Wouldn’t that be something?
Voluntary personal information sharing comes naturally to most of us. When given an opportunity, a few tools, and a community in which we can share our most intimate details, many people don’t hesitate to document their every movement and mood. We readily identify our friends and our preferences, and even document our vices.
Facebook is the place right now where a great many people share the most detailed information about themselves. Are you on Facebook? If so, you might be interested in a new site called I Shared What?!? that will open a window for you into what Facebook sees–and lets others see.
Coaching moment: Did you know you were sharing this much information? Do you know who has access to it, for how long, and for what purposes? Does this make you uncomfortable? Why?
At this past IIW, I convened a session to ask if and how it might be possible to do a stateless distributed membership for a website. There are two main ideas behind this proposal. First, I don’t really NEED to have a membership database of my own. That is, I don’t need to have another place for you to create an account, user ID and password. We can use OpenID, Information Cards, or other technologies for authenticating and authorizing you. Second, if I want to move toward a world where you control your own data, I don’t need to maintain the database of your comments. I only need to know where your comments are stored so I can properly assemble things as needed. It’s convenient but not technically necessary to own and control all the bits myself.
My proposal for a Stateless Distributed Membership is a mouthful, so I’ll unpack it a bit. There are three parts: a membership, being stateless, and being distributed.
Membership
Let me start with the easy part. You probably understand the idea of membership as a group or association of people contributing to something like a conversation or project. They’re members of a group, or in my case, members of a conversation or project on my site. Nothing unusual about this idea.
Being Stateless
Next is the idea of being stateless. In computer science, the http protocol that you use to call a web page and associated resources is stateless because you call a page from the URL or a link in your browser, the server responds by sending the page, graphics, or whatever, then you see it. Each request is separate; there’s no need to stay connected to the servers. In my case, being “stateless” means that each transaction is independent. Eve Maler talks about a stateless identity in her post Both a data borrower and a data lender be:
This is a kind of data statelessness, in that when you tell various sites they can set, read, and republish your [information from your Personal Data Store], they’re letting go of any pretense of exclusive hosting control so that they can offer you a different kind of value.
Now, in the IdM and VRM worlds, some of us have been talking aboutidentity statelessness for a while, which is similar but looks more like straight data-sharing (reading) rather than arbitrary service access (setting).
For some reason this is a tougher sell — even though CRM systems and user accounts are shot through with pale copies of stale data (and, in the enterprise case, even though syncing directories and replicating databases is brittle and no fun).
Even when one party — say, you yourself — is authoritative for some piece of personal data (like your home address), all the sites insist on making you provision a copy of this data into their profile pages by hand and by value, and insist on thinking they own something truly valuable even after you move and forget to tell them.
The bottom line: if I don’t insist on “owning” your data, we both will realize more value from our trust and flexibility. It’s daring, and in the larger scheme of things, I believe it’s a Good Thing.
Distributed
Finally, the term distributed refers to the fact that all parts of the conversation or projects are stored elsewhere on the net. If you wish to add a comment to a conversation on my server, your comment is added to your personal datastore (wherever it is, and whatever form it might take). When you wish to read the conversation, my server compiles the contributions as needed.
In this model, I do need to maintain a database of where to find your comments and a way to authorize you as the person who granted permission for me to include them in the conversation on my website. But think of it: if you want to revoke permission for me to use your comments, you can. How revolutionary (and potentially messy) is that?
Furthermore, you may choose to log in using an identity that’s different from the last one you used. That works on my server. For example, you might wish to be a regular person contributing to most conversations, but if you’re a professional fundraiser and one of the threads is about raising funds for a non-profit, you may wish to disclose your work and position in that context. Your two identities describe different parts of your life, and you may have good reasons to keep those parts separate.
The IIW Session
In my session, I described this concept and asked what people thought about it. I offered three scenarios where people might interact. One of them: a conversation or forum where blog posts and trackbacks can help create a threaded conversation. The session is an hour-long exploration and discovery of the possibilities. If you have questions or can add a piece to this puzzle, I’d love to hear from you.
My heartfelt thanks go to the people with whom I’ve spoken about this, including =JeffH, Eve, the guy at the end of the video talking with me about trackbacks (I’m sorry I can’t find your name), several others who made great suggestions and shared ideas at my session, and Joe, who spent considerable time exploring underlying frameworks with me.
Coaching moment: You probably have more than one account online, and have likely cursed the problem of forgetting user names and passwords. You may have wished that the picture of you holding a beer wasn’t online for your boss to see. Maybe you’ve been spooked by an advertisement for something that you really didn’t want. If you could do things differently, what would you do? How do you handle your accounts now? Do you feel secure about your online practices? Do you even want to be in control? Not everyone does.
Danah Boyd is an insightful researcher. She just wrote a post called “Real Names” Policies Are an Abuse of Power in which she takes Google to task for their changing policies and rather abrupt practice of kicking people off of Google Plus. I agree that being arbitrary is an abuse of power when it affects people so strongly (disabling an account removes the use of all services, not just Google Plus). However, there are two kinds of power: shared, and proprietary.![[del.icio.us]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/delicious.png)
![[Facebook]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/facebook.png)
![[LinkedIn]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/linkedin.png)
![[Ma.gnolia]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/magnolia.png)
![[Technorati]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/technorati.png)
![[Twitter]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/twitter.png)
![[Email]](http://digitalidcoach.com/wp-content/plugins/bookmarkify/email.png)
