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Aug. 30th, 2011 11:00 amJust a little bit I've been thinking about what with the G+ "identity service" and Facebook's real names policy...
I'm not a big fan of legal names being required (the asininity of how this is enforced is a separate, but also real issue). I think the very idea that we should be forced to have a single traceable identity, over which we have only very limited control is a real affront to our privacy and our ability to communicate. But I'm figuring that most of you are fairly aware of the arguments to be made there.
So. The one way in which Facebook and its icky names policy has been useful to me is in how well it gives me the ability to look up people I've lost touch with. It's not perfect, and not everyone is on Facebook, but, like everyone else, I use it because it's pretty much the lowest common denominator of social networking. (Likewise, it gets only a fairly filtered version of my life - actually, it just gets my public twitter feed.) And, of course, it only is useful in locating the people I'd known by their legal names in the first place. So, great for people I went to elementary school with, not so much for many of my net friends over the last several decades.
But it occurred to me that the useful directory functions could be handled in ways that would not compromise privacy in the same way.
[ETA: This is pretty obvious, but what I find interesting about this is that a) it could provide a useful service, and indeed provide it better than what is now available b) it could provide these services in a way that protects people's information and indentities c) it could undercut other services which are attempting to consolidate and monetize people's online identities.]
Imagine... well, imagine Diaspora*, or something like that. A distributed service, with you controlling your own information. Now imagine that the servers on this network had a shared director service. Not some kind of involuntary imposed directory service, but one you got to register with. Indeed, one you could register with as many times as you'd like, including zero.
Each entry would include an identity - which could be anything the person was known by - and then as much associated public information as the person registering the identity would like to include, to allow people to sort through identities with similar names.
So, it could be:
Barb Smith
* Washington Middle School, Seattle
* Garfield High School, Seattle
* North Seattle Community College (aka "Northgate State")
* Sprynet
* Adobe
Or, it could be:
StormText
* Caves of Shadows BBS
* alt.talk.religion
* alt.pagan
* BeliefNet.com
Perhaps it could even support having multiple personae entered explicitly as the same person:
StormCloud / StormText / TheDarkOne
* Livejournal...
Or whatever. Totally user defined, with minimal formatting options provided for searchability
This is the public piece, which is shared between all servers. There is also a code linking this to a certain entry on a certain server.
On that server, and only on that server, is contact information - probably one or more email addresses, but the exact mechanism isn't that relevant. What's important is that anyone can find StormText, or Barb Smith, and send a contact note to that person through the registry service, including their own contact information. (Yes, spam control is important.) At that point, the recipient can decide what if any contact information they want to share.
Simple, not hard to secure, and the contact information never leaves your own server. Meanwhile, there is a central service that allows you to locate and connect with the people behind identities, without forcing any public linking of current identities or contact information.
Thoughts?
I'm not a big fan of legal names being required (the asininity of how this is enforced is a separate, but also real issue). I think the very idea that we should be forced to have a single traceable identity, over which we have only very limited control is a real affront to our privacy and our ability to communicate. But I'm figuring that most of you are fairly aware of the arguments to be made there.
So. The one way in which Facebook and its icky names policy has been useful to me is in how well it gives me the ability to look up people I've lost touch with. It's not perfect, and not everyone is on Facebook, but, like everyone else, I use it because it's pretty much the lowest common denominator of social networking. (Likewise, it gets only a fairly filtered version of my life - actually, it just gets my public twitter feed.) And, of course, it only is useful in locating the people I'd known by their legal names in the first place. So, great for people I went to elementary school with, not so much for many of my net friends over the last several decades.
But it occurred to me that the useful directory functions could be handled in ways that would not compromise privacy in the same way.
[ETA: This is pretty obvious, but what I find interesting about this is that a) it could provide a useful service, and indeed provide it better than what is now available b) it could provide these services in a way that protects people's information and indentities c) it could undercut other services which are attempting to consolidate and monetize people's online identities.]
Imagine... well, imagine Diaspora*, or something like that. A distributed service, with you controlling your own information. Now imagine that the servers on this network had a shared director service. Not some kind of involuntary imposed directory service, but one you got to register with. Indeed, one you could register with as many times as you'd like, including zero.
Each entry would include an identity - which could be anything the person was known by - and then as much associated public information as the person registering the identity would like to include, to allow people to sort through identities with similar names.
So, it could be:
Barb Smith
* Washington Middle School, Seattle
* Garfield High School, Seattle
* North Seattle Community College (aka "Northgate State")
* Sprynet
* Adobe
Or, it could be:
StormText
* Caves of Shadows BBS
* alt.talk.religion
* alt.pagan
* BeliefNet.com
Perhaps it could even support having multiple personae entered explicitly as the same person:
StormCloud / StormText / TheDarkOne
* Livejournal...
Or whatever. Totally user defined, with minimal formatting options provided for searchability
This is the public piece, which is shared between all servers. There is also a code linking this to a certain entry on a certain server.
On that server, and only on that server, is contact information - probably one or more email addresses, but the exact mechanism isn't that relevant. What's important is that anyone can find StormText, or Barb Smith, and send a contact note to that person through the registry service, including their own contact information. (Yes, spam control is important.) At that point, the recipient can decide what if any contact information they want to share.
Simple, not hard to secure, and the contact information never leaves your own server. Meanwhile, there is a central service that allows you to locate and connect with the people behind identities, without forcing any public linking of current identities or contact information.
Thoughts?
