Re: Transfer of followers - a very interesting question and a major use case for DID standard.

Hey Bohdan,

This is out of scope for the DID spec itself, but definitely an
important use case that can be built on top of DIDs.

I think your ideas that the list of followers should be independent of a
specific service, and that your followers (or social graph) should be
fully portable, align very well with SSI.

W3C ActivityPub has a way to express in RDF/JSON-LD who your "followers"
are, and who you are "following", see here:
https://www.w3.org/TR/activitypub/#followers

Markus

On 06/30/2018 02:27 PM, Bohdan Andriyiv wrote:
> On the last CCG call, Christopher Allen raised a very interesting
> question – transfer of followers from one service to another. This is
> a very interesting and important question, as well as a major use case
> for DID standard. If such transfer of followers can be done, it would
> have a profound impact on the Internet. Every Internet industry that
> have social networking element, will become much more competitive as
> incumbents will lose their lock-in on users, caused by the network
> effect.
>
> Now, when we see, that making transfer of followers possible would
> have a huge positive impact on the Internet, the question is - "Is
> such transfer of followers a theoretical possibility  a
> "would-be-really-nice-to-have-but-never-gonna-happen-thing" or is it
> something that can be done in practice and if yes, how?".
>
> To answer this question we need to look in 3 dimensions.
>  * Technical dimension
> We need to have Internet-wide accepted standard of identity. Such
> standard should allow me to say - "I am identity "realBob123" on
> service X." and every service should understand it. If this can be
> done than I will be able to say something like this  - "Hey service A,
> I do not like you anymore, I am using service B now and I am identity
> "realBob123" there. Show on my profile page a button with text "Follow
> me on service B", and also send message to all my followers with this
> button. And when my followers click on the button make sure they will
> register and automatically follow me on service B."
> BTW, maybe I am rediscovering America here. Do we have such
> inter-operable standard of identity already? Can DID become such
> identity standard or it is already covered by other standard?
>  * Legal dimension
> Transfer of followers functionality should be enforced by competition
> law. Just as Google Chrome browser, allows to change its search
> engine, all Internet services that have social component have to allow
> simple standard way to tell your followers - "Hey I am on another
> service, here's a button, click on it and you will start following me
> on that service.".
> Now, thinking about it, I am really surprised this has not been
> proposed already, after all of the negative press with Facebook.
>  * Real world dimension
> Besides network effects, real world behaviors are shaped by user's
> need for minimize mental load and habits.
> To achieve this mental load minimization, we would need to have a
> standard way on all services to initiate followers transfer. There
> would need to be a /standard/ form on all services with fields: 1) New
> service where you want to be followed; 2) Your identity on a new
> service. Such form would need to be enforced by competition law.
> But, unfortunately, this form might still be too complex – too high
> mental load barrier for many people in our hectic world.
> I think, to make followers transfer really seamless and commonplace in
> the real world we would need to use **Base Identity**.
> In the current Internet, most people use 1-click sign up/in usually
> with Facebook or Google identity to most of the services. This,
> Facebook or Google identity is what I call a "Base Identity". When
> this Base Identity exist, and in real world settings it does exist for
> most people, the transfer of followers can be intermediated through
> it. A user will not have to fill in a form to tell Service A his
> identity name on Service B, he will just have to say - "Hey followers
> on Service A, follow me on Service B". What is important, the
> initiation of followers transfer, now will be possible from service B.
> Service B will be able to provide to a user a functionality to offer
> his followers on service A to follow him on Service B. As Service B is
> very much incentivized to provide such functionality, it will figure
> out the best seamless and easy design to do it - hence no need for
> hard to understand forms on service A (which Service A is going to
> hide anyway as it is against its incentives).
> Such Base-Identity-intermediated transfer of followers, relies on the
> existence of Base Identity, and subsequently Base Identity provider.
> This immediately, opens a number of questions: "What exactly is Base
> Identity", "Does Base Identity exist in the current world?", "Do we
> really need Base Identity?", "Is it not too dangerous to have Base
> Identity?", "Who is or should be Base Identity Provider?", "Would Base
> Identity Provider have too much power?", "Can Base Identity be
> self-sovereign?". I would very much like to explore and discuss Base
> Identity questions, probably in another topic.
>
> Conclusion.
> Transfer of followers is very important. It will make the Internet
> better, by making it more competitive.
> Transfer of followers is possible in practice. It will require
> technical standard and enforcement by law.
> In real world, transfer of followers is going to be intermediated via
> Base Identity.
>
> Bonus: Base Identity concept. Base Identity is a very important real
> world existing concept. Base Identity and Base Identity Provider
> concepts and their aspects (existence, importance, relevance to DID
> standard) needs to be explored more.
>

Received on Tuesday, 3 July 2018 14:42:48 UTC