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

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 Saturday, 30 June 2018 12:27:37 UTC