Dave Kearns

Marc Cantor and some others have created “A Bill of Rights for Users of the Social Web” which, while I can generally support in principle, is (as are most internet-based manifestos) remarkably flawed. For example, the BofR includes:

“users of the social web are entitled to certain fundamental rights, specifically…ownership of their own personal information, including…the activity stream of content they create.”

But the “activity stream” is actually compiled by the web site and includes much more than content. It’s that whole “attention” thing again. At least in the US, you are assumed to maintain ownership of the content you create – it’s called “copyright,” and it’s yours until you specifically forego it. So there’s really no need to restate that, is there?

The bigger problem is in the area of “relationships.”

In the words of the BofR: “Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list…” But friend-ness is a relationship. A two-way relationship. I can claim to be your friend, but unless you reciprocate there is no “friend” relationship between us. Unfortunately, most social networking sites refuse to choose among differing degrees of relationship (friend, acquaintance, lover, parent, actor-that-I-admire-and-want-to-meet, etc.). Given the binary nature of most social networking sites you can choose either “friend” or “stranger” for a relationship equation and most people will be nice, and choose friend when they at least think they may have interacted with the claimant at least once. In the closed world of that particular social network, most understand that the term “friend” has a very loose meaning. But once you can take that list of “friends” elsewhere and install it – even on a site with a much more fine-grained sense of relationships – there is a great deal of risk to the “other parties” in the relationships. Worse, those “other parties” have no idea of (and no veto power over) the type of site to which their name and supposed relationship might be dragged! I might be OK with being associated with someone on the Manx kitty lovers network, but do I also want to be associated with that same person on Witches&Bitches.net?

Let’s revise the Bill of Rights to both acknowledge reality as well as to protect all users – the primary and all their “relations”.

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