Danah Boyd posted recently at Many-to-Many about the future of social software. I’ve been more than a little bit gung ho on web 2.0 for a while, but I do like her caution:

If MySpace falters in the next 1-2 years, it will be because of this moral panic. Before all of you competitors get motivated to exacerbate the moral panic, think again. If the moral panic succeeds:

• Youth will lose (even more) freedom of speech. How far will the curtailment of the First Amendment go?
   
• All users will lose the safety and opportunities of pseudonymity, particularly around political speech and particularly internationally.
   
• Internet companies will be required to confirm the real life identity of all users. At their own cost.
   
• International growth on social communities will be massively curtailed because it is much harder to confirm non-US populations.
   
• Internet companies will lose the protections of common carrier which will have ramifications in all sorts of directions.
   
• Internet companies will see a massive increase in subpoenas and will be forced to turn over data on their users which will in turn destroy the trust relationship between companies and users.
   
• There will be a much greater barrier for new communities to form and for startups to build out new social environments.
   
• International companies will be far better positioned to create new social technologies because they won’t have to abide by American laws even if American citizens use their technology (assuming the servers are hosted outside of the US). Unless, of course, we decide to block sites on a nation-wide basis…

There’s stuff here that I wish I had more time to write about, more time to think about, but read the full story. I’ll get back to this in bits and pieces over time.

danah boyd, facebook, friendster, moral responsibility, myspace, responsible application development, responsible web design, social internet, social software, web 2.0

(note: the following is cross-posted at Identity Future.)

Being that good software — the social software that’s nearly synonymous with Web 2.0 — is stuff that gets you laid, where does that leave IdM?

Danah Boyd might not have been thinking about it in exactly those terms, but her approach is uniquely social-centered. She proposes “SecureId”

What is SecureId? SecureId is a program that helps you protect and control your digital identity by allowing you to determine who can access your private information. By allowing you to articulate your digital contexts based on facets of your identity, SecureId provides the framework for you to properly relate identity information and people with contexts, thereby giving you the ability to portray yourself properly. SecureId uses a knowledge-based security system to help you manage access to various facets of your identity. By presenting you with a portrait of your digital identity, SecureId also gives you a virtual mirror to your social performance.

Reading further, she implores us to “imagine that you are in control of your digital identity.”

The information you give out on a daily basis is quite context dependent. While you might give your medical history to your doctor, would you give it to a random stranger? Does your language differ between work, the pub and at home with your 3-year-old? What about your clothing? Not only do you make different decisions based on the level of trust you have, but also based on what is socially appropriate. Speaking to your boss like you speak to your child might be both inappropriate and offensive. Do you have different groups of friends, family and associations that may or may not interact with one another? What roles do you play in your life and how do aspects of your character change when you are in these different roles?

SecureId offers you an interactive visual landscape for articulating your identity facets and associating appropriate data with them. Through this mechanism, you can quickly see who has access to what aspects of your self. By presenting you with a portrait of your digital identity, SecureId also gives you a virtual mirror to your social performance, an awareness that is taken for granted in the physical world.

context dependent identity, danah boyd, identity management, idm, social, social aspects, social context, social identity, social idm, social interaction, social networks, social software