We have looked at the impact of Facebook’s F8 announcements around Open Graph and Like buttons from the point of view of the overall semantic web ecosystem (a big positive). We then looked at it from the point of view of web site developers/publishers (a mixed blessing, some trade-off involved). But what we are seeing is a major issue brewing related to Facebook users. And when “push comes to shove”, if the users don’t like what Facebook is doing, the rest is just blogosphere chatter.

Are The Peasants Really Revolting This Time?

Every time Facebook makes a move to push their users to a more public mode, there are howls of protest in the blogosphere. The most notorious example was when they introduced Beacon. They did back off from that. But they keep coming back with a similar basic move “we will broadcast your updates and make money from that”.

Facebook is the great Baron Of Social Media. But even Baron’s are not immune to populist rage. But are we seeing real revolt by Facebook users or simply a vocal minority?

Here is one example of that vocal group taken from a comment on this post on Techcrunch:

“Yeah, so… they’re doing it independent of opt-in/opt-out. At least w/ the Glue (which I haven’t used before), it’s something you manually install/de-install.

I signed into Facebook. Closed it w/out signing out. I was looking at the WashingtonPost re: an article and there’s a message: “None of your friends like this so far. YOU can be first!”

I already opted out of this bullshit. So what the hell gives? This amounts to an implicit acknowledgment that SOME information – …how much, I don’t know – is transferred in light of the fact that I CLEARLY OPTED OUT. Why pander to the public w/ the whole opt-out BS if you’re going to proceed with siphoning member information, in whole or in part. ==;;

failwhale.

Only answer in the meantime is make sure you log out and/or delete cookies. I see this heading in a direction reminiscent of their ‘privacy update 2.0′”

The only way we will know this is real is if we see signs of increased churn in Facebook (ie people deleting accounts). Time will tell.

What Is The Web Of Trust And Why Does It Matter?

Trust in the real world is a mix of exchanges and artifacts that we trust (a business card, an email, a LinkedIn profile, etc) and the intuition we all build over time. That is very, very hard for machines to replicate.

It seems that Sir Tim Berners-Lee was very aware of the challenge when he wrote about Web Of Trust in 1997.

This is an extract from the paper written by Sir Tim Berners-Lee in 1997 (yes, a looong time ago, he was not even a knight in those days) where he says:

“The Web of trust

In cases in which a high level of trust is needed for metadata, digitally signed metadata will allow the Web to include a ‘Web of trust’. The Web of trust will be a set of documents on the Web that are digitally signed with certain keys, and contain statements about those keys and about other documents. Like the Web itself, the Web of trust does not need to have a specific structure like a tree or a matrix. Statements of trust can be added exactly so as to reflect actual trust. People learn to trust through experience and though recommendation. We change our minds about who we trust for different purposes. The Web of trust must allow us to express this.”

Reading his writing from from 23 years ago just makes one more appreciative of his wisdom and leadership!

What Does Open Graph Do To Web Of Trust?

One could argue that “set of documents on the Web that are digitally signed with certain keys” describes a Facebook account. But almost anybody who thinks about this for long will take a view that is something along these lines:

1. It is better for our online identity to federated than centralized

2. It is better for our online identity to not be controlled by entities that make money from distributing information that we create.

That is a massive over-simplification of a complex subject. Kaliya Hamlin has been running the Internet Identity Workshop for many, many years and the subjects for discussion don’t seem to be running out!

In fact:

“Internet Identity Workhop 10
May 17-19, 2010
at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.

Registration is open!!!“

Many people have been working on this issue for a long time. Doc Searls has been promoting Vendor Relationship Management, where we control the conversation with vendors, for a long time. Nearly a year ago I wrote a post urging Facebook to get behind VRM; that fell on deaf ears!

Is Facebook’s Move a Positive Or Negative For The Web Of Trust?

That seems to depend on how this will play out. If Facebook’s plan succeeds then many people see a world where our online identity is controlled by one corporation that intends to make a lot of money from that control.

Most forward-looking people would not want that future. It would make Microsoft and Google’s dominance of previous eras seem minor.

It probably won’t happen. One or two things are likely to happen:

1. Facebook changes policy after user backlash, as they have done in the past.

2. More people opt out of sending updates via Facebook or opt out of Facebook entirely, so they become simply one social network source of identity among many.

Facebook has certainly lit the fire around identity. The question is whether Facebook’s moves will catalyze the movements around open identity and create mainstream market adoption of those alternatives.

Here are links to some of the people who are thinking deeply around this subject:

Kaliya Hamlin
Doc Searls
David Siegel
Drummond Reed
Phil Windley

FWIW, I fall into the “glass half full” crowd. This will catalyze the online identity debate and lead to some good momentum.

We plan to re-visit this story as it unfolds and get their opinion.

Breaking News: the politicians are onto this one. As Nick ONeil chronicles:

“Today during a press conference, Senator Charles Schumer of New York and a number of other Democratic Senators announced that they would like Facebook to make their new “Instant Personalization” service “Opt-In” rather than “Opt-Out” by default. While the new service accounts for only a portion of Facebook’s new features, it’s appearing as though this could rapidly turn into Facebook’s second Beacon moment.”

Please tell us what you think in comments.

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