Smarter solutions than breaking up Facebook

It’s time for Identity Portability

By Digitopoly

“You want people to be able to communicate across networks.

. . .

The solution . . . is to allow individuals to port their identity to other networks, With that identity comes a set of permissions associated with that identity and it is that which creates value here. A competitor to Facebook — call it, for the sake of argument, NoRussiaBook — could come in, offer a different ad policy and you could move there. Your friends and connections need not know the difference although I would not recommend that be hidden — just that defaults be set for ubiquity which can then be seen and adjusted at the discretion of individual users. To be sure, privacy is complicated here but that is because privacy is complicated, not because there is anything really special or risky about this proposal.

. . .

All of the other solutions — namely, breaking up Facebook — do nothing to resolve the underlying issue — network effects become barriers to entry. We need to start taking that seriously if we want to do something here.”

More at Digitopoly

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