It's pretty much the definition of fascism (corporations assuming Regalian tasks) and the main motivation behind my PhD — so yes, it’s freaky. But it shouldn’t

It's pretty much the definition of fascism (corporations assuming Regalian tasks) and the main motivation behind my PhD — so yes, it’s freaky. But it shouldn’t be surprising, not as a first step. Decades after widespread e-mail and web use, very little progress has been made to improve identity and relation representation with a usable design outside of Facebook and its competitors (currently: LinkedIn, twitter; and the less public: Instagram, WhatsApp, SnapChat, Lime) all self-centric platforms. Open social media initiatives have been legions, from blog-based solutions (mainly on top of WordPress) to some revitalisation of OpenSocialNetwork spearheaded by Facebook employees. However, standard-based platform hit the contradictions raised by social presentation (what is a friend, a follower, should a non-physical person have identity? what should be public?) even harder than a single platform does. At least a corporate monopoly headed by people who don’t mind being called prejudiced can leap over a semester long nasty debate on gender classification, and focus on scalability and fixing bugs. My ever-disappointed hope is that after a handful of social network generations, current decision-makers know how to recognise a coming tide. To preserve their market share, they hopefully will support a working standard. In that regard, having Facebook and Instagram under the same super-management might help agree on some commonalities. I believe it will be in their interest to suggest a usable OpenSocial-4.0 that will first let one connect their accounts within one corporate group. In Facebook/Instagram case, that means articulate multiple identity facets, pseudonyms, challenge the need for civil criteria such as age and gender. Moving further out, it might mean discuss information-sharing for ad-targeting to avoid commercial conflict with competitors. Possibly it might finally let you connect your own server, and your multiple identities to your less savvy friends WordPress blog or twitter feed. From there on, one can hope proving their integrity to their ice-cream clerk without having to bow to too Orwellian institutions. An alternative is to ask a Facebook competitor more agreeable to your concerns (reddit? Moot’s Canvas?) to offer a similar service: though luck if what matters is law enforcement. That war of leaky abstractions against our own laziness to express our social ties has been raging since the 80’s. As icky as post-libertarian can seem, their focus on usability helps set up great services far before any more respectful entity can. Rather than code along and be overtaken, we might benefit from learning how to shift those to more open practice later in their development.