A proclamation of emancipation! Since the beginning of civilization humans have been fighting for freedom from oppressive forces. Today large portions of our personal life, our community, and our business relationships reside online. Essential aspects of who we are like our friends, our political beliefs, our spiritual preference, where we live, our age, where we shop, and where we vacation has become data that represent our identity, our digital imprint. Yet all of this data is legally owned by private corporations when we agree to the terms of service on places like Facebook, Google and other online platforms. It is time for us to take this sovereign data back from third-parties that use it to exploit, spy, shadow-ban, and censor us. Welcome to the distributed, peer-to-peer, sovereign, and secure MetaSocial Revolution.

What is Your ID and Why Does it Matter Online? As obvious as the answer to this question may be when we consider the utility of our driver’s license, passport, or birth certificate in society, few have considered what this means as a global citizen of the internet. How often have you used Facebook to login to another app like Spotify, Tinder, Netflix? In these and other instances Facebook is the equivalent of using your driver’s license to access these platforms. Would you ever let a third-party or a private corporation keep your birth certificate, passport, or driver’s license for you? Probably not…

Reclaiming Your Data is Digital Emancipation: By using Facebook or Google as keepers of your online ID, you are giving them a whole lot more information about you than a person would have if you gave them your driver’s license, passport, or birth certificate. European countries were the first to recognize the importance of data sovereignty online and created General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Unfortunately GDPR is an attempt to establish data sovereignty in an inherently-flawed, centralized system.

Privatization thrives in a landscape of central authorities, gatekeepers, and regulatory brokers that influence the mechanisms of finance, government, and most areas of society. Corruption of this system causes it to lose its intended use to serve and steward The Commons along with the people. -Blockchain and a Renaissance of the Social Commons

Centralized systems work for many aspects of society but they are problematic, insecure, and vulnerable to corruption online. In this regard peer-to-peer, decentralized, and distributed networks are superior. In addition to being transparent and secure, peer-to-peer networks provide the opportunity for each of us to control our data through Self-Sovereign Identity (SSID) with the help of DPKI (Distributed Public Key Infrastructure or “Deep Key”) on Holochain distributed applications (hApps).

Keeping it Simple With Holochain: I have spent the last few years focused on the utility of Blockchain and though it is a robust solution for many applications, it is not fast enough or scalable for addressing the needs of average people on social media and other online platforms. The Holochain Community is taking lead in this regard. For those who wish to take a deeper technical dive into this topic, I highly recommend reading Beyond GDPR, Holo Vault delivering on Self-Sovereign Identity for Distributed Applications by Jean M. Russell who cites many experts in the field. She also asks these crucial questions which each of us should consider:

What is the infrastructure that respects our privacy?…And at the same time enables enough transparency to foster trust! What design allows us ownership and control of our data?…And at the same time creates and cultivates a commons beyond the individual! What connects us with others to share and learn and grow together as a community?…And also protects us by creating boundaries and barriers that give us a sense of safety and identity? What rewards people for sharing and being a contributor?…And does so without extracting wealth from those sharing it! What creates enough trust to lubricate human interactions?…And for all that, does not become administratively burdensome?

Social Media of the People, by the People, and for the People: In a previous blog I discuss Authentic Community as the Missing Link in Social Media. I encourage you to read it for background on this evolving community discussion about putting the power of social networks back in the hands of the people. A bunch of alternative social platforms have emerged in an effort to address the many issues that people have with Facebook. Many of them have great features, but they all share the same problem… adoption. Each time I have created a new account on an alternative to Facebook, I always find myself going back to Facebook because that is where everyone is!

Digital Platforms need to model organic human interactions first and business models second, not the other way around…

A Digital Declaration of Independence: MetaSocial is an emergent project that addresses all the issues above while also allowing alternative social media platforms an equal playing-field to compete with Facebook. What if all your personal data (including friends-list, biographical information etc.) is stored on your own sovereign digital ID that is interoperable with many different social media platforms so that you don’t have to create or store your profile information with any third-party? It will not be a giant corporation to make this possible, it will have to come from the people and the process will need to be collaborative. The best development environment and distributed network to host such an idea appears to be Holo.

Holo is the new cloud. A cloud that is built and maintained by the crowd. -Raymond D. Powell

We Need Your Input! MetaSocial and variations of the concept have been loosely tossed around in different circles recently. Raymond D. Powell and myself coined the term MetaSocial and are inviting others to weigh in as we take this idea to the next level. We have discussed starting a central portal for interoperability standards on such a project, as well as considering an actual application (hApp). In order for this concept to live up to a vision of collaboration and community ownership it will require input from diverse stakeholders and a shared effort moving forward.

Are you a developer, a content creator, a social media expert, or are you involved in a Facebook alternative platform? We wanna hear from you! Visit our website and give us your email so that we can be in touch with you as we host meetings, create videos, blogs, standards, and possibly even an application (hApp) to move the MetaSocial concept forward.

It will take collective effort and cooperation for a non-corporate, non-centralized enterprise to put the power of social media back in the hands of the people. Ou data is a digital imprint of our identity, it needs to be sovereign and controlled by the user. MetaSocial is the People’s Web and it has the power to radically change the way we think about data and social systems online. We hope you will join us for this exciting journey!