John Batelle has a fascinating post exploring how our identities are presented on the web. He begins by noting the emergence of two distinct territories across the web landscape:
The Dependent Web is dominated by companies [Facebook, Google, and increasingly Twitter] that deliver services, content and advertising based on who that service believes you to be: What you see on these sites “depends” on their proprietary model of your identity, including what you’ve done in the past, what you’re doing right now, what “cohorts” you might fall into based on third- or first-party data and algorithms, and any number of other robust signals.
The Independent Web, for the most part, does not shift its content or services based on who you are. However, in the past few years, a large group of these sites have begun to use Dependent Web algorithms and services to deliver advertising based on who you are.
He goes on to detail what he sees as the early phase of “a major shift in the texture and experience of the web.” Sophisticated algorithms that “track your declarations of intent and interpret them” until “Independent Web will be able to use to Independent sits will be able use Dependent Web infrastructure to determine what content and services they might offer to a visitor.”
Batelle suggests we will want to consider a Third Way – The Revealed Identity:
I think it’s worth defining a portion of the web as a place where one can visit and be part of a conversation without the data created by that conversation being presumptively sucked into a sophisticated response platform – whether that platform is Google, Blue Kai, Doubleclick, Twitter, or any other scaled web service. Now, I’m all for engaging with that platform, to be sure, but I’m also interested in the parts of society where one can wander about free of identity presumption, a place where one can chose to engage knowing that you are in control of how your identity is presented, and when it is revealed.
One thing I’m certain of: Who I am according to Google, or Facebook, or any number of other scaled Dependent Web services, is not necessarily who I want to be as I wander this new digital world. I want more instrumentation, more nauance, and more rights.
The question is, however, how to create that better service?
These are fascinating thoughts. This post does them little justice but if it piqued your interest go there! He’s hoping readers will point him in useful directions.