I got around to catching up with my non-work blog reading today and of the pieces that jumped out to me, most focused on the distribution of power over web-based social networks (in the broader sense). I'm referring here to control of resources as well as political influence, as opposed to more Foucaultian senses or Deleuzian control. How, in an environment for which standard practices around privacy, ownership, and identity are still being forged, do we allocate or support mechanisms of sociality and quasi-governance?

The piece that set me down this line of thought tonight was a brief article in Tech Confidential from last week about Digg's decision to alter its practices to block the influence of certain uber-Diggers, who have come to wield large amounts of influence over what makes it to the front page. These Diggers have made their way to such a position by being able to convince large numbers of other users to vote a particular entry up or down. This sets up a situation in which the normally laissez-faire overseeing body, Digg-the-company, sees an effective inequality between users and a global lessening of diversity through the influence of a relative few members. In this view, these members lead to a social context that promotes bandwagonism and unduly favors early entrants to the system.

Sure, it could be argued that actions limiting the ability of these uber-users from influencing the actions of "average" users promotes diversity - after all, with less persuasion, won't everyone just vote how they feel they should, not what anyone else thinks they should? But on the other side of the coin, I think that such informal, and indeed formal, associations between uber-users and average users is unavoidable in any sort of reasonably large sociality. For example, I'm one who believes that labor unions are a natural result of the economic conditions which place a large number of similar people, in similar situations, together. It is the same basic social and effect of unicyclists forming a unicycle club. On Digg, like in ay unicycle club, there will be some members who are more engaged than others and act as eyes and ears for those who can not or do not want to be more engaged. To imply that such forms of association, however informal, are somehow working against the larger community seems odd as it is the natural result of community. It is also quite futile to fight it. Whatever limitations Digg puts in place, there will be ways for these sub-associations, informal sub-networks - or whatever you wish to call them - to exist and function as they have up until now.

This type of sub-network formation seems natural to any web service with ambitions to mimic or enhance non-web social interaction. Concurrently, so does the formation of a hierarchy within these subnetworks between those with different levels of engagement.

The line of thought stemming from this seems to head toward a Gladwellian conclusion that there is some subset of influential folks who are responsible for each and every trend sweeping over society. This brings me to the (infallible, of course)Fast Company article on Duncan Watts, which describes Watts' strong opposition to this particular view of social network-based communication. A particular section from the article gets to Watts' alternative view:

Watts believes ... a trend's success depends not on the person who starts it, but on how susceptible the society is overall to the trend--not how persuasive the early adopter is, but whether everyone else is easily persuaded. ...

'If society is ready to embrace a trend, almost anyone can start one--and if it isn't, then almost no one can,' Watts concludes. To succeed with a new product, it's less a matter of finding the perfect hipster to infect and more a matter of gauging the public's mood. Sure, there'll always be a first mover in a trend. But since she generally stumbles into that role by chance, she is, in Watts's terminology, an 'accidental Influential.'

Watts describes that in a number of models he set up to pattern the spread of information among a heterogeneously socially-connected group, the cascade of information that defines a sweeping trend was more often started by a node that had only average connections. However, a highly connected node was able to spread it faster and further.

If we take this view and apply it to highly-engaged vs. less-engaged users of a web based social networking service, then it seems that the uber-users are not so much responsible for seeding trends, but in some cases can be responsible for furthering them. According to Watts, the average Digg user has as much influence as the uber-Digger.

One thing I would be curious to see Watts look into would be the effect of the formalization of the union like sub-networks within social networks like Digg. Does effective institutionalization of influence effect the spread of information? Or does it merely mask its origin and development?

On top of all this is the issue of ownership of the data through which all this communication is expressed. It is vitally important to address the implications of ownership, especially as we witness self-declared non-evil companies absorbing more and more of our personal data every day. This may be done through providing useful and entertaining services and products, but really that's just another way of saying "enslavement with a smile" - with a hefty dose of melodrama, of course. Axel Bruns addressed this issue of ownership in what he calls 'produsage' in Re-Public.

All in all, Terrell Russell (in a largely unrelated post) puts it well when he writes:

"We sometimes forget we’re in uncharted territory. We are playing with the new shiny toys of the internet and not necessarily understanding the implications. These tools provide great power across the board. Users gain abilities to connect, find, sort, and publish in ways never before available. Conversely, companies gain abilities to monitor, gather, and sell more personal information than ever before. Additionally, third party observers gain the ability to observe at a distance and in numbers never possible in the physical world."