Recently I was pondering on the Diaspora project's one month report, wondering how exactly comments on status updates were being routed.
Does the person who owns the status update receive the comment on their seed and potentially have the opportunity to review it before it is broadcast? That seems reasonable. Really, though, the comment belongs to the person who wrote it. Shouldn't their seed have the right to send it out to all its peers regardless of what the person who posted the original update thinks?
It's fairly obvious in this case that the status update seed should be the definitive source of any comments. We all appreciate the idea that if the status update belongs to you, then you should have some level of control over what content is associated with it.
The problem becomes more complicated when you take a photo of your friends and want to share it on your seeds, including tags of the identities of everybody in the photo. The way Facebook operates is that even though you own the photo, the user who is tagged has the option of removing that tag, whether or not the photo poster wanted to keep it there. Clearly this is isn't enforceable in Diaspora where you only have control over your own seed.
On one hand, the photo and its tags belong to the person who shared the photo and contributed the tags. On the other, the tagged person doesn't own anything except the identity, but it would be nice if they could have some control over being tagged. How should this system mediate this?
The critical thing is that we're communicating with our friends. I would propose a system like this: your friend's seed announces its policy on photos: (a) Please don't tag me, (b) If you tag me, please don't display it until I've reviewed the photo, or (c) Go ahead, tag me.
When you attempt to tag this friend in a photo it will check on the policy. If it's option (a) Don't tag, then it will refuse to do so (or at least make you jump through hoops. Shame on you for not respecting your friend's wishes). If it's option (b) Check first, it will send away a review request without you having to think about it. If it's option (c) Tag me, it will simply apply the tag.
Not only does this work to allow people to stipulate their tagging wishes, but it falls back on good old human respect to get along. Just because you have the technical ability to do something disrespectful to a friend doesn't mean you should. Conversely, where we can use technology to facilitate flexible interaction rather than dictate policy, we should.