Most of the discussions about social media power miss the critical distinction: between the platform and the graph.

The reason we're in this mess is that there is no separation between social media platforms and the graph.

Twitter, Facebook etc. control both the platform and the graph.

The social graph are the connections that we make with each other. This is not property of any company. And yet, you can't freely move this information between different platforms, which means that the platforms effectively own it. That's crazy when you think about it.

The equivalent of what goes on with SM platforms would be a club, where you are not allowed to exchange contact information with people you meet there.

You're free to leave, but then you have to somehow find the people you want to stay in touch with. Not impossible, but hard.

This is how SM works today. If you leave Twitter, FB etc. you have to reconstruct your graph MANUALLY somewhere else. This creates a massive barrier and gives platform huge LEVERAGE.

The answer to this problem is not "breaking up Big Tech". That's silly – it doesn't even address the issue!

The key is to enable freely moving between platforms. I.e. it needs to be easy and quick to replicate your graph on other platforms. It has to be automated. It needs to happen with a click of a button.

When this is the case then a platform banning somebody for WHATEVER reason is fine. If you don't like it you CAN leave.

Right now you can, but you really can't. You have to incur a massive cost to do so. That's the reason people freak out. They are right to do so.

Luckily, the technology to do that already exists – cryptographic proofs.

You can post a cryptographic proof on your SM accounts, website, via email etc. This proves that the same entity controls all of them.

Copies of these proofs can be stored & verified by anyone.

. @KeybaseIO was the first project to bring cryptographic proofs to a large number of users. But there are more projects that enable that. My personal favorite is @keyoxide.

With cryptographic proofs we can build a universal & decentralized social graph that's not owned or controlled by any single entity.

With a Universal Social Graph there can be any number of services that enable you to back up your network.

If you want to move from one platform to another you can find all the people you were previously connected to with a click of a button. And they can find you.

Creation of a Universal Social Graph would change the imbalance of power between the user and the platform.

Today it's in favor of the platforms. With USG it would be in favor of the user. You.