The current social web 'exists as a number of “closed silos” that limit their users to relationships with those who have accounts on the same site' (CfP). Discussions surrounding a Federated Social Web envision a better model where '[d]iverse social networking sites could federate using inter-operable standards to share social data' (ibid).

While this is a great step forward, it preserves a model that limits the autonomy of the users. In discussions of the federated model, sites run services to which humans apply for membership. Those sites then share their users' data, through federation protocols, to other similar services with a different set of users. While none of the following are strict requirements, the services are envisioned as:

• having membership
• hosting content
• transferring content to other services

These services are still silos, albeit considerably more open than their predecessors: Someone else hosts and effectively owns a representation of a person's identity and some segment of their content.

A better model would be a person hosting their own representation or representations of their identity or identities and all of the content they wished to share in diverse ways on the internet. Content would be provided, by URI, to services that act as engines of presentation and aggregation. In this model the relationship between traditional content providers (e.g. Flickr, Twitter, etc) and content creators (you and me) is inverted.

Unfortunately, expecting everyone to host their own content repository on the web is not reasonable for many reasons technical, economic and political. There is, however, another option: In these modern times people who are unable or do not want to have their own vault store their money in a bank. In return those banks provide a variety of services. Notably they are regulated to guarantee reasonable security and accessibility of funds.

An Internet Bank of Content could be used to invert the social web, placing control directly in the hands of the user while taking advantage of the simple principles of the open web.