The proposed Architecture for the Digital Expression of Agency (DEA) aims to redefine digital socio-economic relations. It focuses on enabling participants to exercise their will, manage their digital environments, and accept the consequences of their decisions, while ensuring that control boundaries remain verifiable and independent of any single party.
The DEA model identifies four key roles: the User, who owns their device and data; the Producer, who creates platforms and technology; the Operator, who provides infrastructure and cryptographic services; and the Protocol Institute, which maintains standards and rules. A normative layer defines the boundaries of authority for each participant.
Unlike Web3, which the author argues ignores the balance between users, producers, and states, DEA seeks to be normatively agnostic. It does not dictate specific rights but provides a technical interface to protect existing legal and cultural rights, ensuring that control over digital environments is not unilaterally altered.
The framework draws comparisons to existing concepts like Digital Self-Determination (DSD), MyData, and the AT Protocol. While these approaches focus on data privacy or social network independence, DEA aims to extend the principle of agency to the entire digital environment, including the ability to modify system states and configurations.
The author is currently developing a social platform based on the DEA architecture. The model promises benefits such as increased sovereignty over digital identity, improved privacy without requiring deep technical expertise, and reduced legal risks for companies by clearly defining the scope of their responsibility.
