Abstract
Consumer media sharing imposes a hidden, compounding storage tax. When a user shares a photo or video to n recipients on a copy-based platform whose defaults save received media to the library and cloud backup, the asset is duplicated across every recipient's device and personal cloud. Families carry the same memories n times over, and platforms turn duplication into upgrade prompts. The cost is invisible, and so is the kindness of a sharer who avoids it.
This paper specifies the B-Link℠: a rich link-preview primitive that replaces copy-based sharing with reference-based sharing while carrying four normally-absent payloads. One cloud-canonical copy lives in B-Storage℠; what travels is a standards-compliant preview (Open Graph / oEmbed) that renders inline. Bound to it are a verified-human signature (Proof of Humanity℠), establishing that a real, unique human is the origin; a cryptographic timestamp, establishing when — together a portable share-registration record that distinguishes human-shared from bot-emitted media; a conferred-benefit disclosure stated as a fact of the share, with the counterfactual saving defined only on inspection; and an optional, recipient-initiated gratitude affordance routing a voluntary thank back to the sharer.
The design decouples high-frequency sharing from low-frequency thanking, so a gratitude economy acquires a distribution surface without debasing the gratitude. Also specified: a permanence floor, so received content is never hostage to the sharer's subscription; a threat model covering sybil attacks, false benefit claims and thank-bait spam; and non-withdrawable gratitude routing that removes the cash motive to farm thanks at the root. Open problems are stated.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Ly, Thon, "B-Links: Proof-of-Humanity-Signed Shareable Provenance with an Embedded Gratitude Affordance", Technical Disclosure Commons, ()
https://www.tdcommons.org/dpubs_series/11797