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• is_a::[[Model Form]]
• has_status::[[Seed Stage]]
• in_domain::[[Self-Sovereign Identity]]
• extracted_from::[[Revisiting Self-Sovereign Identity Initiative]]↑

Choice Architecture and Exit Rights

Framing

Every digital system offers choices. The architecture of those choices — what’s default, what’s easy, what’s costly — determines whether participation is genuinely voluntary or practically mandatory. This model describes how initially voluntary choices accumulate into coercive dependencies.

Structure

The Lock-In Escalation

1. Voluntary adoption — user joins a system, creates credentials, builds reputation
2. Accumulation — credentials, relationships, and standing accrue over time
3. Dependency formation — other systems require the accumulated credentials
4. Exit penalty — leaving means losing recognized standing across dependent systems
5. Practical coercion — participation is formally voluntary but practically mandatory

Three Lock-In Mechanisms

Credential dependency chains: Can’t get job without credential, can’t get credential without biometric, can’t get biometric without national ID. Each step appears voluntary; the chain is coercive.

Proprietary format lock-in: Wallet formats, credential schemas, and attestation infrastructure that don’t interoperate. Switching means starting over. The EU Data Act (September 2025) acknowledges this by mandating service switching provisions.

Network effect penalties: The value of a credential depends on who accepts it. Leaving a dominant ecosystem means losing recognition even if you keep the credential.

Connection to the Six Inversions

This model maps directly to the Exit → Erasure inversion in The Architecture of Autonomy: “In the physical world, you can walk away with your resources. In the digital world, departure is erasure.” Also connects to Property → Privilege: you accumulate assets that exist at platform discretion.

In Kolpondinos’s taxonomy, this is Infrastructural Paternalism — the form where exit is theoretically available but functionally equivalent to digital death.

Boundaries

This model covers structural lock-in and exit costs. Psychological effects of lock-in awareness (self-censorship) are in [[Self-Coercion Through Surveillance Awareness]]↑. Interface manipulation that creates the initial adoption is in [[Coercion Resistance as Meta-Lens]].

Sources

• Allen, C. (2025). Choice Architecture and Exit Rights Lens. Revisiting Self-Sovereign Identity, v0.2.01.
• Kolpondinos, M. (2026). Technology Paternalism — Infrastructural form.
• OECD. Data Portability, Interoperability and Competition.
• European Commission. Data Act (applicable September 2025).

Relations

relates_to::[[Coercion Resistance as Meta-Lens]] relates_to::[[Technology Paternalism Masks Coercion]] relates_to::[[Self-Sovereign Identity]] relates_to::[[Authentic Collaboration Requires Agency]]

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