Extending social networks with delegation

Despite their enormous growth, current social networks lack a systematic approach to delegate rights - when an entity authorizes another to access the resources on its behalf. This paper proposes a delegation model based on socio-technical design and theory of cooperation and collaboration that best suits the requirements of social networks. The model is formulated through formal methods, designed using ontologies and implemented through Facebook APIs. The model's expressiveness is examined for overlapping policies of multiple users, its consistency is analyzed for conflicting and redundant policies and user acceptance testing is performed for acceptability. For social validity, the model is also compared with 27 previous delegation models with respect to socio-technical validity parameters derived from social principles already accepted in the human society. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.