W4-017 · Condition 02 — Portable identity
Digital citizenship
Digital citizenship is membership of a digital economy carrying rights, standing and obligations that persist across its surfaces — the condition under which a participant is a member rather than a user.
A user can be logged out. A citizen has to be expelled.
The distinction is not sentimental. Users hold a revocable licence to a service; citizens hold standing that the operator must act to remove, and that they can carry elsewhere if it is.
The practical markers are portability of standing, a route to appeal, obligations that run in both directions, and a record of participation the participant controls. Most platforms supply none of these and are correct to call their participants users.
For builders the relevance is retention economics. Citizens behave differently from users: they invest in standing because standing is theirs, and they defend a place they belong to. That behaviour is worth more than any acquisition channel, and it cannot be bought.