This looks like a wrapper around several popular social login. While it is convenient, I fail to see how it is decentralized. If anything, it just add another single point of failure, so it is more centralized? As a SaaS vendor, I likely already support several social logins and email verification. Why should I switch? If I have not implemented the social logins, I can see the convenient factor. However, social login…
Thanks for the questions! Hellō is not decentralized -- apologies for any confusion -- did I mistakenly write that somewhere? The governance is decentralized. Yes, it is another point of failure, as is any other service you build your app on. I have extensive experience with tier zero services such as AWS IAM and have applied those learnings to the Hellō deployment if that is any consolation. The value proposition of…
Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
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Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for the questions! Hellō is not decentralized -- apologies for any confusion -- did I mistakenly write that somewhere? The governance is decentralized. Yes, it is another point of failure, as is any other service you build your app on. I have extensive experience with tier zero services such as AWS IAM and have applied those learnings to the Hellō deployment if that is any consolation. The value proposition of…
In what jurisdiction is this coop based/registered?
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#43Just chiming to say that we used Hellō for one of our products ( bestozy.com ) and the whole experience was a breeze. Dick Hardt was very accessible - but tbh we didn't need much help at all as the integration was straightforward and the documentation comprehensive.
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#44Looks nice and convenient! One question, though: How do you say Hellō? [həˈləʊ] or [həˈlø] or [həˈlɔː]? :-)
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#45What is the role/responsibility/benefit of corporate members? It's not clear from the available descriptions why a company would want to become one. Perhaps simply to support the initiative?
The only responsibility of a corporate member is to abide by the bylaws, and vote for the corporate board members.
We have been having regular corporate member meetings to review progress and discuss identity trends. I think the current members learn something from the other members at each meeting.
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#46What is the role/responsibility/benefit of corporate members? It's not clear from the available descriptions why a company would want to become one. Perhaps simply to support the initiative?
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#47Hi HN! I’m Dick Hardt[1]. Over the last twenty years, I’ve led the design of identity standards (OAuth 2.0, JWT) and systems that you and billions of others use every day.[2] You know that these systems don’t always work in your favor. Each is bespoke and most, if not all, of your identity is locked up in these silos. I called this out in my Identity 2.0 OSCON talk in 2005 where I popularized a user-centric identity…
extremely hard for me to get excited about something that has blockchain in it these days
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#48I've implemented this for a bunch of clients lately and would probably have used something like this if it was available and mature.
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Additionally, registering and configuring your app at Apple / Facebook / Google etc. is non-trivial. I know what I am doing in theory, and I have already invested a week of time in configuration and approvals and updates. I don't feel like it's worth giving up control over your user's authentication to an intermediary in return for saving a week of work. Maybe the case could be made for day-1 of a startup, but cert…
> I don't feel like it's worth giving up control over your user's authentication to an intermediary in return for saving a week of work. Maybe the case could be made for day-1 of a startup, but certainly not year-1, it's just too critical a component. Are you not outsourcing to an intermediary with Apple/FB/Google? Authentication is critical. Completely agree. It is also not a differentiator for your application unle…
This is a product decision, it gets you better security (on average), brand association that may be good for the right product/SSO combination, easier signup (at least in theory), and in many cases is necessary for integrations with those services.
Using Hellō gets you better security (on average), but not as much as going direct. It loses some of the brand association, and in fact I'd suggest many users would probably want to whitelabel Hellō. It adds an extra step to sign-up over direct integrations. And it likely complicates integrations with the services.
> I'm sharing my experience. Apple requires a D&B number to register your app. Many require you to jump through their process for proving control of a domain. Microsoft requires you register as a partner if you don't want the scary unverified label. FB disabled Hellō for not having the correct link to the app, then disabled for not having a required term in our T&S.
These are all fair points!
Apple is a pain, in fact I wrote up a long post about all the issues, although I'm not sure Apple via Hellō solves the ongoing issues, only the initial setup cost? – https://danpalmer.me/2019-07-02-on-signing-in-with-apple/
Facebook will ban apps for all sorts of reasons, but having experienced the nasty end of this I unfortunately suspect that Facebook might take issue with it, and Hellō may become a single point of failure that could cause a FB login outage across many services.
> FWIW I don't use libraries for the OIDC flows -- I find it makes it more complicated than it needs to be. I do use libraries for any JWT work of course.
I've seen good ones and bad ones. The one that I was thinking of when I wrote my original comment was Django All Auth. It gives you much the same effect as Hellō, and in my experience setup of the library has not been difficult, and has made it easier to implement multiple flows quickly. Devise for Rails was a bit of a pain 9 years ago though.
It probably all depends on access to high quality libraries in your ecosystem of choice how much you value things like Hellō, and having a lot of Django experience I just don't really feel the value proposition.
Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity
#50I can see this being very useful for web3 projects once you add support for the discord scope. A lot of the time you just want a way of logging in with a wallet and link to discord in a secure way. I've implemented this for a bunch of clients lately and would probably have used something like this if it was available and mature.