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Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

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Re: Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

#2

Post by saurik »

For more (and better) counter arguments, start with this thread (which was about one particular comparison with Facebook Connect: possibly click to see the parent for context) and then follow my chain of earlier comments I link at the bottom of that one (which were more general, going into the flawed assumptions in Persona about email).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7243172

(By the way, I am going to try to avoid wasting even more of my life arguing on Hacker News about the benefits or lack thereof of Persona, so I am dropping these links here to maybe seed discussion among others, but I am going to attempt to avoid ruining my Christmas Eve by forcing myself to never look back at this particular thread again ;P.)

Also, for anyone wondering if I have anything credible to say on this subject before bothering to read any of this--and maybe to the one person who downvoted me from 3 points to 2 points, which I noticed as I fleshed out the "I will hopefully leave" message ;P--I have run a service with tens of millions of users that only uses federated login (though accounts are optional, so I "only" have just over ten million accounts on file), and have been staring at this space since 2001, when Microsoft announced Passport (at the time, I even was thinking of starting my own single-sign-on service, but was a naive college student ;P).

(later edit: I found another old thread on this subject that I am going to add here as an edit, mostly because any other way of adding it might cause me to see if there are any responses to this comment ;P. At the time, to this new link, there were two responses I hadn't bothered seeing and responding to: one from someone who insisted upon comparing the fundamental bug in Persona with an existing "worst practice" (as opposed to any of the better alternative options), and one who seems to be in left field assuming the value of a Facebook account is based on whether the user updated their email address: the point I was making is that Facebook isn't actually tied to email addresses, as they "understand" the problem inherent in relying on them for anything, and so users do not run into any of the issues that Persona not only doesn't solve but actually makes worse. Regardless, yeah: even without reading any comments from today I am already spending way too much time at this ;P.)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8250301

Re: Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

#5

Post by SwellJoe »

I hate that the best user experience for logins is "Login with facebook" or "Login with Google". I don't want to impose that privacy failure on my users, but I also don't want to impose the annoyance that is "Sign up with a username, email address, and password". Offering all of the options is also a compromise that complicates the user experience.

Now, here's the sad thing, for me: I didn't even know Persona existed until its demise was being discussed on HN and reddit. Persona is exactly what I want for my users and my sites; and for my own use of the web. And, I didn't even know it was an option until it stopped being an option.

In short: I strongly agree. Mozilla has to focus resources on areas where it can have the biggest impact on privacy and the open web. This is one of those areas.

I hated to see Thunderbird dropped from the Mozilla roster, as it is my mail client of choice, but I understand where they're coming from. I hated to see FirefoxOS end, but I never got to use it, and it seems to have been doomed from the get-go by poor market fit and difficulty competing with the three biggest tech companies in the world in a market where money and influence play a role in which devices get into users hands. But, Persona is exactly the right kind of thing for Mozilla to be doing, and there's no reason they can't do it effectively, and without a huge amount of resources.

Re: Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

#6

Post by scrollaway »

> I don’t know if something like a Kickstarter campaign to raise some money to pay for engineer time would help sway Mozilla at all, but I’m perfectly happy pledging a few hundred dollars and running the campaign, if necessary. I just really want to see Persona succeed.

I mentioned this by email, but I'll repeat it here:

I believe in the design behind Persona. I believe a well structured, free authentication provider, is one of the core pillars of a free web, which is exactly what Mozilla claims to stand for.

I believe in a free web and I'm also willing to put my money where my mouth is. I'm ready to pledge not just my money but my time. I am willing to volunteer my skills as a developer, UX designer and my experience leading FOSS projects to Persona, or a Persona-like project that has a chance of succeeding. If you are involved in this, feel free to email me (see my profile for a point of contact).

I invite others willing to do the same to say so here.

Re: Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

#7

Post by prodmerc »

I find Keepass and/or Lastpass are better solutions - you can have different logins for different sites, generate truly strong random passwords and login with two clicks in any modern browser.

I don't want Google (or God forbid, Facebook) knowing what sites I login to and part of my credentials, and I don't want websites to know my email address.

I know you say they don't have this information, but it's not hard to get access to it if they feel they want to. Google Web History already creeps me out :-)

I also feel more secure with different passwords (and even emails) on different sites.

Re: Open Letter to Mozilla: Bring Back Persona

#10

Post by manigandham »

SwellJoe wrote: post #5

I hate that the best user experience for logins is "Login with facebook" or "Login with Google". I don't want to impose that privacy failure on my users, but I also don't want to impose the annoyance that is "Sign up with a username, email address, and password". Offering all of the options is also a compromise that complicates the user experience. Now, here's the sad thing, for me: I didn't even know Persona existed…

Side note: usernames should just be emails these days, they're unique and save all the effort of needing another made up name.
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