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Email is widely usedSetting up your own email server is notoriously difficult, and requires coordination with major brands. Importantly, people who use brands like GMail can't choose to whitelist you. There's no setting in GMail saying, "I trust everything coming from Bob's domain, don't bounce them." Emails get rejected on the protocol level.
Effectively, if your friend is using Gmail, then they're using a brand, and you won't be able to talk to them unless you also use a brand that Google respects.
> HTTPS is widely used
The DNS system is probably one of the things I'm least worried about online, but it doesn't make sense to describe it as anything except as a brand. Domains aren't permanent -- you have to continue leasing them. That makes sense for a brand because you don't want companies to take over an entire space, but it makes no sense for an identity, because you should be able to permanently own an identity. Additionally, DNS is optimized for brand recognition, not for identity verification. It makes a ton of security compromises (think ally vs a11y) that make identity verification harder, but brand recognition easier.
I would also disagree that phone numbers are good identity systems. Most people keep their phone number permanently, and it's trivial to tie a number to a real world identity. I would hesitate to call it pseudonymous. There's a real conflict between phone numbers being treated like a permanently owned identity and phone numbers being a thing you need to maintain and carry with you. In general, I try very, very hard not to allow any business to tie my identity to a number, because I think it's blatantly insecure.
I do think the first point you're getting at is correct, in a sense:
> I'd say the reality is that it's easy to join the Internet land-owning class (buy a domain; get a cert; run services), yet most people prefer to rent because they are not so inclined.
I agree. However, it's not that identity management online is good. What you're describing is that it's relatively easy to build a brand. It's relatively easy for me to set up a domain, grab my username on new services as they come up, and make sure that when someone searches me on Google I show up near the top. That's not identity, that's brand management.
The reality is that the current Internet is adapted to brands, but because it's not a massive problem for technical people to invest into making their own brand, we just kind of tolerate it. And non-technical people prefer to rent space on other people's brands instead of building their own. But in both cases, we haven't really built personal identities that are disassociated from advertising or word-of-mouth.