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Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

hello.coop

31–40 of 55 posts

Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

#31

Earlier 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…

> 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

It absolutely is for people building/validating MVPs

Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

#32
I don't really see what this gives over Auth0, Orly or various other identity providers which have social login plugins available…and none of those seem to be involved with anything related to smart contracts, which makes them infinitely preferable in my opinion.

Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

#36
Just 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

#37

I don't really see what this gives over Auth0, Orly or various other identity providers which have social login plugins available…and none of those seem to be involved with anything related to smart contracts, which makes them infinitely preferable in my opinion.

You don't need to register with the various providers or set up any plugins. You set things up once and then you're done. See Dick's comment about the reg bit at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33180661

Also, jrockway shared relevant Auth0 comments in this discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33180939.

Is your reluctance around smart contracts influenced at all by https://www.hello.coop/pages/financing.html?

Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

#39

Earlier 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…

> Using Hellō gives the same protection, while preserving the user's privacy (provider does not know which app the user is logging into)

Wouldn't Hellō know all of this though? It seems it's just moving the privacy concern to another organization.

Re: Show HN: Hellō, a cooperative approach for online identity

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Using Hellō gives the same protection, while preserving the user's privacy (provider does not know which app the user is logging into) Wouldn't Hellō know all of this though? It seems it's just moving the privacy concern to another organization.

Hellō has an interesting protocol that prevents Hellō staff from knowing what data is stored in the system.

There's an step-by-step overview of the protocol at https://www.hello.coop/pages/protocol.html

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