Earlier quoted context omitted.
My question remains: to what extent is selective disclosure useful given the demonstrable human factors failures in existing selective disclosure systems? User agreements are another example of failure. They give full disclosure, on a take-or-leave-it basis. Few people say no to GitHub when it means being blocked from participating in most software development projects. Plus, very few actually read that full disclosu…
I think this discussion is going in a few unhelpful directions. These "wallets" are not used for financial transactions, they're for credentials. They are an alternative to paper/plastic driver's licenses, proof of majority, etc. Selective disclosure is a specific thing, it's not relevant to compare it to "full disclosure." If you must compare, it is much easier to understand what it means to use a very fine grained…
Which is why I gave other examples of the human factors issues, not just financial transactions: configurable cookie warnings, configurable app permissions, and user agreements.
> what it means to use a very fine grained proof
Except you know that bars, etc. are going to ask for more details, including full name, address etc. And they'll say it's needed to prevent known hooligans and troublemakers.
Will people stop going to the bars until the bars only request the minimum required information? No - or at least not more than people currently click off all the "I agree to this surveillance" buttons on a web page.
So people just accept, and enter. Then the bar asks for more, and more, and more, and people have been trained to just agree to everything, because they have very little power to say no.
I've already heard accounts of people who bring their passport instead of state id for the simple reason that it does not contain a scannable address. If it's expected that everyone always has the ability to provide any required information, simply saying no is hard.
> Fine grained digital approaches can help those situations.
"Can" is pulling a lot of weight. I can click off all the cookie trackers. The vast majority do not. Is that from an informed decision, or is that simply the easiest decision?
I can disable geolocation tracking on my browser, but then - oops! - the county web site showing me the upcoming vaccination times doesn't work because the site assumes everyone has geolocation turned on, and they never tested for someone who voluntarily disabled that option.
Build a system that expects coherent data, and you build a system where people get trained to provide anything which asked for, with poor support for those who opt-out.