The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

Except that it's not possible. And worse, it's just hard enough to evade that only those with malicious goals will manage it.

> Large internet corporations like Google and Facebook allow all to create an account on condition that some personally identifiable information is revealed, usually a phone number.

Also Signal, sadly enough :(

> The benefit is that it deters most from repeatably creating new accounts when older accounts have been flagged or banned due to improper behavior. These companies gain the function of "identity provider": they manage your online identity that can be used to login in different locations of the internet. We all know many websites that offer a "Google login" or "Facebook login".

Yes, it "deters most". And mainly it deters vulnerable people, who need ~anonymity to protect themselves from adversaries. It doesn't deter spammers, trolls, scammers, bot operators, and such. There are just so many ways to use multiple phone numbers. Ranging from free websites to SIM banks. And actually, it's easier just to buy accounts, either fresh or old (which probably means stolen).

So even without getting into concerns about corporate gatekeepers, it's clear that this is a misguided approach.

As you say, using your real name builds your brand. However, you must then be very careful to avoid saying stuff that damages your brand. And as you basically say, you must therefore censor yourself online.

So why not do other stuff using pseudonyms? That's exactly why I started using them. I'm retired now, so there's really nothing about my meatspace identity to protect. But when there was, having the freedom to express myself honestly online was important to me. In particular, because I had to police my meatspace behavior so carefully.

It's not really ready to be used widely at this point. Given that, the fact that the documentation is currently more oriented towards developers working on identity software is fine, I think.

>Even if the value prop was well-explained, it's still very high friction compared to "Sign in with ". Why would a user download an installer and deal with managing all of their accounts? There's a secure, anonymous, easy, centralized option that does it all for you (Sign in with Apple). That service does it so well that you only have to click a button to log in or sign up. Nothing else required. That isn't achievable without a central authority managing everything for you.

Sure, installing software is higher-friction than using a centralized service, but it's not that much higher friction. It's not like people don't install software all the time. (And again, this is something that could easily be preinstalled by your OS vendor of choice, which would make the experience very similar to the centralized providers'.)

>Your local machine is a major point of failure. If you lose your local machine and haven't backed up your accounts, you just lose access, right? The only solution is either set up a server with periodic backup (too much friction for regular users) or a centralized authority that stores them for you, which defeats the purpose of all of this.

Yes, this is a big one. No, I don't think those are the only two options. You could sync them between devices if you have more than one (phone/laptop?), you could store them on a user-specified data storage location (think MIT's Solid), etc. I acknowledge that it's a problem, but I think it's a tractable one.

>This project, to me, falls into the "cool technical stuff category". It's obviously built for "geeks" (lack of a better term) and not for people.

I think you're looking at the project as it is, and not as it could be.

That's for sure how I see it :) It gives everyone the choice of what mix of real names and ~anonymous personas to use, and how to link them.