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The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

yarmo.eu

171–180 of 202 posts

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#171

Have worked in the identity space for a long time. Authentication isn't a hard problem, but identity is. It will be decentralized because if it is not fragmented, it is literally just oppression. Trusting authentication is not trusting identity, and the origin of identity is the Ur-problem because it comes down to questions of recourse, collateral, risk, authority, and legitimacy - which are all political economy que…

> There is one other use case for identity, and yes, it is decentralized and bottom-up, because it is about dividing into secure, self-sovereign affinity groups, and the reasons for doing that are on a very short list of uses. Super fun, but basically a weapon.

A weapon against who? A self sovereign affinity group could just be a community trying to self organize without relying on non-owned infrastructure. Aka prepper stuff.

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main point was that there's been plenty of oppression in the US despite it being to some degree a democracy. It doesn't sound like you're actually disputing my main point at all, but wanting to shift the discussion on to whether the American system of government needs to be replaced and why, which is really off-topic. Still, in response to your tangential point, I want to make clear that I'm not advocating discard…

> I do think the system has proven itself to fail at meeting the high ideals that some of the founders professed to have. The system has proven itself to be highly corruptable, the checks and balances built in to the system have failed, and much of the Constitution is widely ignored or reinterpreted to mean whatever the people in power want it to mean. It arguably failed so long ago that virtually nobody notices. For…

Overwhelmingly, I believe the issue we're facing is somewhat to do with identity and property being tied together, and not something specific to the US. And this is a factor that precedes 1776 in the rise of national identities: monarchs had a strongly individualized identity, but identity across a people via a national boundary was a more limited consideration until trade growth had sufficiently developed a reason to use such: language, religion and local allegiance did most of the work. The locals could often evade legibility by obscuring their identity.

But property-based identity held a lot of currency by the time 1776 rolled around: it established credibility as an actor with some real agency and independence within trade relations, and therefore our modern nations have built their legibility around property. And what we've done since is to either try to position everyone somewhere within the property system, or to turn towards an authoritarian model to create identity without ownership(as in the various communist experiments, or the flat, hidden authority in "Tyranny of Structurelessness").

So when we have the idea of something like identity theft, or corporate personhood, that's a thing generated of having an identity to own, cascading down into human relationships as property, personal branding, etc. And the largest, most developed function of the legal system in the US is to make judgments about property. But we also have systems of identification that are imposed in an authoritative fashion(the SSN, DL, passport, etc.) - every nation is a mixed identity market in this way.

And in this respect I think the philosophy is truly starting to fail in a world which has so greatly automated ownership, and we will need to consider both identity and property at the same time to reach useful alternatives.

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never understood that way of viewing things. For me identity is a right. Historically "identity" wasn't a right, but something imposed on people, for better tracking and controlling them by authorities... > In an oppressive state identity surely could be oppression, just like everything else, but in a democratic country? Oppression is not about democratic vs totalitarian state. McCarthy and Hoover, to mention…

Identity can’t be “imposed,” come on. Personhood is continuous across time and space. All a system can influence is your ability to lie about this. Ability to deceive the state can protect your freedom but inability to trust others also has a cost, there has to be a balance.

>Identity can’t be “imposed,” come on. Personhood is continuous across time and space.

I'm not talking about "identity" as in "being somebody".

I'm talking about identity as in identification, documents, and so on -- which is what we were discussing (as in "identity provider" in software terms).

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#177
> The solution is relatively simple. When you create a new account and get to choose between "Google login", "Facebook login" and "Email login", pick "Email login".

Sorry, but no. I do not trust Random Website where I create an account for occasional usage to keep my email and password combo safe. I do trust Google and Facebook to do that. I also enjoy the great experience they offer when I have to delete said account: just go to google account page and delete the website from "my logins" or whatever they call it. Most websites don't even have a procedure to delete account.

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#178

In my ideal world, we have a framework for brick-and-mortar businesses to act as internet notary service providers. If you want a general-purpose open-id style account, you visit a notary, and provide them with a fee and proof of your identity. You tell the notary how much information they can share (in particular, whether they can release your name to the internet, or just the "we verified this account is held by a…

> If you want a general-purpose open-id style account, you visit a notary, and provide them with a fee and proof of your identity.

This is never going to happen. I will never visit a physical location in order to create an online account. I strongly suspect I'm not alone in this regard.

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#179
post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Historically "identity" wasn't a right, but something imposed on people, for better tracking and controlling them by authorities... I used to own a wonderful book about the history of data science. As I recall, starting in maybe the 1600s, experts in France and Germany were tasked with tracking populations, birth and death rates, economic activity, and so on. And the primary goal was to aid in military planning. Un…

Was it "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk"?

Thanks, but I don't think so.

I do recall reading it, however.

Re: The Future of Online Identity Is Decentralized

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is this a distinction without a difference? Networks like LinkedIn exist for the purpose of building real social capital and that's how they're used by 99% of their users. I don't see the incentive for someone to use a fake persona (other than scamming). All those private firms are in many ways identity providers just as real and official as governmental ones.

> Networks like LinkedIn exist for the purpose of building real social capital ??? No they don't. They exist for the purpose of selling advertising. Any other purpose is either marketing copy to get you to use it or an emergent property based on people believing the marketing. Consider that LinkedIn would continue to exist if it provided no social capital whatsoever as long as it could still get ads in front of eyeba…

It's weird to mount a mild defense of LinkedIn, which I don't really like much, but I think you're making a slight category error by tacitly lumping it in with other social networks. LinkedIn's value proposition has always been "getting jobs is mostly about professional contacts and we're going to help you build professional contacts," and it makes the bulk of its revenue by selling its recruiting tools and, to a lesser degree, its premium services for job hunters. The most recent figures I've found suggest it makes less than 20% of its revenue from ads. I actually susect LinkedIn would not continue to exist if it provided no "social capital" whatsoever, because their business model really isn't "get ads in front of eyeballs." It's "get job prospects in front of eyeballs."

Having said all that, I wouldn't want to use it as an identity provider. :)

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