Maybe a Trusted Name or Fact, but Definitely not an Identity
Are we trying to manage the wrong thing?
Note: This post reflects the opinion and perspective of the author only and is intended to give further clarity to thoughts-in-process. Thus, the words contained herein offer no warrant and should be read with a requisite dose of scepticism.
The recent flurry of exodus from Twitter to other platforms has gotten me thinking once again what really is identity, or more fundamentally, is that the right thing to be thinking about after all?
The commencement of this thought process is evidenced by this somewhat glib tweet I posted last week.
Since this tweet, there has been an acceleration of exits to other platforms, namely Mastodon, and an interesting upstart protocol called nostr (short for Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays). I discovered this protocol last year, and had been tracking it due to its novel simplicity and its grassroots development by the decentralized payments community. But then, Jack Dorsey discovered it, all hell broke loose, and it got banned on Twitter as a competing social media platform.
So what’s the big deal? I am getting a sense that an all-out-war is breaking out between the social media platforms, and, we, as users need to figure out how to pick up our social graphs (followers) and our identities and leave to elsewhere. Many are going to Mastodon and others are going to nostr.
But moving to these new platforms strikes to the heart of what identity is. The fundamental question to be answered is: am I dealing with the same person as before?
For sure, there are some simple ways to confirm this: I am trbouma on Twitter, and will likely be trbouma on Mastodon, because I am sure that nobody is interested in using that handle, so it’s a pretty safe bet that it will be me. But is it? If I was more famous, or bettered moneyed, like Elon Musk, I am sure my handle would taken, duplicated and misused a thousand times over.
What is intriguing about nostr is that it is not a platform, but rather a protocol, and you decide what clients and relays that you want to use. The nostr protocol has this really neat capability where you use a public key/private key pair and that becomes the basis of your identity (You can try it out here) The trouble is that no one knows that it is you, so you have to add some profile data, but who is going to trust that? Directory services are starting to pop, listing ‘proof urls’ like your Twitter Profile Page, where it should only be you who can post your public key on your profile page, and if this corresponds to the nostr public key, then it must be you.
The problem then becomes those public key/private key pairs - you can generate them in an instance, and then you can lose them in an instant. If you have built up your profile, added to a directory have a proof url and you lose the private key, what next? The way to solve this is for the profile and directory services is to have some type of recovery service (like an email address). While these processes might be used to fix the issues in the flurry of platform exoduses, I feel like we’ve regressed back to the very same model that gives us the same problems over time,
Some maybe it’s not about identity after all. Rather it’s about names and statements that you can trust about people, backed by services willing to help you out, be delegated some of the hard work ensuring that you retain a ‘good name’, and help you recover gracefully in those situations where you have lost the keys to your digital existence. Some might say this advocating for a centralized service, and the decentralized way should be the preferred option. I don’t think so. It’s a balance. Just as I don’t travel with a big wallet of cash, it’s the same when I interact digitally. I want to use an approach where I can manage my risk to my liking and use services that I am comfortable with.
So where did I go with post? Hopefully to start a journey to re-frame the problem slightly. Maybe it’s not about ‘digital identity’ or ‘private keys’. but rather about ‘trusted names and facts’ I can use along with ways where I can ‘recover with ease and grace.’
Until then
Tim
Entity vs Identity can be confusing, but human Identity = identification (me or oneself)?! Tricky business 🤔 🤓 appreciate your work here, thanks.