The Fight for Social Login Just Got A New Twist

James Greaves
Sep 4, 2018 · 3 min read

Since the dawn of the internet, we have logged into things.

Facebook created Login with Facebook. Google quickly followed suit with a Google login. Now it seems everyone is on the game: Twitter, LinkedIn, GitHub, Foursquare…the list goes on (Wikipedia lists 25 services at the time of writing).

These days, you can sign in with just about anything. Just a few listed here.

For me, these buttons embody everything that is right and everything that is wrong with social media and the surveillance economy. In short they provide a small increase in convenience at the cost of massive amounts of privacy. It appears this is a trade we have all been willing to do.

Deep down we all know that these buttons are a threat to our freedom. That they were created as a way for social networks to track us wherever we go. As if Facebook wasn’t abusing our data and our trust enough already, we needed to give them a way to do that anywhere we go on the internet.

What do we gain in exchange for this massive invasion of privacy? Massive amounts of cash? Free things? More friends?

Nope. Just the convenience of not having to remember another password.

Oh, we are a fickle bunch.

Social login buttons allow you to quickly log in to things, but they also allow social media companies to go everywhere with you. The same companies that are rigging elections and shadowbanning, are your new wingman.

It’s like having a friend that can get you into any party — as long as they get to come in with you, take pictures, pull out a clipboard and start making notes, and then interview all your friends.

We wouldn’t do that in real life. But we accept it on line. No problem.

We’ve actually gotten better. There used to be a time when millions of us would allow any app running on Facebook to access everything about us — and share all our progress in painstaking detail — in order to let us play a farming game or a color matching game. Turns out we would allow that, but we weren’t too fond of it.

So what’s the other way?

There has to be a way to have the convenience without trading our freedom.

At Glyph we are creating identity and compliance tools that serve the blockchain and financial services community. Our unique authentication and verification tools actually come in the form of a button.

This wasn’t designed to take on the social login crew. But it turns out, that’s exactly what we had built as a byproduct to our core offering — verifying identities for the blockchain community.

Social login allows social media companies to go anywhere on the internet with you. The Glyph button enables you to go anywhere on the internet completely alone, while also retaining your own information.

Glyph enables users to retake control of key areas of their own digital identities. It does the same thing, it lets you log in to wherever you go. But instead of taking a creepy friend along for the ride, you are solo. And the only clipboard is yours. The only things you bring back, are the notes you made yourself.

It’s a login where you keep the information — or not, it’s up to you — while at the same time not giving us anything. That’s right, we can’t see it. In the future, we hope to provide tools that let you do more interesting things with this information.

We can do this because of the unique way Glyph is created: a new architecture and business model that is the opposite of the surveillance economy model. It puts you back in power.

Glyph has been designed specifically for blockchain, because every crypto needs much more than just a username and password, they need to actually know who you are.

The good news is that although it’s been designed for crypto, it works for anything else on the internet too — buying event tickets, logging into your bank, or logging into any service.

James Greaves

Written by

CEO of glyph.id a single self identity platform using emerging technology (inc. AI and blockchain) to increase global freedom, prosperity and trust.

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