The Perils of Persistent Identity and Web3-the Decentralized Internet.
By Andrew Gillette on ALTCOIN MAGAZINE
Twitter: @Infosec_Andy
Some of the most compelling applications for blockchain technology revolve around the politics of identity.
Under the current web paradigm, identity has very slowly mutated from anonymous to username/password identification and has recently started to resemble what might be called *persistent identity*. You may have noticed that in the last year or two, most major websites that require a user account now allow you to sign up via your Facebook or Google credentials.
This apparent reduction in friction across the web has resulted in minor conveniences like not needing to create and remember username/password combos for dozens of sites, apps, and services, but is also a coup for big data. It’s much harder to track and gather data in a way that is indicative of trends using unstructured data cobbled together from many accounts than it is from one single identity persisting across the web.
Imagine that you use your Facebook account to login to 80% of the apps and websites you access on a regular basis. When you hike, you use Alltrails, when you post about cryptocurrency you use Reddit, when you date you use Tinder — and you login to them all using your Facebook or Google account.
Blockchains Can Erase or Enable Anonymity
With blockchains, this type of persistence of identity will only accelerate and become more rigorous since distributed ledger technology presents us with the *ultimate* accounting system for identities. Blockchains enable the persistence of a singular identity across all web terminals — this is what many consider to be the hallmark of web3, and will create a seamless continuity between the physical and digital selves we maintain.
The question is, how will this affect the spontaneity of our online expressivity? Part of the web’s success is attributable in large part to the ability users have to unplug from their accountable physical selves and tap into a more emotional expression behind the screen and keyboard. Sure, there are negative consequences of such anonymity, but considering that until recently (at least until pre-Facebook) such anonymity was the standard, there wasn’t any overwhelming harm in allowing people the freedom of expression afforded by anonymity.
Perhaps nowhere is the disparity between anonymous and accountable expression more evident than it is when contrasting 4chan and Reddit. 4chan is an anonymous image-based forum notorious for off-the-cuff, vitriolic expression that is unhindered by identities. In 4chan’s world, users refers to each other as *anon*, short for anonymous, since there are no usernames or other identifying signatures. While plenty of the content tossed around on 4chan is often questionable at best and shocking at worst, it goes a long way in showing what people are *truly* thinking when they can freely express without being held to self-identifiers.
Reddit users, on the other hand, have usernames and often freely give other personal identifying information. Sometimes, Reddit communities (known as subreddits) will even go as far as to have in-person meetups. Reddit discussions are accordingly much more civil as a result and resemble the pleasantries exchanged between strangers in grocery stores, school campuses, and workplaces — scenarios in which people need to keep up appearances and safeguard reputations. To maintain civility, Reddit enforces strict user guidelines and have very hands-on moderation policies.
By placing expression-constraints and reputation-based accounting mechanisms on users, Reddit’s controlled discussion format achieves certain ends, but users can’t stray too far off the designated path.
Self-Sovereign Identity
The power blockchain has to designate paths on the web is incomprehensibly more significant than that of Reddit or even Facebook. For that reason alone, it is incredibly important that developers create a blockchain-based web3 architecture that respects the freedom many internet users have enjoyed of opting out of network sign-ups.
If web3 development continues heading in a perilous identity-based direction wherein all users are tagged and opted-in with their reputation and identities at stake, we risk losing the only widespread frontier we have for global means of expression.
Blockchain identity is currently being called SSID (Self-Sovereign Identity). Leaders in the SSID field include Sovrin, Civic, Basic Attention Token, and Polkadot. What they’re building out is the critical infrastructure allowing for an unprecedented persistence of identity that sits flush across any and every application you will use in the future.
While SSID works incredibly well for putting user-data back into the hands of users (where it belongs in the first place), the trade-off is that unless protections to anonymity are built-in, it will work equally well for creating a surveilled state on the web.
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