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“I guess you can’t use NYU Libraries if you don’t have Twitter or Facebook?”
- myroon5 9y agonon-mobile link: https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/956937724983783425 https://twitter.com/dietrich/status/956937724983783425
- dang 9y agoChanged, thanks.
- trevmckendrick 9y agoThe response tweet from NYU: "This is our login option for visitors. NYU community and consortium members are able to login with their school IDs. If you require assistance please use the Ask a Librarian chat on our homepage."
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoBlack Mirror isn't supposed to be a guide for the future.
- toyg 9y agoMore relevant, further down: "NYU is a private university. The social media login option is only for visitors who are engaged in onsite research. Our materials are not available to the public online."
- bardworx 9y agoFrom my experience in dealing with NYU (technical side of merchant dealing with NYU student cash cards), a bunch of stuff is outsourced. I think the last reply in the twitter feed “WTF” is a bit sensationalized. Yes it’s annoying but they have a revolving door of students and visitors. Managing security is tough. Outsourcing to 3rd party for validation makes sense and brings cost down, even if it pisses of a few folks.
- madez 9y ago> even if it pisses of a few folks Are there only a few people who realize how big of an issue having no vender-neutral solution is? That'd actually scare me. If you think this deeper, then why not organize the voting of the government through Facebook or Google? That'd outsource the identiy management, so it's cheaper. It's depressing how many people are blind to consequences of technological decisions, especially when financial incentives are at play.
- cannonedhamster 9y agoIt's kind of weird they didn't at least include Google as well, but the whole idea of them not having a vendor neutral solution goes out the window because they've admitted that they have other options, so they are already doing DB maintenance for those accounts. I mean I suppose if they enjoy the Republic of Kekistan accounts that they're about to get, then it's no big deal right?
- revicon 9y agoWhat would be a "vender-neutral" solution in this case? There are very very few people that host their own email servers on the internet meaning almost everyone hitting this login window have a gmail/yahoo/whatever email address.
- madez 9y agoA good way would be to accept gpg keys as identities.
- Shoothe 9y agoIndieauth.com does just that: https://indieauth.com/pgp https://indieauth.com/pgp
- toyg 9y ago> There are very very few people that host their own email servers Most people have jobs with companies that run mailservers. There are even community mailservers. Email is a free protocol, and as such it's vender-neutral by default. But it makes more sense in the context of a reply further down: "NYU is a private university. The social media login option is only for visitors who are engaged in onsite research. Our materials are not available to the public online." If they are a private company, of course they can do as they please. Tbh, there are two possible explanations: 1. Someone tried to save a bunch of money and data-handling responsibility. 2. Someone sold tracking data and users to Twitter and Facebook.
- prappawrap 9y agoSo create a garbage account, that voids any premise of authenticity or identity to the social login. Certainly this is jumping through hoops, and performing a silly dance to get a cookie. One might suggest that it’s not a terrible idea to share passwords to these kinds of accounts with random strangers (written in bathroom stalls at train stations and airports, passed around at bars and restaurants), in order to further confuse authenticity and identity, rendering any attempt at harvesting or collecting interesting information from these emphemeral accounts as fruitful as trying to feed one’s self with the residue extracted from the insides of candy wrappers found in the garbage.
- nextstep 9y agoHarder and harder to do as these social networks require a phone number to create an account.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- prappawrap 9y agoWhich is why it’s important to share intentional junk accounts with random strangers, forging a pool of vagrant hobo accounts. Doing so renders burner identifiers more burnt than if one were to abandon them in a non-reusable state. Sometimes such accounts will be hoarded or closed off by vigilantes who might opine that this behavior is somehow immoral or ethically reproachable, even though it isn’t, but so what?
- dvfjsdhgfv 9y agoI regularly create fake accounts on FB using thrash SIM cards and do atypical things in order to introduce some noise to their profiling data.
- plandis 9y agoI had to do this exact thing with Spotify. I have a fake Facebook account solely to login :-/
- anfilt 9y agoReally?
- craftyguy 9y agoYes. It would appear so, based on the 'conversation' on that there social media network OP posted.
- anfilt 9y agoI mean really as in that's batty. Probably should have put in a few more words. I can't give the written word a tonal inflection to add context. I could say "Really! How laughable is that."
- farnsworthy 9y agoI assumed HN would guess this, whereas Twitter wouldn't: Wasn't this most likely a simple technical implementation shortcut/limitation? (Which they're now having to defend as a "policy" decision against the tweetrage?) In other words, I assume it's an organization with a limited technical staff and budget who just followed a means--social login--to an end (since everybody has one of those, right?).
- echlebek 9y agoProbably. Getting oauth2 to work with Facebook and Twitter is dead easy, and far more secure than rolling your own email auth.
- hungerstrike 9y agoEasier and more secure are debatable IMO. You don't have to roll your own in order to signup users with email. There are plenty of libraries out there to do it just as securely as Twitter and FB.
- bitwize 9y agoOwnlife is doubleplusungood.
- dethos 9y agoThis is very dangerous, the assumption that everyone should have an account on a specific private company, even if it is free.