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From 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

From 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 ago
  It'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 ago
  What 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 ago
    A good way would be to accept gpg keys as identities.
    - Shoothe 9y ago
      Indieauth.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.
  - deathanatos 9y ago
    OpenID. Stack Overflow / StackExchange does an excellent job of this, IMO. Even some of the major "social" providers support this; e.g., I think Google does.
- closeparen 9y ago
  It’s pretty unusual for a private university library to accommodate visitors at all. This isn’t your right to vote.
  - dekhn 9y ago
    actually, if it's a federal depository they have to accommodate in-person visitors.

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 ago
It'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 ago
What 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 ago
  A good way would be to accept gpg keys as identities.
  - Shoothe 9y ago
    Indieauth.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.
- deathanatos 9y ago
  OpenID. Stack Overflow / StackExchange does an excellent job of this, IMO. Even some of the major "social" providers support this; e.g., I think Google does.
closeparen 9y ago
It’s pretty unusual for a private university library to accommodate visitors at all. This isn’t your right to vote.
- dekhn 9y ago
  actually, if it's a federal depository they have to accommodate in-person visitors.