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This article seems to present the state of the Internet as a kind of feudalism, where one must swear fealty to an established "brand", and carving out a life as

by gnode 7y ago

This article seems to present the state of the Internet as a kind of feudalism, where one must swear fealty to an established "brand", and carving out a life as a freeman is practically unattainable. I'd say the reality is that it's easy to join the Internet land-owning class (buy a domain; get a cert; run services), yet most people prefer to rent because they are not so inclined. Email is widely used, HTTPS is widely used, and they don't require you use a gatekeeper brand. Many instant messaging platforms, while run by brands, allow you to bring your own email address as an identity. I don't think authentication of identities is a feature that ties people to brands. A phone number is pseudonymous, and acts as an identity for many mobile messaging applications. Authentication in many cases is performed socially: you got the number from them, from a mutual friend, or they told you who they are and you were convinced.

danShumway 7y ago
> Email is widely used Setting up your own email server is notoriously difficult, and requires coordination with major brands. Importantly, people who use brands like GMail can't choose to whitelist you. There's no setting in GMail saying, "I trust everything coming from Bob's domain, don't bounce them." Emails get rejected on the protocol level. Effectively, if your friend is using Gmail, then they're using a brand, and you won't be able to talk to them unless you also use a brand that Google respects. > HTTPS is widely used The DNS system is probably one of the things I'm least worried about online, but it doesn't make sense to describe it as anything except as a brand. Domains aren't permanent -- you have to continue leasing them. That makes sense for a brand because you don't want companies to take over an entire space, but it makes no sense for an identity, because you should be able to permanently own an identity. Additionally, DNS is optimized for brand recognition, not for identity verification. It makes a ton of security compromises (think ally vs a11y) that make identity verification harder, but brand recognition easier. I would also disagree that phone numbers are good identity systems. Most people keep their phone number permanently, and it's trivial to tie a number to a real world identity. I would hesitate to call it pseudonymous. There's a real conflict between phone numbers being treated like a permanently owned identity and phone numbers being a thing you need to maintain and carry with you. In general, I try very, very hard not to allow any business to tie my identity to a number, because I think it's blatantly insecure. I do think the first point you're getting at is correct, in a sense: > I'd say the reality is that it's easy to join the Internet land-owning class (buy a domain; get a cert; run services), yet most people prefer to rent because they are not so inclined. I agree. However, it's not that identity management online is good. What you're describing is that it's relatively easy to build a brand. It's relatively easy for me to set up a domain, grab my username on new services as they come up, and make sure that when someone searches me on Google I show up near the top. That's not identity, that's brand management. The reality is that the current Internet is adapted to brands, but because it's not a massive problem for technical people to invest into making their own brand, we just kind of tolerate it. And non-technical people prefer to rent space on other people's brands instead of building their own. But in both cases, we haven't really built personal identities that are disassociated from advertising or word-of-mouth.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  It really sounds like you're using the word "brand" to mean "service" here.
  - zbentley 7y ago
    They are, because the article in the topic (re)defines it that way.
- gnode 7y ago
  I wasn't suggesting that you need to run your own email or web servers. It's easy (albeit costly) to pay a service to host your email (e.g. Protonmail; Rackspace; many domain registrars), and there are countless web hosting providers. However, this isn't identity (the identity is still yourdomain.net), and you don't need the hosting provider to be well-known. As I understand it, acceptance by the likes of Gmail is a case of jumping through technical compliance hoops, rather than brand stature. I wouldn't consider DNS names as brands. Brands are names which become identifying through familiarity, whereas DNS names become identifying simply by purchase; they're more similar to land registration: you are identifiable by a street address because you own / rent / lease it, not because it is widely known. My point is that I can buy a domain, buy some email and web hosting, then masquerade as i@myself.me, put up whatever files on my website. Nothing about this requires me to build a brand, any more than buying a house to which I can invite people requires a brand. We visit websites we have never heard of all the time.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
HTTPS does require you to use a gatekeeper brand; even going through Let's Encrypt (which is a brand, per article's use of the term) means you're now involving an extra bunch of intermediary brands. After all, the whole point is to have someone else to vouch that you are who you say you are.

by gnode 7y ago

danShumway 7y ago

> Email is widely used Setting up your own email server is notoriously difficult, and requires coordination with major brands. Importantly, people who use brands like GMail can't choose to whitelist you. There's no setting in GMail saying, "I trust everything coming from Bob's domain, don't bounce them." Emails get rejected on the protocol level. Effectively, if your friend is using Gmail, then they're using a brand, and you won't be able to talk to them unless you also use a brand that Google respects. > HTTPS is widely used The DNS system is probably one of the things I'm least worried about online, but it doesn't make sense to describe it as anything except as a brand. Domains aren't permanent -- you have to continue leasing them. That makes sense for a brand because you don't want companies to take over an entire space, but it makes no sense for an identity, because you should be able to permanently own an identity. Additionally, DNS is optimized for brand recognition, not for identity verification. It makes a ton of security compromises (think ally vs a11y) that make identity verification harder, but brand recognition easier. I would also disagree that phone numbers are good identity systems. Most people keep their phone number permanently, and it's trivial to tie a number to a real world identity. I would hesitate to call it pseudonymous. There's a real conflict between phone numbers being treated like a permanently owned identity and phone numbers being a thing you need to maintain and carry with you. In general, I try very, very hard not to allow any business to tie my identity to a number, because I think it's blatantly insecure. I do think the first point you're getting at is correct, in a sense: > I'd say the reality is that it's easy to join the Internet land-owning class (buy a domain; get a cert; run services), yet most people prefer to rent because they are not so inclined. I agree. However, it's not that identity management online is good. What you're describing is that it's relatively easy to build a brand. It's relatively easy for me to set up a domain, grab my username on new services as they come up, and make sure that when someone searches me on Google I show up near the top. That's not identity, that's brand management. The reality is that the current Internet is adapted to brands, but because it's not a massive problem for technical people to invest into making their own brand, we just kind of tolerate it. And non-technical people prefer to rent space on other people's brands instead of building their own. But in both cases, we haven't really built personal identities that are disassociated from advertising or word-of-mouth.

JohnFen 7y ago
It really sounds like you're using the word "brand" to mean "service" here.
- zbentley 7y ago
  They are, because the article in the topic (re)defines it that way.
gnode 7y ago
I wasn't suggesting that you need to run your own email or web servers. It's easy (albeit costly) to pay a service to host your email (e.g. Protonmail; Rackspace; many domain registrars), and there are countless web hosting providers. However, this isn't identity (the identity is still yourdomain.net), and you don't need the hosting provider to be well-known. As I understand it, acceptance by the likes of Gmail is a case of jumping through technical compliance hoops, rather than brand stature. I wouldn't consider DNS names as brands. Brands are names which become identifying through familiarity, whereas DNS names become identifying simply by purchase; they're more similar to land registration: you are identifiable by a street address because you own / rent / lease it, not because it is widely known. My point is that I can buy a domain, buy some email and web hosting, then masquerade as i@myself.me, put up whatever files on my website. Nothing about this requires me to build a brand, any more than buying a house to which I can invite people requires a brand. We visit websites we have never heard of all the time.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

HTTPS does require you to use a gatekeeper brand; even going through Let's Encrypt (which is a brand, per article's use of the term) means you're now involving an extra bunch of intermediary brands. After all, the whole point is to have someone else to vouch that you are who you say you are.