Indeed. The article doesn't make the context clear up front (perhaps because it's on a blog and partly aimed at people who already know what the blog is about),

Indeed. The article doesn't make the context clear up front (perhaps because it's on a blog and partly aimed at people who already know what the blog is about), but the author and Mozilla have a solution to that problem that isn't "social". The post mentions it toward the end: "We built the Persona protocol to reduce data sharing to the minimum needed for the user to easily log in: the browser mediates the login without leaking data to the identity provider. In the end, Persona is the easy login solution that respects users." Ben is a smart guy, I've read about Persona, and it seems to be really well thought out and to have learned from the failings of e.g. OpenID. I intend to use it the next time I need an easy login solution for users.