Comment by JimDabell

Comment by JimDabell a day ago

1 reply

> Exactly one seems hard to implement (some kind of global registry?).

Governments. Make it a digital passport.

> I also don't want websites to be able to entirely prevent privacy throwaway accounts, for a false ban from Google's services to be bound to your soul for life

People should be free to refuse to interact with you.

> to be permanently locked out using anything digital because your identifier was compromised by malware and can't be "reset", or so on.

Make it as difficult to reset as a passport. Not impossible, but enough friction that you wouldn’t want to keep doing it every time you get banned for spamming.

Ukv 18 hours ago

> Governments. Make it a digital passport.

Some places don't have a sufficiently functional/digitally-competent government to manage it securely, and others would likely withhold/invalidate identifiers from groups they disfavor (like an ethnic/religious/political minority) - which would be fairly consequential if this is to dictate ability to communicate online. It's not the only way a government can do that, but it would be one that's alarmingly easy (requiring just inaction) and effective (to whatever extent the system works "as intended" in thwarting workarounds).

Presumably there also needs to be recourse against a corrupt government accepting bribes in exchange for giving out identifiers to spammers/etc., which to my understanding of the proposal would cut off all legitimate citizens of that country too if there's no redundancy.

Relaxing the requirement to allow for fallbacks (such that you can also apply to ICANN or some other international organization to get an identifier) should help, and if anything gives you more room to be picky about which organizations are accepted as attestors.

> People should be free to refuse to interact with you.

I think this conflates negative/passive rights (like the right to bear arms) with positive/active rights (like the right to counsel). Someone is free to refuse to interact with anyone who has worn fur if they can make that distinction, but that doesn't obligate me/society/governments to implement infrastructure to ensure that they can distinguish people who have worn fur - and people are (in general, not under oath/etc.) also free to lie about whether they have.