[PREV - REALITY_RANK]    [TOP]

REAL_ID

                                             December 22, 2010

   If you want to let someone know who
   you are, you should be able to do that.

   If you want to avoid dealing with someone
   if you don't know who they are, you
   should be able to do that.


      Given a way of doing both of those
      things, I think social pressure would
      almost immediately erase the anonymous         THE_TOY_WEB
      web of free accounts.

      It shouldn't be (and isn't) that hard to
      do... it might be hard to do in an elegant
      way that's simple enough to catch on.


         Could you start an "identity verification
         business" that works with other, existing
         sites?


                   E.g. you sign on with us, pay us a few bucks,
                   and the *act* of paying us is what we use to
                   verify your identity, then we give you a
                   digital signature.

                   Maybe, we give you a front end for posting to
                   other sites that digitially signs the posting.

                   We encourage other sites to check the validity
                   of the posts signature, but even if they don't
                   an individual user can do that, without the
                   site's cooperation.

                      We provide tools to
                      make that easier.




  (Aug 1, 2011)
  There are some signs that people
  are *beginning* to care about
  things like this, in the facebook
  and google+ worlds.

    We're not really there yet, the
    kind of "identity verification"
    they do still strikes me as fairly
    useless.  But maybe someday it'll            (Apr 15, 2012)
    get tightened up if people see the           Actually, I get the
    need.                                        impression google+
                                                 really cares about this.
                                                 Not sure about facebook.






--------
[NEXT - THE_ANONYMOUS_LIE]