2024-10-07
A few thoughts on domain name-based identity being advocated by Jay Graber, Bluesky and others
The most recent October episode of Mike McCue's DotSocial podcast popped up in the Podcasts app and I gave it a listen. This episode, an interview with Bluesky's Jay Graber. A generally interesting episode but the subject of identity really got me thinking about this notion of having one's own domain as sort of universal identity via DID (decentralized identifiers).
I'm familiar with the basics of concept because it is a feature Manton at micro.blog supports if one uses a domain name there. I previously had beardystarstuff.net pointing to my micro.blog account and used that domain for my website which also showed up as an account/server via ActivityPub and also as my username at Bluesky. I've hardly used Bluesky and only set-up an account because Manton was adding support and partial integration. In general I don't feel a need to broadcast out to the various services, what the cool kids call POSSE (Post (on) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere). I also have a Threads account that I've barely touched.
My blog is my internet home. I cross post some stuff to Mastodon but that's about all I want to bother with. There's only so much time in a day and if I'm not interested in interacting on the various platforms why syndicate to them?
After listening to the episode and assuming that my domain name-based username at BlueSky was broken as I disconnected from micro.blog I was curious about the set-up process. I logged in and yes, I saw that my account had an error message for the "handle". I opened the account settings to see what was involved with reconnecting it to my domain. It took two minutes to login to my Domain host and set up a new DNS record pointing to Bluesky and it was working 5 minutes later. So, it was easy for someone familiar with setting up new domain records. But what does it actually do? Is it useful any way? I don't know. As of this moment it doesn't seem to do much at all. But it was interesting to listen to Mike and Jay discuss some of the possibilities for the future.
But, you know, we never own a domain. We only lease it. There's no option to "own" it and given current domain costs lifetime ownership would likely be a bit expensive proposition for some. Is that something that will ever change? So, while the domain as identity sounds good, the idea seems to come from a place of privilege in terms of cost and practical implementation. And of course more interop and some sort of domain-based identity for those that want it would seem to be a positive development. But it's worth remembering that features that seem to define "Indy Web" or the "social web", be it identity via DID, the practice of POSSE or, perhaps most notably, web mentions, come with a variety of technological hurdles.
These are all interesting developments but it also seems to me that we also need a more base-level advocacy of web literacy. Maybe that's a thing already but it's something I want to think and write about in another post.
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