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0 pointsjerf2y ago0 comments

This has always been my objection to them, as a user, as they have been presented. As an employee, I don't care. Businesses have sufficient relationships and mechanisms to self-serve any issues that come up, like lost keys. But as a user, I do not. It is a drop-dead requirement for me for any authentication material that I have some way of backing it up and modifying it in case of compromise.

Besides, give the Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Harvard MBA bros a whiff of the possibility of full control over something as important as your primary authentication material and before you can whisper Richard Stallman they're out having a happy Bacchanalia toasting the name of Portunus [1], whom I will now resurrect out of our ancient past to name him the God of Platform Lockin, and us users aren't going to get a word in edgewise over the debauchery and slides projecting Total Addressable Markets.

Fortunately it seems they all got a little too drunk with power this time, but honestly it's only a matter of time before they arrange another Portunus summoning lock-in party again. This target is irresistible and the annoyance people have with passwords is too good an angle to pass up.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portunus_(mythology) And yes, I am aware of the stream-crossing between Bacchus and another god here. But who knows what a Portunalia even is any more?

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novok2y ago

I'm not quite sure if even the corporate case works properly with iOS & Android devices as the article states, otherwise you could become a 'corporation of one' and side step all of this stuff. Even the corporations look like they have to use apple or google's crap for employee devices and accounts?

jerfOP2y ago

I mean in principle. If I throw my authentication material into a lake, there's an IT department that can have authorization to re-establish it. If I throw my personal authentication material into a lake, there's really nobody who can help me. I can try to convince a large company that I'm really me, but that is indistinguishable to them from a social engineering attempt, and dealing with that is high touch and expensive. I need to be able to back up my stuff. If the aforementioned "large company" is the one holding my authentication material and anything whatsoever bobbles it, then I'm back to trying to convince them I'm me.

A "corporation of one" is still just me, so I'm not talking about trying to technically hack around things by pretending to be a corporation.

When you see it this way it becomes really clear that Google, as a corporation, is an absolutely atrociously awful company to be the ones holding the keys to my identity. But there aren't any good, big, easy, safe options. I need to be able to self-service. Or we need to create much smaller, more local (in some sense, not necessarily geographical) holders of the auth material that I can convince I am me and they can reset it if something goes wrong. But that gets into a complicated web-of-trust and that's never worked out.

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novok2y ago

jerfOP2y ago

A "corporation of one" is still just me, so I'm not talking about trying to technically hack around things by pretending to be a corporation.

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