Identity Manager

[erlend-sh]

What's the value-proposition of Weird? Especially Weird as an identity provider. And what's Weird's relationship to Commune?

Weird does something for Commune that other platforms don’t dare to do: It separates your core identity from the main-attraction platform. All identity providers are used to have some kind of tight coupling between identity and a service:

GitHub: ID + git
Discord: ID + chat
Gmail: ID + email
Facebook: ID + social network

This tight coupling weakens our digital sovereignty. Even if I stopped using gmail for email, I still rely heavily on it for my authentication to hundreds of sites & services. It’s part of their lock-in scheme.

Gmail et.al. has made identity confusing, because they've made it seem like it necessarily comes coupled with something like email or a social network. But identity should stand on its own, and it is paramount that it's not owned by a megacorp because there's no stronger lock-in effect than ones online identity.

So Weird is kind of a compromise. We acknowledge that identity on its own is somewhat lacklustre, at least in the current landscape. To be competitive, we pair identity with what is arguably the root identity of ones online presence anyhow: The personal webpage.

https://blog.jim-nielsen.com/2022/other-peoples-websites/

Being an identity provider is essential, because I want to be set free from my Google/GitHub dependence. That cannot happen overnight since most sites need to explicitly add additional options, but a lot can happen in the 'indie web' that I now mostly hang out in, e.g. the fediverse and the like. A lot of those apps don't provide any SSO login at all, but they absolutely should, and it's hurting their onboarding capabilities.

https://socialhub.activitypub.rocks/t/autonomous-identity-for-the-pluriverse-based-on-oauth-oidc/3675