> The idea that we use our email accounts, attached to huge corporations which siphon every detail about us for their advertising engines is absolutely absurd. I just want to be able to log in to applications and carry some of the simple data like my identity and what assets I have available with me, without having to pay for it by losing my privacy and autonomy.
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> Nothing in the web2 tech stack currently allows this.
Anyone who wants to can get their own email address which doesn't require giving data to advertisers. You can run your own domain or use an email service which isn't run as a loss-leader for advertisers, and you can use services like the one Apple built into iOS if you want to prevent the sites you visit from having a common identifier. The cryptocurrency services will need a variation of that same solution since using one wallet for everything is bad for privacy but the average person has limited interest or ability to reliably juggle many wallets.
What's more interesting is to consider is why many people chose a single email provider when it started as a service which is at least as decentralized as any cryptocurrency. That includes the extremely important account recovery problems tptacek mentioned, spam, but also simply things like the different values most people have for security and operations. Cryptocurrencies are theoretically decentralized but in practice most of the people involved seem to use a handful of exchanges and ostensibly decentralized services often depend on one or two companies, and that tends to come down to the same answer: most people don't want to run servers or be one mistake away from losing everything, and would prefer that work be someone else's job.
The other problem we have is how much people are willing to pay. Fastmail, iCloud, etc. are not expensive but a LOT of people have reliably voted with their feet and there seems to be only a small number of people who mind ads enough to pay for alternatives. I don't see web3 as SSO going anywhere until there's a lot more value to be shown from buying in — that upfront non-trivial payment requirement for something which just allows you to access other services you presumably would also have to pay for seems like a tough sell as a mainstream movement.
Anyone who wants to can get their own email address which doesn't require giving data to advertisers. You can run your own domain or use an email service which isn't run as a loss-leader for advertisers, and you can use services like the one Apple built into iOS if you want to prevent the sites you visit from having a common identifier. The cryptocurrency services will need a variation of that same solution since using one wallet for everything is bad for privacy but the average person has limited interest or ability to reliably juggle many wallets.
What's more interesting is to consider is why many people chose a single email provider when it started as a service which is at least as decentralized as any cryptocurrency. That includes the extremely important account recovery problems tptacek mentioned, spam, but also simply things like the different values most people have for security and operations. Cryptocurrencies are theoretically decentralized but in practice most of the people involved seem to use a handful of exchanges and ostensibly decentralized services often depend on one or two companies, and that tends to come down to the same answer: most people don't want to run servers or be one mistake away from losing everything, and would prefer that work be someone else's job.
The other problem we have is how much people are willing to pay. Fastmail, iCloud, etc. are not expensive but a LOT of people have reliably voted with their feet and there seems to be only a small number of people who mind ads enough to pay for alternatives. I don't see web3 as SSO going anywhere until there's a lot more value to be shown from buying in — that upfront non-trivial payment requirement for something which just allows you to access other services you presumably would also have to pay for seems like a tough sell as a mainstream movement.