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Browser Firm That Required Users To Confirm Their Real Life Identity Shut Down After Its Employees Were Threatened (xconomy.com)
New submitter nleskovic shares a report: When Authenticated Reality launched last year, it seemed that the company had struck gold in terms of market demand and fit. The Austin-based startup had developed a Web browser that would require users to prove they are who they say they are. Users would have to sign up for an account -- scanning their driver's license and taking a photo -- in order to download the browser, which would sit "on top" of the Internet, said Chris Ciabarra, Authenticated Reality's co-founder, in an interview last year. "Everybody knows who everybody is," he said. So, when Facebook announced this week that its site was, once again, home to inauthentic pages and accounts designed to influence the outcome of the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, I contacted Ciabarra to find out how the company was doing. But, he said Wednesday that he had shut down the startup just a month after its debut. He said people who had heard about Authenticated Reality from media reports were visiting the firm's offices in California and threatening employees. (The addresses were listed on the website.) "It was getting kind of scary," he told me. "They were thinking we were taking their freedom away because they had to sign up using a driver's license. They thought we were trying to follow them."
This got my attention.
Why would one need (or want) to provide proof of identity to use a browser? So the company can pass a permanent, unique ID cookie and data to *every* site you visit? So you can be tracked *everywhere*? I imagine their revenue model relied on selling your browsing data to every/anyone. So that sounds like fun.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Because you get to say whatever you feel like without a personal repercussion.
Like Twitter.
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog."
I think people were far more worried that the company would be selling their browsing histories, attached to their real names.
sounds more like an excuse to not admit to having a shitty business model
Most of you are too young to remember, but once upon a time, everyone's real-life identity was transparent on the Internet. Everyone used their real names, most people even included their phone number and work address. If all you had was an email address (bang path), you could use it to finger them and get their info. Being able to skirt around this and do things anonymously was considered a bug which needed to be fixed.
As I recall it, anonymity took off when AOL joined Usenet. An AOL account granted you 5 usernames, ostensibly so a family could share a single AOL account. But a lot of AOL users used the extra identities to create pseudonyms so they could post on Usenet anonymously. There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this among the pro-real identity folks, and a lot of heated arguments, but I don't remember there being any death threats over it. And eventually the pro-anonymity side won out.
It's interesting that the pro-anonymity folks aren't as tolerant of opinions different than theirs. For a democracy to function, there has to be a free exchange of ideas. People with different opinions must be allowed to express and practice what they think is a better way to do things. Their idea should be evaluated by each individual who hears it, and either accepted or dismissed. An individual or a group proactively preventing other individuals from learning about a different idea by threatening the people advocating them is corrosive to democracy, and will lead to a tyranny by an apparent majority. Nobody will know if the "majority opinion" is really held by the majority, because everyone is too afraid to contradict it.