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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."
The day that I have to use my real, legal name on the Internet no matter what it is I'm doing, and no anonymity allowed, will be the LAST day I ever use the Internet, and I know I'm FAR from being alone in this.
File this under obviously bad idea category. The Internet is full of crazy, so you don't want to tie anything to your real life identity.
Sounds like a great browser, for other people to use. I'm guessing that the people showing up and threatening employees were either early investors or creditors.
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. . . .
Who forced anyone to sign up to this browser? If the people who sign up *want* to interact in an environment where there is no anonymity, that is their right.
sounds more like an excuse to not admit to having a shitty business model
So long as no one is forced to use this browser to get access to anything they must access, there is nothing to see here.
The danger lurked in this browser eventually becoming mandatory for certain sites — the government-run ones. And even then, only when the access did not need authentication before.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What's to stop one person from signing up legitimately and then giving copies of the browser to others who did not register? Does the browser check IDs? If so, does that slow it down? We've got people here in the USA who don't want to be identified for anything, so yeah, not real surprised that some people were threatened by this and got that point across. On the other hand, I was almost thinking that all the dumb "solutions in search of a problem" ideas for companies had surely been taken by now. but I am wrong about that.
There had been some way to hide their identity....
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.
Do you think my name really is Rick Schumann? LOL if you do.
Why should what I post here on Slashdot be part of some permanent Public Record attached to my real legal name? So you can hunt me down and threaten me because I said you were a fucktard and should STFU? What about you? Is your real name "Pablo Max"? If so what's to stop me from hunting you down and beating you within an inch of your life because you dared to disagree with me or otherwise annoyed me somehow? What's that, you say, that's just a 'handle' and not your real name? LOL, guess you like you anonymity too, don't you, 'Pablo'? LOL relax I'm not mad at you or threatening you or planning to threaten you, just making a point.
As stated above: 'official' business, and you exercising freedom of speech/freedom of expression on the Internet are two different things entirely. Or are we living in China right now, and every gods-be-damned word we post on the Internet is being scrutinized and 'graded' and being used to leverage our behavior by affecting our actual quality of life? Do you want to live in a world like that? You can see why, if things went that way, I'd dump the Internet over it.
Did you watch that show Seth MacFarlane created, The Orville? Did you see the episode where they found a planet where their supercharged version of social media was literally being used to decide whether people lived or died, literally crowdsourcing justice? An extreme example done to make a point, but would you want to live in a world like that, where one joking statement taken out of context literally ruins your life, because the whole world can see it? Even here in the United States, would you open up a Twitter account under your real name with real address and contact information, then proceed to openly criticize Donald Trump and his administration right to his face? You'd be lucky to live out the week and you know it. That's why the ability to have anonymity on the Internet is important.