On anonymity online

We spend way too much time signing up for things these days. Any digital service you wish to use requires an email and password. Most people don't even change the password from service to service - because that's too much to try and remember.

But we've already hit a point where it has gotten to be too much. Multiple email accounts. Twitter. Facebook. Tik Tok. Your thermostat. Amazon. I haven't counted, but I would not be surprised if I had over 100 different services and accounts set up just to live day-to-day.

The problem with this is that each login is a potential weakness in security. One bug, one cyber attack, one malicious bot/person can do untold damage to our lives. Why is this? Because each service requires us to sign up for their service. It's how they make money - the more subscribers they have, the more profit they make. The power is held by the holders of the services.

But what if we flipped a switch and gave the power back to the user? What if we could still subscribe to all of the services that we wanted. You can still order that pizza, or that AirBnb, or send an email - but without having to sign into anything.

Imagine a new world where you create a single digital avatar for yourself. This is you - online. Your homebase. Your contact list. Your wallet. It is everything you need to engage with the virtual world around you. And it is secure. It isn't stored on anyone else's servers or in anyone else's database. It is entirely owned by the one person on this planet that has a right to own it - you!

You can decide how to engage with the digital world. And you decide what you share when you do. Some services might require elements of your personal identity - but you should be able to track who has access to what within your single homebase. Think of NFT's (non-fungible tokens) and how they might serve this purpose. If I sign up for something, I could receive an NFT from the service provider. They know how many NFT's they've given out and I know how many NFT's I have. And if I don't want to be signed up for a certain social media platform, I dispose of their NFT.

We shouldn't have to jump through all of the hurdles that we currently have to unsubscribe or remove our account. We should have a single wallet for all of our subscriptions, logins, and other virtual connections. In this homebase, we can then organize ourselves more easily.

Doing this means you can subscribe to emails and order your clothes online without risk of exposure. You don't have to worry about that forgetting where you're signed up and where you've shared your information. This would mask your most private information. And it keeps you anonymous from the parasites who just want to learn more about you so they can modify your behavior. And it prevents those parasites from selling "you" to the highest bidder.

Because who wants more behavior modification that drives you to buy more, want more, and feel unhappy with how things are currently?

I don't know how to build this, yet. But rest assured that if you and I don't start trying to figure this out, one or many large corporations will try to make a pretty "solution" to give them the competitive advantage and own more of you.