Re: Prioritizing Individual Sovereignty over Interoperability

The [Universal] DID System is rightly looking more and more like The Domain

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________________________________
From: Steven Rowat <steven_rowat@sunshine.net>
Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2019 2:13:05 PM
To: public-credentials@w3.org
Subject: Re: Prioritizing Individual Sovereignty over Interoperability

On 2019-04-30 7:24 am, Markus Sabadello wrote:
> You are right, my last comment went too far, I fully agree the community
> is gaining much, not losing.
>
> I think what I meant to say is that "DID" is losing (or changing) its
> original meaning and intent if it we say that domain names, Facebook
> usernames, etc. can also be DIDs.
>
> If that is the community consensus at the end of the debate, great.
> If we arrive at some middle ground that can enable the "bigger tent"
> while still maintaining the original narrative, also great.

While I accept Manu's concerns, I think also the debate has become
fuzzy and is not over. I don't think a "bigger tent" is necessarily
the only way to measure success. It depends on what the people in the
various sub-tents are being helped to do by the VC/DID system envisioned.

Perhaps reframing the "DID decentralization" and did:facebook and
did:web issue as the following will help:

1. Monetizing the Internet has created the stalking advertising model,
which now widely accepted as seriously problematic.

2. A Verifiable Claims / DID standard has in the past promised to help
make other monetizing methods more doable: direct sale of information,
private transactions, pseudo-anonymity, micropayments, subscriptions.

The question for me then is whether #2 is being helped or hurt by the
currently discussed changes. Is DID being set up now so that it will
principally help #1, because that's where the "bigger tent" currently is?

I'm not saying I know which way the technical details about
did:facebook and did:web fall. But if the debate could be framed about
which of those two is being helped, it might make it easier to follow,
at least for me.

Steven Rowat