Re: Should WebIDs denote people or accounts?

On 5/18/14 1:59 PM, Nathan Rixham wrote:
> I'd suggest that this is not a technical problem and cannot be 
> addressed this way.
>
> When you add reasoners in to the mix they can quickly determine that 
> typographically different (personas/agents/uris) refer to the same 
> thing, whatever approach is used.
>
> Perhaps then the only way to combat this is to create the reasoning 
> programs which do this, and release them freely to people so they can 
> check their own data / persona's and quickly address any slip ups 
> which reveal identity over persona's before it's published.

As you know, nothing about WebID forces you to include an Email Address 
in your WebID-Profile doc. In short, you never need to place anything in 
a WebID-Profile document that you don't want to be used in undesirable 
fashion.

When we generate WebID and WebID-Profile documents from YouID, we don't 
mandate anything. Even the fact that you have Twitter, Facebook etc.. 
accounts are optional in regards to the WebID-profile document we 
generate (i.e., we have an anonymity option). Thus, you don't have an 
IFP based relations for coreference oriented inference and reasoning. 
Likewise no foaf:onlineAccount or anything like that.

As you said, this isn't technical problem. Its a social matter. We just 
have to remember that we don't have to make public that which we see as 
a compromise to our ability to self-calibrate vulnerability. This is 
what we do in the real-world, and nothing changes that online, bar 
misunderstanding of technology specs etc..


-- 

Regards,

Kingsley Idehen 
Founder & CEO
OpenLink Software
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