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Comment by threeseed

4 years ago

> still forces you to rely on a single central provider as your "root"

So what ? I am still struggling to understand what immediate and painful need users have with trusting Apple, Facebook, Google etc with their identity.

If people had some issue with this then users would simply not use OAuth and default to creating an account for each service they use.

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threeseed

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lmm  4 years ago

> I am still struggling to understand what immediate and painful need users have with trusting Apple, Facebook, Google etc with their identity.

It's not so immediate until you get banned, but they've all been gradually stepping up their politicised banwaves. And there's always the concern about what happens when one of them goes the way of Yahoo.

> If people had some issue with this then users would simply not use OAuth and default to creating an account for each service they use.

Which has huge practical headaches, to the point that OAuth being the least-bad option doesn't say a lot.

  • ShamelessC  4 years ago

    What's to stop e.g. Google from creating a blacklist of these public identities again?

    • lmm  3 years ago

      Defaults and ease for site operators matter. Google could publish a blacklist but it would be opt-in, and if one blacklist starts being unreasonable then site operators can easily switch to another.

      2 replies →

betwixthewires  4 years ago

> If people had some issue with this then users would simply not use OAuth and default to creating an account for each service they use.

Do you really believe this? Plenty of people use services they don't particularly like because it's better than the alternative or they have an immediate need. I know lots of people who didn't want to use zoom but needed to, have a Facebook account to keep up with family even though they'd rather not, etc.

Plenty of people would love an option that works as easy as oauth but doesn't lock them to a FAANG provider. Just because they use it when there's not another option doesn't mean they wouldn't use another option if it existed.

kobasa  4 years ago

>I am still struggling to understand what immediate and painful need users have with trusting Apple, Facebook, Google etc with their identity.

Are you actually serious right now?