Would you say that to your mother or your priest?
We all know that much of the Internet is a toxic cesspool, particularly the Social Media aspect of it, and it often seems that there’s really nothing that we can do about it except to choose to leave much of it behind. On the other hand, the Internet is one of the most important modern means of communication, some say the modern Public Square and to cut yourself off from it, cuts yourself off from much of the information available in the world today.
So, we wonder, how do we retain access to the all the people and information we are connected to via the Internet, while avoiding the toxic sludge that much communication there can contain?
Which leaves me thinking that thoughtful citizens need to demand more from our service providers and call for some kind of personal system of Internet identity protection and confirmation. A safe space for each individual where, they’re able to confirm their identity – say this is me, I’m a real person and I want to interact with other real people, not bots, not trolls.
I presume we will always need to leave some space for bots and trolls, as well as others who do not wish to have true discussion about important issues; some people just want to yell and scream and rail against everything. Or perhaps whistle blowers prefer to send up flairs with anonymity, I can surely understand this, but most users, I think, would like a civilized place for proper communication.
I think it would be great if Social Media platforms would give users the opportunity to verify the identify behind a user’s account, while giving users the ability to define their public persona or personas; perhaps a real name, perhaps one handle for your music fan groups, one for your sports groups and one for your politics groups, however you roll. But the key would be that users would have the ability to filter out non-verified accounts, or groups would have the ability to be verified members only. Then if users misbehave, the tie back to the confirmed identity would give the ability to block all identities tied to the main verified account. Users making criminal threats would be able to be pursued more easily by authorities, but the reality is a safety-first system like this would keep the troublemakers away to begin with.
Just think of what a system like this could do for kids to protect them against cyber bullying and predators on the Internet. Identities confirmed by school-based email addresses, with all kids, parents, and teachers known to the systems in use.
While what I describe above is a site-by-site solution and is needed NOW. For the long term good of our digital society, I think we need to see developed a system of Digital Fiduciaries to help us protest all aspects of our digital lives.
Beyond just communication interaction on the Internet, I think a system like this could also be amazingly beneficial for protecting everyday Americans from much of nefarious activity that often affects our digital lives. We each interact with so many of these systems each day; banking, bill paying, shopping, and many other situations.
And we have seen a long history of trouble when these systems are attacked by bad actors; I’m talking about vendors, being hacked and identities being stolen through stolen credit card numbers, Social Security numbers, and so forth. With my conception being that this system would allow us to confirm our identities to the sites we need to trust, while keeping our most important personal data safe in one location dedicated to keeping it secure, rather than with each and every company or organization we deal with each having all of our details, exposing them to myriad hackers.
I think a secure identity system like this should be further utilized to help us each manage and review important information about our lives that exists in the world, like our credit reports and other data that is gathered by companies to track, “understand” us each as individuals, in order to better sell to us. Some folks like it, others hate it; the bottom line is every American should have access to and control over this data. We should have the ability to fix errors and opt out of most tracking if we so wish. I think my freedom to not be tracked is more important than any companies right to track the intimate details of every consumer’s life.
Beyond our financial and business lives, I think a system like this would help fulfill the promise of electronic medical records. I know for me I need to look in several different systems if I want to review my interactions with the Doctors I see. Blood work is in one system, Primary care is one part of one network, specialists belong to others, all are “in network” to the insurance co, but the data is all over. I think any and all personal data like this should be consolidated within a secure “Digital Fiduciary” environment only focused on aggregating, organizing and securing our personal data.
To me, this kind of technology is not in itself bedrock, but it supports the bedrock ideal of every American being able to live in a safe society, free of various kinds of pursuit and abuse fear of having their identity, financial background in history, stolen, corrupted, or deleted on them. Safety and security that’s American Bedrock.
