“I guess you can’t use NYU Libraries if you don’t have Twitter or Facebook?”
twitter.com
twitter.com
Certainly this is jumping through hoops, and performing a silly dance to get a cookie.
One might suggest that it’s not a terrible idea to share passwords to these kinds of accounts with random strangers (written in bathroom stalls at train stations and airports, passed around at bars and restaurants), in order to further confuse authenticity and identity, rendering any attempt at harvesting or collecting interesting information from these emphemeral accounts as fruitful as trying to feed one’s self with the residue extracted from the insides of candy wrappers found in the garbage.
Doing so renders burner identifiers more burnt than if one were to abandon them in a non-reusable state.
Sometimes such accounts will be hoarded or closed off by vigilantes who might opine that this behavior is somehow immoral or ethically reproachable, even though it isn’t, but so what?
"This is our login option for visitors. NYU community and consortium members are able to login with their school IDs. If you require assistance please use the Ask a Librarian chat on our homepage."
Wasn't this most likely a simple technical implementation shortcut/limitation? (Which they're now having to defend as a "policy" decision against the tweetrage?)
In other words, I assume it's an organization with a limited technical staff and budget who just followed a means--social login--to an end (since everybody has one of those, right?).
You don't have to roll your own in order to signup users with email. There are plenty of libraries out there to do it just as securely as Twitter and FB.
Yes it’s annoying but they have a revolving door of students and visitors. Managing security is tough. Outsourcing to 3rd party for validation makes sense and brings cost down, even if it pisses of a few folks.
Are there only a few people who realize how big of an issue having no vender-neutral solution is? That'd actually scare me.
If you think this deeper, then why not organize the voting of the government through Facebook or Google? That'd outsource the identiy management, so it's cheaper.
It's depressing how many people are blind to consequences of technological decisions, especially when financial incentives are at play.
Most people have jobs with companies that run mailservers. There are even community mailservers. Email is a free protocol, and as such it's vender-neutral by default.
But it makes more sense in the context of a reply further down: "NYU is a private university. The social media login option is only for visitors who are engaged in onsite research. Our materials are not available to the public online." If they are a private company, of course they can do as they please.
Tbh, there are two possible explanations:
1. Someone tried to save a bunch of money and data-handling responsibility.
2. Someone sold tracking data and users to Twitter and Facebook.
Even some of the major "social" providers support this; e.g., I think Google does.