Comment by uniqueid | Hacker News Reader

Comment by uniqueid | Hacker News Reader

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Yes, because we designed the internet and web "wrong". I've commented with my opinion on this, here on HN, before. In my opinion, the world should have two internets: the current internet, and a "safe for life" internet.

The former would serve as a staging area and playground for new features. Just as the internet does today, it would provide, roughly speaking, no accountability and no security. My guess is that its main audience would be high-school seniors and college-age kids. In addition, you'd have a minority of techies, and — yes — some vile wingnuts.

The "safe for life" internet's network-layer would have baked-in authentication (eg: part of your IP is a user-id). It would have a protocol for notarization (ie: the ability to have a third party vouch for information. eg: the choice to tie your real name to your user-id, or remain pseudonymous). Its "web" markup would be far simpler and more semantic (no per-site styles, no dynamic features, no scripting).

When someone invents a very useful web feature/paradigm on the old internet/web, the new internet's web-standard could add special tags to support it. So, for example, the NewW3C could introduce a set of "store-front" tags with which one could create an entire online-store without any scripting. The NewW3C would include all sorts of functionality, eg: tags to host a Twitch-like site to stream video, with no JS whatsoever.

With this sort of accountability, the alternate internet would finally provide the ability to effectively moderate — bad actors wouldn't easily "respawn" a sockpuppet or bot account, to evade a ban. It would make commerce and data-sharing much safer (via the lack of dynamic features).

The situation today is absurd. What content do we want the web to promote: interesting photos of Japanese food, by a serious developer... or hackneyed ramblings by a bunch of 20-year old trolls? The internet we have today is "wrong" for most people.

This is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't have helped in this case. The trolling on Github was using a logged in account; this would exist within the "safe internet". The co-ordination of this occurred in 4chan, which would likely be in the "unsafe internet".

With your proposal, the trolling would still happen, but it might have been harder for her to track down where it was coming from.

Trolling is a societal issue, not a technological one.

  it wouldn't have helped in this case.

I'm not certain that is the case.

  The trolling on Github was using a logged in account

Except, if Github bans the user, that user (the actual human being, not their worthless handle) is gone — banned permanently. That's both a disincentive, and a rate-limiter.

Also, if the abuse is egregious enough (ie: a death threat), the troll is now in legal peril. The cost/benefit of reporting a troll to the police (even under a pseudonym) on the new internet is much more attractive. Currently, trying to track down an IP is fairly worthless. It's not tightly-coupled to a human being.

  Trolling is a societal issue, not a technological one.

We disagree on this, but — let's be honest — there's no way to prove either position conclusively. I'm tempted to bombard you comparisons and contrasts from the various historical periods, but I doubt it would convince you. There are myriad counter-examples with which you could reply.

My take is that the internet, in its current form, enforces so little accountability, that it gives bad actors far more power than good actors.

Are you seriously proposing totalitarian internet? So let's think who would adopt it first. My guess: China, Russia, Belarus, maybe even North Koreans would finally join internet.

No. I actually discussed that, over here, in this other comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24291757

Edit: Here is a more serious reply.

I should have stressed that the new network-layer would support the old internet. So, for example, a user might have a Firefox.app window open on their screen (connected via TCP/IP and displaying a normal HTTP website), and a also an AltBrowser.app (connected via AltTCP/IP and displaying a new AltHTTP website). Sort of like the Tor-paradigm, only if Tor required you to update your router's firmware.

I think, in such an environment, the old internet would still be the first choice of most 20-somethings (aside from when they online-shop). Why? Because young people tend to seek excitement, danger, conflict, boundary-pushing, etc.

The new internet likely would be the primary choice (probably the sole one) of oldsters, toddlers, parents, researchers, sensitive souls, retailers, and so on

I'd be skeptical of a safe-for-life Internet for one reason: safety. Experian, Target, OPM... we've seen countless times that very entities the average person does business with [un]voluntarily can't be trusted with a person's details or credentials. All it would take is for one corporation to mess up and someone else would own a person's one and only safe-for-life identity which, as you noted, means they'd own their victim online entirely. Even if there's an appeal process, since the safe-for-life ID would have to be worldwide, ostensibly it'd be even more difficult for victims than it is to get a new SSN. It's a nice thought, but I wouldn't be willing to trust anyone, especially an organization like Experian that I can't even opt out of, with the safety of what amounts to my professional and a fair amount of my personal online life.

That's an excellent point. I didn't address this aspect today, but I touched on it a little in a HN comment I posted a couple months back.

Ideally, the identity-side would be handled in a distributed way through a network of brick-and-mortar notary businesses. An account "for life" wouldn't be so iron-clad as to ruin someone's life. It would be onerous in the sense that one would have to pay a fee to the notary, and provide government ID to replace their account. At which point (after which the original, compromised user ID is marked as invalid).

The point you make re: security-issues with retailers is relevant, but it applies primarily to the businesses who notarize users, probably not the retailers.

As an example of the difference, the user could request the notary electronically confirm to the public that the user has a high school diploma, but not reveal any details re: from which school, or from which year. I haven't thought this through, but I could envision a "Mailboxes Etc" type business providing both notary, and PObox/reship services so that other retailers couldn't even find out a user's address.

I don't think you'd need a separate internet for that. You can have some kind of ID system where you can authenticate to a site with your ID. Some sites essentially use small credit card payments to do this already. This commonly helps prevent ban evasions in online games that cost money.

You could be right when it comes to the network "piece." The reason I proposed it is to enforce identification tied (indirectly) to a single human being, in perpetuity. It would also be attractive to make transmission of old-style web traffic over the new network difficult, to avoid the existing web subsuming the new one. There may be other ways to wind up with the same result. Ha! Maybe neither way is possible! The internet is so complex, it's hard to reason about.

And what happens when someone hacks your account?

Probably the user would have to dig out their birth cert, and visit the notary they originally used to get internet access. Then the notary would contact their ISP (or maybe they push the update to their public records, and the user asks their ISP to pull the update) with the replacement user ID.

Whatever the specifics, the basic idea is that there be a one-to-one relationship between a user and their account.

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