blog: a model for identity in software
Signed-off-by: Christine Dodrill <me@christine.website>
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title: "A Model for Identity in Software"
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date: 2021-01-31
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tags:
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- philosophy
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- pluralgang
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---
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# A Model for Identity in Software
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Most software on the market has a very boring relationship with identity. Most
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assume that one user has one "real" name and one "username". Some software
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associates identifiers like phone numbers with people. Some software allows you
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to have multiple entirely different accounts and then share nothing between
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them. Some software makes this easier. Some software (such as forum engines)
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have the concept of sub-accounts that allow you to compartmentalize parts of
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your identity and switch between them at will. However, there is very little out
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there in terms of software that gets this _right_. There's always limitations,
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difficulties, red tape and caveats. I would like to discuss a proposal for how
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to handle this in a way that is flexible enough to cover the widest possible
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expressions of human identity so that software can be as inclusive as it can be
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from the ground up.
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This is a very serious thing and I am treating this very seriously, however it
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can get kind of boring reading everything in a serious tone so I am attempting
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to liven it up with some more creative scenarios.
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## The Existing Clusterfuck of Identity
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So, let's start out with describing some assumptions that programmers have about
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identity so that this proposal can address them. I'm going to be borrowing from
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a few sources:
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- [Falsehoods Programmers Believe About
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Names](https://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-believe-about-names/)
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- [The Plurality Playbook](https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook)
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Here's some big assumptions that can cause the most practical issues:
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- Each user has at most one name
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- Each user has at most one username they prefer
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- Each user has at least one phone number or email address they'd prefer to use
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- Users have no reason to create multiple logically separate identites
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If you have never encountered the kind of situation where people have multiple
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names that they actively go by before, this will likely sound very confusing to
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you at first glance. People just have given names right? They're given to you by
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your Mom and Dad and then you're just stuck with them for the rest of your life,
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right?
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Wrong.
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Your "Mom" and "Dad" in fact have names of their own beyond "Mom" and "Dad".
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They could have names like "Karen Smith" or "David Carmicheal". But to you they
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could be "Mom" or "Dad". You could be "son" or "daughter" to your "Mom" and
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"Dad". You could be something else entirely to someone else. Yet those are all
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separate logical parts of someone's social identities. If you are called "Mom"
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in a context by someone, it can have a very different connotation than if you
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were called by a username, nickname or legal name.
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As an example, let's consider the various ways that I, the author of this
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document experience identity that defy most of the identity systems that I have
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to deal with. I am publishing this post under the name Christine Dodrill. That
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name is my legal name that I use for dealing with the government and in formal
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situations like that. One of the places that this post gets published is [my
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GitHub account Xe](https://github.com/Xe). I also tend to use that name in some
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places, I see it as a lot less formal than my legal name. Generally contexts
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that I use it in are places that I feel safer in, however it's still detached
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from my more personal relationships. Then there's my handle Cadey. I consider
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this one to be the "real me" (for some definition of "real" and "me" that makes
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sense in context). I don't use it everywhere because Cadey is a lot less
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formal/a lot more personal, shitposty and friendly than the other names are. If
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you see me using it or I am in a space with others using that to refer to
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myself, this is actually a fairly significant sign of trust in the situation or
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the people involved.
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[<a href="https://twitter.com/theprincessxena">Cadey A. Ratio</a> the name is a
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shitposty reference to a term in online gaming called the Kill/Death/Assist
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ratio. K/D/A Ratio, Cadey A. Ratio.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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Also, as an aside I am going to be talking about some things in the rest of this
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article that really do mix the name-based compartmentalization that I do
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together, if you really want to ask clarifying questions or whatever I suggest
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doing it over somewhere my name is listed as Cadey.
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I have not seen any system on the internet that allows me to properly map the
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differences between these logical facets of my identity. Not without having to
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make multiple accounts, keep track of god knows how many email addresses and use
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ungodly hacks such as [Rambox](https://rambox.pro/#home). Seriously, I've tried.
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People wonder why I would need a tower with more than 32 GB of ram and having to
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keep so many webmail clients and instances of Discord open is basically the
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entire reason why.
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So, one common thread between my escapades with identity and someone that wants
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to keep their kids, knitting buddies, DnD group and gaming buddies separate is
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that they are the same _person_ wanting logical separation between different
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_facets_ of their identity. They may not want their kids to know that they play
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Grognar the Destroyer on saturday nights, but they might also not want their
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very religious knitting buddies to easily be able to find out that they roleplay
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as a succubus in an MMORPG.
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People that are transgender, nonbinary or a political activist may also want to
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separate out parts of their identity for fear of rumors or persecution. Coming
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out as transgender is one of those 50/50 splits between "nothing bad will
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happen" and "that person will never see you the same way again and disown you".
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That incurs a _huge_ amount of social risk. This is a very strong case for
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having a way to logically separate out part of one's identity. This could mean
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the difference from someone being accepted by their family or shunned by them.
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This could mean the difference between an activist being able to continue to
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advocate for universal healthcare coverage and that activist being thrown in
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jail for a very long time with trumped up charges for speaking out against the
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actions of Big Toothpaste.
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However, what about _entirely separate people_ that need to share computers or
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accounts? This could range from a married couple sharing a computer for
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financial reasons to one of the worst possible cases for this kind of thing:
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[Plural systems](https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook#introduction).
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Usually I write these articles assuming that people reference links if they are
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confused or for later reference. However, for this case to make sense I feel
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that I need to directly quote part of that source so that I can help make my
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point more clear:
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> Plurality (also known as multiplicity) is the state of having more than one
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> person/consciousness sharing a body. Together, the people who share a body
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> make up a plural system or multiple system, often referred to simply as a
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> system.
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As far as existing identity systems go, this is the _worst case scenario_. This
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throws the "Users have no reason to create multiple logically separate
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identities" assumption so far out of the window that I think it may be in Narnia
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by this point. Plural systems that I know have had to resort to things like
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[PluralKit](https://pluralkit.me) that uses user-definable text prefixes and
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suffixes to kinda-sorta-maybe implement multiple account support into Discord
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communities (however at the expense of making it _much harder_ to use existing
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moderation tools with PluralKit messages).
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Not to mention platforms that need multiple phone numbers gets financially
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expensive for systems that want to have each member have their own connections
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to other people. Making multiple accounts on services can also be a huge pain in
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the ass because programs do not have decent (if any) support for easily changing
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between accounts without having to keep ram-hungry clients open or constantly
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changing based on context. I certainly have a huge amount of trouble doing this.
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Rambox is decent enough for the lot of us to be able to easily multibox Discord,
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but it is such a terrible pile of hacks that we all really would love to get rid
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of.
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[If all of this is coming as a shock to you, you have probably had a much more
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privileged/socially advantaged life that has protected you from having to think
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about these things. This is okay. Ignorance is the first step to understanding.
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Don't be afraid to find out more. This is not new either. Identity has probably
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always been this complicated, but facts and circumstances have prevented it from
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being discussed as openly as a blogpost such as this
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does.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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## A Middle Path
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How can we make things better for both cases?
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There is not much prior art out there (annoyingly enough), however a large step
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in the right direction comes from a very unlikely source: Google Plus. One of
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Google Plus' distinguishing features was the the concept of
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[circles](https://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet/social-networking/networks/google-plus1.htm).
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Circles allowed you to separate people you communicate with into groups such as
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"College Friend", "Coworker", "Furry", "Knitting Group" or "Family". One of the
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main things that Google Plus stopped short of doing was the ability to let other
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people have multiple ways to see you (they also had some shockingly bad takes
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such as the insistence of "real names" which may have caused untold amounts of
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harm in the process). You ended up with one "you" but many groups you could
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limit posts to.
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["Real names" is usually a poorly defined concept, however in this case it
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usually means "whatever is on your government ID", which can be shockingly
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problematic to transgender or gender-nonbinary people that live in life
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situations or countries that prevent them from being able to have agency over
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their government ID.](conversation://Mara/hacker)
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Solutions such as subaccounts or Rambox are hacks to work around the disease,
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but what could a cure at the source look like?
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Consider [Firefox
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Containers](https://www.maketecheasier.com/firefox-multi-account-containers-explained/).
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They are completely separate sub-identities but share common things with your
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"main" identity such as the password manager and extensions. Being able to
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communicate with other people as a logically separate identity should be as easy
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as it is to spawn a tab in a Firefox container.
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There should be a "bank" of identities that you can pick between in contexts
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where those identities are relevant. I should be able to flip over to Nicole's
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view of a Discord guild, send a message that she's dictating out to a
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conversation about the flavor profiles of Bavarian sausage casings and then flip
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back to my discussion about the philosophical consequences of eBooks compared to
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traditional print media in about as much time as it took me to come up with
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something sufficiently bizarre for this sentence. An advantage of this being
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baked into the substrate of platforms means that moderators aren't shafted by
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this either. If you ban one of someone's identities from a place, you should ban
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them all from that place to prevent fractal
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[sockpuppeting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sock_puppet_account).
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I should be able to connect with someone at work, and then that same person
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online without either of us having any idea that we are the same people. I
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should be able to talk about legal things as Christine, personal things as Cadey
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and the space inbetween as Xe. The girls and I should be able to talk about our
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own things individually without our coworkers, our professional contacts, Mai's
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DnD group buddies, our own personal friends, acquaintances and people that are
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in groups I moderate without anyone being able to connect them all together at
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the platform level without my explicit permission.
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Yes, this would be a hard thing to implement. It throws a lot of assumptions
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about identity on these platforms out of the window. However I believe that it
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is really worth doing, because the benefits in terms of privacy will _far_
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outweigh the implementation costs. You have more than one "you" in practice.
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Software should let us make these kinds of logical separations easier, not
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harder. Having to use tools such as Rambox means that the identity model of a
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service is fundamentally flawed.
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