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