Keys to trust in the digital world: identity

In Bruce Schneier’s book he describes the phenomenon that people want to benefit from betraying the group while at the same time maintaining a sense of self goodness, a contradiction or what is called a delicate balance that comes from the constraints of social pressure.

Accordingly he proposes four different types of social pressure, namely moral pressure, reputational pressure, institutional pressure and protective mechanisms. These social pressures produce different effects when applied to different targets.Trust originates at different levels of social pressure, with which individual behaviour is constrained and groups may cooperate.

However, in the digital world built by the Internet, trust does not seem to work so well. The phrase “no one knows you’re a dog on the Internet“, which was popular during the Internet’s heyday, is a true reflection of the confusion that prevailed at that time. In addition, human confusion, such as cyber violence and rumours, which should be properly controlled, has also flourished on the Internet.Trust stems from social pressures, yet identities in the digital world are disconnected from society, and thus there is no way to level out pressures from reality to the web.

To cope with such problems, it is easy to think of establishing a real-name system on the Internet from where we stand now. However, a real-name system is essentially a complementary description of digital identity, and its main purpose is to prove the truth and validity of certain attributes of digital identity. Trust in the digital world needs to be established based on digital identity. Digital identities are not only used as unique identifiers for differentiation, but more importantly for proof.

Reference:
Schneier, B. (2012) Liars and outliers: Enabling the trust that society needs to thrive. Indianapolis, IN: Wiley.

Pklein (2020) Digital Identity: The key to privacy and security in the Digital World, MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. Available at: https://ide.mit.edu/insights/digital-identity-the-key-to-privacy-and-security-in-the-digital-world/ (Accessed: 07 November 2023).

On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog (2023) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog (Accessed: 07 November 2023).