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This post first appeared on aud.life

I recently rejoined Facebook, having deleted my account a little over a year ago. It’s been interesting to watch the process of rebuilding a network there – that is, who’s “friending” spurs others to see my avatar in a list of recommended connections. I’ve only received two friend requests from my home town, none from folks I went to high school with, none from folks I went to graduate school with. I’ve received only one friend request from a family member. Some of this, of course, is due to folks’ usage (or lack thereof) of Facebook. Some of this is, no doubt, a reflection of a lack of interest in re-friending me. (And considering it’s an election year, good riddance.)

But what’s really interesting is that for every one friend request I’ve received from a person I know, I’ve received one friend request from a stranger, from names I do not recognize.

One of the things that prompted me to rejoin Facebook was the struggle that friends Alec Couros and Alan Levine have had with catfishing. I recently heard Alec say that he has to be on Facebook so that he can report imposters and so that he can try to have some semblance of control over his “identity” there. Facebook has done nothing to respond to this problem.

When I set up a new account on Facebook, one friend immediately DM’d me on Twitter to ask if it was really me. She knew that I strongly dislike Facebook, and so she was (rightly) suspicious about a new account there bearing my name and image.

But a lot of people seem quite happy to friend anyone and everyone on Facebook. And I wonder how/if that makes it easier for catfishing accounts to establish themselves as “real”?


One of the promises of the blockchain is that it’ll help address identity issues. Me, I’m still skeptical about a technological “solution” to something that seems a lot more complex that a cryptographic verifiability.

But then again, here are all are, performing out identities online, posting bits and bytes about ourselves online. How do we protect that? (Secure it. Keep it private. Keep it ours. Mark it as ours/ourselves.) Can we?

I think that the un-editability of the blockchain makes it a non-starter for identity discussions. Identity is, after all, always in flux. And yet, some sort of certainty around identity is going to be demanded – not just by banks or governments but by all the (social) networks in which their practices are increasingly intertwined.

How do we maintain our own “hosted lifebits” without reducing everything to an enforced and inescapable fingerprint (and I do fear that biometrics are going to be proposed as “the solution” for issues of identity)? Can we?

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Audrey Watters


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Audrey Watters

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