This article has slop tones, but it is worth a skim because the general idea makes sense: using google or apple accounts to log in to your nostr apps is probably not a good idea.
Nostr was built as an explicit counter-model to KYC (Know Your Customer) platforms. No phone number, no email, no identity check. You generate a key pair, you are in. Your npub (public key) reveals nothing about who you are as a person. For most Nostr users, this is not a side effect. It is the entire point. They moved away from Twitter, Facebook, and Google precisely to stop leaving personally traceable footprints.I feel for developers who need to make things that users find convenient -- when most users don't care to maintain the pseudonymity of their nostr identity.
A Google or Apple account is, by definition, a KYC'd identity. You cannot create one without a phone number, and in most cases you also hand over a real name, a payment method, and years of behavior. The moment a Nostr user binds theirnpubto such an account, three things become true at once:This is not about whether Google or Apple read your Nostr messages. It is about whether the wall between your anonymous Nostr identity and your real-world KYC'd identity holds. With every OAuth button in a Nostr client, that wall gets a hole punched through it. The hole does not close.
- The link is permanent, as it sits in the IdP (identity provider)'s logs from the moment of login.
- The link is irreversible, because the IdP will not delete it just because the user stops using the feature.
- The link is correlatable, as no extra work is required and it happens in the normal data pipeline.
The damage does not require Phase 2, 3, or 4 of anything. In the moment a Nostr user performs their first OAuth login in a Nostr client, the link is established. Everything after that is merely a question of who uses that link, and for what purpose.
Logging in to your nostr app with kyc'd accounts seems a little like buying Bitcoin via an ETF.
We haven't really seen a major fallout on the child safety act forcing people to kyc their socials
But when they do, I hope to see people searching out places like Nostr for freedom logging in via npub
As an aside at my fiat mine yesterday, I was chatting to a workmate who said his shitty iPhone has updated itself and now wants a kyc document to proceed 🤣🤣
I said dump it for a Samsung android while it's still kyc free
But he was genuinely aghast at having to input his passport to look at his phone
How long, though, until the normie experience finds gov idea requirements to use devices no big deal?
I think of how we've shifted on many such requirements: phone service in the US commonly requires ID, so do most modes of travel -- flights, car rental, train tickets, bus tickets).
I still think within five years most people will accept kyc'd app stores as entirely commonplace and expected.
Just earlier in the sauna we were discussing these car robberies where the thieves break-in to steal your keys first
And one of the boys said, why dont they just have face recognition on the steering wheel 💁
That's the normie mindset
Face recognition is actually cool and useful. The thing is, it's monopolized by big tech and involves a third party for it to work hence it's out of the question for anyone who values their privacy/sovereignty. So I get why your boy suggested it. Hopefully free (as in speech) tech catches up to mainstream tech within the next couple of years so we can have big tech conveniences without sacrificing freedom
As an extra - my token rich friend has a top of the range - range lol rover
And the insurance company made him fit a pin number contraption in the dashboard, so only the correct digits start the car
Yes I'm familiar with the mindset. People just aren't deep thinkers 🤷♂️, and if they are, the allure of cool tech is too much to resist even if that means submitting to the machine
Yes. I encounter this all the time. Most people feel safer with more surveillance.
????
Isn't this only asked if you opt in to Apple Digital ID, in the US? I.e. for domestic TSA checkpoints?
No idea 💁
Worth finding out! Shotgun KYC on the premier mobile OS would be a major major problem in the long run.
If Nostr really breaks out I expect a large percentage of users will use it through Apple/Google still, just as people use custodians for Bitcoin today... the same problem exist: key management
Key management is an unsolvable problem that goes back to 70s and 80s, and pretty much everything you touch in software today is an abstraction around it. User/password, SSL Certificates, Email challenges, 2FA, Biometrics, and so on.
The bigger picture is that it's more like the TCP/IP of identity, and an ideal state means Nostr based apps don't have to integrate Apple or Google auth, Apple or Google would in effect provide a standardized remote signer functionality with their accounts.
Just like Bitcoin, again, optionality is what matters. Key-based identity offers a "credible exit" from those systems where desired, leaving room for an intransigent minority that keeps the whole system in check.
Nsec custodians and hosted policy engines are actually a requirement for Nostr to succeed, because enterprises (and even small businesses with a social media intern) need these. Without enterprises a critical threshold of economic activity cannot find its way to Nostr.
Because Nostr apps have this open standard and no need to integrate Apple or Google auth, it breaks up the identity duopoly too. https://auth.shock.network is the proof of concept for a policy engine protocol (same mental model of bunkers, but actually usable)
Why the downzap?
His entire profile has been downzapped. It seems the Sheriff has Outlawed him.
Started heavy in this thread, 12.4k down on initial reply
#1532083
Seems @Kruw flexing his stack not so very privately
Truth hurts
So basically what you're saying is signer centralization, but with secondary key auth, is a better solution than subkey delegation in the protocol?
PS: docs goes to a generic page - can I run this today? I need to get rid of this AVM with Amber because it keeps draining my laptop battery 😬
Yes, clients particularly on mobile can't reasonably do the work for delegation, they're pretty unusable as is. This has already failed with NIP-26 I think it was and other iterations of delegation.
Centralizing signers is still decentralized of course, it just becomes part of the self-hosted stack.
A policy engine on the remote signer also allows for much more granular controls than delegation ever could. I think of it like firewall rules, can this client sign? what kinds can it sign? to which p tags? How many sigs per day?
Those rules can then be defined into categories, perhaps your social client has a social scope while your wallet client has a wallet scope... each only with specific kinds/p-tags or perhaps even relays.
We're using in production only as an email-auth bridge so there's no self-hosted code yet, just the SDK that points to our instance and the granularity stuff is not in the policy dashboard yet. It's still proof of concept to inform the initial open protocol but we're getting back to it after the next Pub/Wallet release.
Oooo
what a stupid way for someone to log nostr using that.
I hadn't thought of it that way. This article is very interesting; it's made me think differently about using Nostr and what I shouldn't do to avoid linking my Google, Gmail, or other app identity. I'll discuss this with a friend who values privacy as much as I do!