i don't want follower and block lists to follow me to every corner of a federated internet. i don't want a single unified profile everywhere. that sounds fuckin terrible to me actually.
but they seem so into it! they seem to think this will fix all the issues with things like twitter and meta! i do not understand why they seem to think this
every time I go on reddit or whatever and "log in with google" pops in the corner and I'm like "that is the absolute worst thing that could possibly happen in this situation"
Having a unified identity across different social contexts is something that is only possible for the "in-group" of a society. Because by definition, they way that they are in private is the thing that is blessed as "acceptable" in public.
Things like Code-Switching (linguistics) and pseudonyms and, to invent a term, "partitioned identities" are survival strategies for being part of an out-group. Any out-group. Race, gender, queer, religion, all of them. The idea of safe spaces is very similar, too.
Cohesive, non-partitioned identities are privilege. Believing it's "normal" to have a single, universal, connected identity is a type of privilege. Expecting it of others (much less demanding or enforcing it) is a type of oppression.
Long ago I worked on a little multi-protocol instant messaging client called Adium. One of our most popular features wasn’t a feature at all: it was a hidden debug option that let you have multiple “profiles” in the app with completely (or partially!) separate accounts, settings, UI theming, etc…
In hindsight, we accidentally built the ideal user experience for marginalized people, which is pretty neat.
