Unfortunately this isn’t very good for society, although Telegram Messenger may not realise this.
As my webinar for the SSI (self-sov ID) Meetup highlights, reducing / eliminating the frictions associated with producing ID means that we will be asked for our ID more and, by corollary, become disenfranchised / excluded if we refuse. The least Telegram needs to do here is pay attention to the work on SSI and Verified Claims.
Identity ≠ ID.
Identity is a multi-faceted and contextual social construct essential to our psychological (and occasionally physical) safety. ID on the other hand is a set of bureaucratized documents.
The Telegram team appears to constitute ID technologists instead of identity sociotechnologists. If they carry on like this, people will die as a consequence.
BTW, they’re not alone, more’s the pity. Keybase appears to be heading along a similar trajectory for example.
