This content was created by Tracey Follows. This content was uploaded by Tracey Follows. This is a YouTube video titled "What will the future look like if big tech controls digital identity?" (published 2023-05-25). It contains a brief multi-speaker discussion (SPEAKER A and SPEAKER B) about digital identity futures, focusing on whether Big Tech (Apple, Google, Meta) will fill the vacuum by owning identity wallets. Topics include anonymity, eliminating passwords, interoperability, vendor lock-in, data portability, advertising incentives, and how an IDAS-certified, open approach would contrast with current ecosystem lock-in.
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It's an interesting future that we're heading towards with all of this. And as you've pointed out, and there are lots of things that we don't know yet because it's all in play, but I know that you've noted in some of the stuff you've written on this topic that if this doesn't pan out in the way that you have brilliantly explained on this podcast, um, that Big Tech will step in and fill the vacuum. And that's a very different future, isn't it? In summary, how would that play out in terms of some of the aspects we've just been discussing here? Anonymity, getting rid of passwords, interoperability. Would it work at all?
Well, it's— that again is a really good question, Tracey. Big tech is already there. So you have your wallet on your Google, your Android phone, or you have your wallet on your Apple phone, and then you have other wallets like you can have a Google Wallet on a Samsung phone or a Samsung Wallet. Not so much on the iPhone side of things. And you think, well, what are the drivers there for these folks doing this? Well, if they own your identity, let's put it that way, if they own your wallet, if you can't easily transfer out your stuff and put it somewhere else, then you're going to stay with them, right? And the question for people is going to be whether that's a comfortable thing or not. Now, at the moment, it's the easy thing because sure, you're in the Apple ecosystem, for example, great, you've got an iPhone, you've got a MacBook. I've got my wallet and it works on them all. And it's great. Well, the reason it works like that is because Apple wants to sell you more shiny things. People might think, well, they're great because they're not selling my data. Well, they do have quite a big advertising business as it happens, but they are selling you more and more very highly priced shiny things that don't interoperate with anything else. And then you've got Google on the other side who are an ad-driven business who are looking at how they can sell your data for ad revenue. And that's just, just two examples. What would be really interesting would be if Apple and Google and others like Meta and so on, if they IDAS enabled their wallets and got them certified, that would be really interesting because, you know, the legislation would force data portability, for example, and openness. So I kind of can't see it happening because they're all about lock-in, whereas IDAS is all about openness.
