poztter.org
philosophy · essay 03
Identity is owned by you.
The philosophy of POZ is that your identity is owned by you. Providers can host it. They can attest to bindings, refresh handles, offer services around it. But they never own it. When the relationship of trust is broken, the owner holds all the power.
the trap of provider-owned identity
From an individual standpoint, the ownership of your identity solves many problems and opens up many doors that were previously shut. Take the most everyday example: email. If you've known a friend for years and they decide to switch their email address, it can be a massive risk. Letters get lost. People miss the change. Reputation, contacts, conversations — half of it stays attached to the old address forever.
Too often people feel trapped and held hostage by their email provider. So much of their identity is tied to one — potentially no longer trusted — company. The cost of leaving is high enough that most people stay. The provider doesn't have to keep their loyalty honestly; the cost of switching does it for them.
This same trap shows up everywhere identity touches: social media handles, video channels, professional profiles, even phone numbers. The platform's incentives are not your incentives, but you can't walk away without paying for it.
POZ inverts the relationship
With POZ, the opportunity exists to change providers and take your identity with you. Transparent to your contacts. You decide who you trust with your email or other services. When the relationship of trust is broken — or when the identity owner simply wants to separate from an identity provider — the owner holds all the power.
Your record is yours. Your contacts know you by your record, not by whatever handle a provider issued. If you switch from one email host to another, your friends' clients update the binding automatically. Nothing is lost. There is no "I'm changing my email" notice to send.
"people follow people, not the host"
The principle generalizes beyond email. When a friend's social media handle gets hacked, transferred, or stolen, your trust doesn't have to leave with the handle. Your trust was placed in your friend's POZ record, not in the username the platform issued. The username is metadata. The record is the person.
And the corollary: deplatforming becomes much weaker as a tool. A platform can remove an account; it cannot remove the person's identity. The person can re-establish their presence elsewhere — and everyone who trusted them still trusts them, because the chain of attestation flows from their record outward, not from any one platform inward.
what this requires
Identity ownership only works if two things are true. First, the record must be portable — small, self-contained, signed, and verifiable without dependencies on any particular server. POZ's file format is built for this.
Second, providers must attest, not issue. A provider should be able to confirm "yes, this binding belongs to this POZ record" without that statement implying ownership of the identity. POZ's Identity Zone is built for this — every attestation points to the user's record, with the user's keys signing that they accept the attestation.
the owner's leverage
One way to read this essay: it's about power. In today's internet, power flows toward whoever holds the namespace. Email providers hold address-space. Social networks hold handle-space. Domain registrars hold domain-space. The user negotiates from a weaker position with each.
POZ doesn't take that power away from providers. They still hold the namespaces — that's what makes them useful. POZ just gives the user a competing power: the right to leave with the relationships intact. The exit is no longer paid for in lost contacts. That changes the negotiation.