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This is not a conspiracy. This is just corporations acting in their best interest. Exactly the same as MicroSoft acted in their best interest as described here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....

If that is confusing here is link to the Friedman Doctrine that explains it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

When we see a technology that appears beneficial and is not adopted, I think it is fair to wonder why that is.

For me the key points I ponder are:

- over several years I saw articles on HN that supposedly promoted Fido, but almost always they talked about Yubikeys. This continues.

- Solokeys built an open source Fido key. They were priced very low compared to Yubikeys, but functioned just as well. You could buy them on Amazon at one point (and I did)

- the Fido Alliance Accreditation fees https://fidoalliance.org/certification/authenticator-certifi...

So no. I do not see a conspiracy, I just see an array of corporations acting according to the Friedman Doctrine.

Perhaps a good question is what benefits might those corporations gain from their actions. Would Google and Apple benefit from broad adoption of Fido keys or would it somehow lessen their profits? I don't know the answer, but I know the question.



>If that is confusing here is link to the Friedman Doctrine that explains it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

>When we see a technology that appears beneficial and is not adopted, I think it is fair to wonder why that is.

>...

>Perhaps a good question is what benefits might those corporations gain from their actions. Would Google and Apple benefit from broad adoption of Fido keys or would it somehow lessen their profits? I don't know the answer, but I know the question.

Again, I don't see any cogent arguments here aside from a vague anti-corporations sentiment along the lines of "corporations are greedy so they must be trying to oppress us at every opportunity". You mention "I think it is fair to wonder why that is", but you haven't articulate how hobbling u2f/fido/webauthn benefits the tech giants, when security is a huge pain point for them (both for their employees and their customers), and therefore they presumably benefit from it being adopted.

>- over several years I saw articles on HN that supposedly promoted Fido, but almost always they talked about Yubikeys. This continues.

Is there any evidence this was perpetuated by the fido alliance and/or their sponsors? Should we think there's a conspiracy by github because people confuse git with github?

>- Solokeys built an open source Fido key. They were priced very low compared to Yubikeys, but functioned just as well. You could buy them on Amazon at one point (and I did)

>- the Fido Alliance Accreditation fees https://fidoalliance.org/certification/authenticator-certifi...

What is this supposed to be evidence of? If anything this disproves your point that there can be competitors to yubikey.


It's an observation, not an argument.




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