The internet was built to move data, not to understand people. Yet over time, identity became the invisible layer that determines access, trust, and behavior online. To understand how digital identity works today and why it often feels fragmented or broken, it is essential to look at identity in the specific context of how the internet itself evolved
The internet was not originally designed with identity at its core. In its early days, it was built to connect machines, not people. Yet over time, as the internet became the primary space for communication, work, commerce, and social interaction, identity slowly emerged as a central layer of the online experience. Today, almost everything we do online depends on some form of identity, even though that identity often operates invisibly in the background.
From connecting machines to recognizing people
At a technical level, the internet identifies devices through IP addresses, protocols, and network identifiers. These mechanisms are excellent at routing data, but they say nothing about who is behind a connection. When the internet began to be used by individuals rather than institutions, a new problem appeared: systems needed a way to recognize people, not just machines.
The first solution was simple and pragmatic: accounts. Usernames and passwords became the default way to associate a human being with an online action. This model worked well enough to allow the internet to scale, but it also laid the groundwork for many of today’s identity challenges. Identity became tied to platforms rather than to individuals, and recognition was fragmented across thousands of separate systems.
Identity as an access mechanism
In most online services, identity functions primarily as a gatekeeper. Logging in determines what you can see, what you can do, and what resources you can access. Whether it is email, banking, social networks, or cloud services, identity defines permissions and boundaries. From a technical perspective, this makes sense: systems need to control access to prevent abuse and ensure security.
However, this access-based model also reduces identity to a binary state: logged in or logged out. It rarely reflects the nuance of real-world identity, where context matters and different situations require different levels of disclosure. Online, proving who you are often means revealing far more information than necessary, simply because identity systems were not designed to be selective or flexible.
The rise of platform-based identity
As large platforms grew, platform-based identity became the dominant model on the internet. Instead of having one coherent digital identity, users accumulated multiple identities across services, each governed by different rules. Some platforms began to offer “login with” services, allowing users to reuse an existing identity across multiple sites.
While this reduced friction, it also concentrated power. A small number of companies effectively became identity providers for large parts of the internet. Losing access to one of these accounts could mean losing access to many services at once. Identity became portable, but only within ecosystems controlled by specific platforms.
Identity as data, not just authentication
Over time, identity on the internet evolved beyond authentication. It became a data-rich profile. Every interaction, click, message, or transaction added more information to an identity record. Identity stopped being something you used occasionally and became something that was constantly updated and analyzed.
A practical example makes this visible. When you browse an online store, your identity may influence what prices you see, which products are recommended, or whether a transaction is flagged as risky. These decisions are often automated and invisible, yet they are deeply tied to how your identity is represented within the system. Identity becomes not just who you are, but how systems perceive you.
Identity, anonymity, and pseudonymity online
One of the unique features of the internet is that it allows for anonymity and pseudonymity. In theory, users can interact without revealing their real-world identity. In practice, however, true anonymity is difficult to maintain. Technical identifiers, behavioral patterns, and data correlations often link activities back to individuals, even when names are not explicitly used.
This creates a tension. On one hand, anonymity can protect freedom of expression and personal safety. On the other hand, systems often demand stronger identity signals to combat fraud, abuse, and misinformation. The internet continuously balances between these two forces, often without clear or transparent rules.
Trust without physical presence
In physical interactions, trust is often built through presence, reputation, and social cues. Online, these signals are largely absent. Identity systems act as substitutes for trust, providing ways to establish credibility between parties who may never meet. Ratings, verified accounts, and reputation scores are all attempts to recreate trust in digital environments.
However, when identity systems are weak, opaque, or easily manipulated, trust breaks down. Fake accounts, identity theft, and impersonation are not just technical issues; they undermine confidence in the internet as a social and economic space.
Why identity on the internet feels “broken”
Many of the frustrations people experience online stem from the fact that internet identity was added as an afterthought, not designed as a foundational layer. Systems optimized for speed and scale struggle to handle complexity, nuance, and human context. Identity ends up being simultaneously too rigid and too invasive.
Users are asked to trust systems with their data, yet they often have little control over how their identity is used or represented. Identity becomes something that happens to people, rather than something they actively manage.
Rethinking identity for a networked world
Understanding identity in the context of the internet means recognizing that it is both a technical construct and a social one. It is shaped by protocols, platforms, incentives, and power structures. As the internet continues to evolve, so must the way identity is designed and governed.
The next generation of identity systems aims to make identity more portable, more privacy-preserving, and more aligned with how people actually exist across multiple contexts. Identity on the internet does not need to be centralized, static, or extractive. But getting there requires first understanding how the current model came to be, and why it no longer fits the realities of a fully networked world.