3 Ways Vaccine Hesitancy Cracks Our Digital Identity's Foundation

We are making choices like that every day, because we’re living in an age where our lives are ever more filtered through digital technologies. From banking to socializing, our lives—and importantly our identities—are increasingly spilling over into the digital world. There's a growing crack in this foundation, and it's fueled by something seemingly unrelated: vaccine hesitancy. It’s not just bad for public health—it’s dangerous to your digital freedom.

Mandates Fuel Digital ID Control

Vaccine mandates are meant to protect public health. Yet in the process, they’ve created digital dominion more extreme and pervasive than even Big Brother could dream of, a threat to us all. Looking to demonstrate your vaccine status to travel, go to a concert, or even return to the office? That evidence is almost always digital, kept in a computer file or database, and monitored and governed by gatekeepers.

This is where the surprising connection gets interesting. As Matthew Crawford recently pointed out, new technology often adds friction where it’s trying to smooth things over. Digital vaccine passports promise to make our lives easier, but they will only add confusion. They are doing so at the expense of our independence. Together, they form one heck of a slippery slope. Before long, our every action might be monitored and managed according to our health decisions. Are we really okay with that? I'm certainly not.

This isn't just some abstract fear. Remember the AI regulation debate? As Rep. Ro Khanna pointed out, it would harm jobs and social media if few profits with no accountability. The same principle applies here. Without a decentralized, privacy-respecting approach to managing vaccine status, we risk handing over too much power to those who would control our digital identities.

Centralization Breeds Distrust and Division

Our reactions to vaccine mandates aren't just about the vaccine itself. They’re really about a generalized, deeper distrust of centralized authorities. This distrust is then magnified online, specifically by the digital platforms that we navigate every day, fueling echo chambers that only further exacerbate established prejudices.

This is where Nathan Beacom’s insight about moral identity politics is so important. Rather than targeting unintentional traits, we should be targeting moral identity. The digital space creates many challenges, but how might we uphold a moral identity online? What’s even more difficult is when our own data is collected and used against us to exploit us.

Through the attempts to centralize vaccine information, vaccine hesitancy has only been further fueled. It doesn’t help that heavy-handed censorship of dissenting voices on the internet has strained this trust further. Americans resist top-down approaches to regulation and do not respond well to mandates, particularly when the mandates affect their health. Without a clear and transparent process, it is difficult to know what is going on. Add in a real or imagined power asymmetry, and you have a perfect storm.

This isn't about being anti-vaccine. It's about being pro-freedom. It's about recognizing that centralized control, whether in the form of vaccine mandates or digital identity systems, can erode our individual autonomy and create a society of surveillance.

Decentralization Offers a Path Forward

So, what's the solution? The answer lies in decentralization. This is where my background in DeFi and NFTs like CryptoKitties is an asset. We should extend the same decentralized, user-centric principles to the ways we manage our vaccine status and, eventually, digital identity in general.

Picture this scenario as a future reality—you own your individual health data, and it’s written securely on a blockchain. You can decide to share it, and with whom, and when, without relying on arbitrary centralized third parties. This is not an unrealistic fantasy; it is well within reach using technology we have today.

What if we were to use NFTs as a means of representing verifiable vaccine credentials? This allows people to verify their status without revealing sensitive personal information. We can use zero-knowledge proofs to authenticate claims or verify information while keeping the individual’s underlying data completely private. The possibilities are endless.

This should not just be a technology conversation. It’s an ethics conversation. It’s not about having a government-run digital identity system that intrusively tracks all kinds of interactions without an individual’s consent or autonomy. It’s more than just that; it’s about making sure that technology is working for us and not the other way around. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez goes to bat for repair, ownership, and skilled trade work. In much the same way, we need to fight for the reparation of our damaged digital communications network. We must reclaim our data and negotiate its use for fair exchange.

As Tyler Austin Harper cautions in our current Slate Age, the hype surrounding the ascendance of AI is greatly exaggerated. Don’t allow the hype to distract you from the alarming realities of centralized control. Adopt decentralized solutions, preserve your digital identity, and join us in advocating for a future where technology strengthens humanity instead of trapping it. Otherwise, the fractures in our digital infrastructure — already exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic — will only worsen with time.

The rise of AI, as Tyler Austin Harper warns, is being oversold. Don't let the hype blind you to the underlying dangers of centralized control. Embrace decentralized solutions, protect your digital identity, and fight for a future where technology empowers, rather than enslaves, us. Because if we don't, the cracks in our digital foundation will only continue to widen.