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Ask HN: Keybase.io About Transparency and Open Alpha status

11 pointsby humanetechabout 6 years ago
Keybase is widely used by members of HN, and discussed in many threads before. I really like the ideas behind the software and the vision to bring public key encryption to the masses.<p>But what I find odd, and not addressed in any discussions I&#x27;ve seen, is that a commercial company (Keybase Inc) that is about delivering products to prove ones identity, has so little information about themselves. Keybase.io is lacking most of the information you generally find on a company website. Sure, there is a ToS and PP, and a Jobs page, and in a 4-year old blog post [0] I can find a bit on founders, team and investors.<p>As lead of Humane Tech Community I made it a bit of habit to check openness and transparency of the commercial entities behind cool projects, their position, revenue models and their future plans, and I find Keybase lacking a bit here.<p>Wikipedia says &#x27;Current status: Open alpha&#x27; [1] which I find also weird. This makes me hesitant to try out the service, and I think it could be an improvement to the company to provide more openness and transparency to gain trust with the broader public. Do you agree?<p>It may be that this is all intentional, because Keybase is indeed in alpha phase and testing out their products to a selected audience of more expert techies, like you all on HN. Would be great to know more about how this fits together.<p>Edit: If this has been asked before and I overlooked, I&#x27;d be happy to just have the pointer to that info.<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;keybase.io&#x2F;blog&#x2F;2015-07-15&#x2F;keybase-raises-series-a<p>[1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Keybase

1 comment

humanetechabout 6 years ago
Anyway I created a post mentioning Keybase on our community forum to a topic where we track similar identity systems and technologies.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.humanetech.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;3089&#x2F;22" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;community.humanetech.com&#x2F;t&#x2F;3089&#x2F;22</a>