87
submitted 7 months ago by remington@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] Kissaki@beehaw.org 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Gravatar was a great, minimal, independent service. Until they acquired it and integrated it into their WordPress platform and onboarding (trying to get you to become a customer).

[-] jherazob@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago
[-] Kissaki@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

You link to an avatar generator.

What made Gravatar great beyond that was that you set it up with your email account, and other websites would use your chosen avatar,identified by email address.

[-] jherazob@beehaw.org 1 points 7 months ago

Had a longer answer that went away for some reason 😭

Your criticism is fair, but:

  • Using the email as a seed on the generator goes halfway there, here's an example, although of course it could never change
  • Centralizing the avatar opens that service up to be grabbed for tracking like Gravatar did, or breaking the security of a site by injecting code without the consent of the site owner. The usual tradeoff between security/privacy and convenience.

Would be good to have a good user-managed way to do the same (well, beyond using an image on your own hosting, i guess)

this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2024
87 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

37702 readers
402 users here now

A nice place to discuss rumors, happenings, innovations, and challenges in the technology sphere. We also welcome discussions on the intersections of technology and society. If it’s technological news or discussion of technology, it probably belongs here.

Remember the overriding ethos on Beehaw: Be(e) Nice. Each user you encounter here is a person, and should be treated with kindness (even if they’re wrong, or use a Linux distro you don’t like). Personal attacks will not be tolerated.

Subcommunities on Beehaw:


This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS