Identity

What defines a person, group, social entity or organization and distinguishes it from others.

Declared (you wrote it), recorded (observed as you use the service), inferred (estimated from the recorded).

The inferred one. It decides what you are shown, offered and charged — and you cannot see or correct it.

Whoever verifies identity decides who can act. A failed fingerprint check under Aadhaar can block food someone is entitled to.

It changes over time and according to context — a person at 14 and at 24, or at work and among friends.

Online, every audience receives the same message at once, so one presentation has to serve all of them.

It was accurate at the time. The problem is relevance rather than truth — which is the ground the right to be forgotten stands on.

Removes a search result under a person's name. The original page stays published.

A person holds several characteristics at once and they overlap — the combination is its own position, not the sum of its parts.

Age, nationality, religion, culture, gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, and social and economic class.

Each test averages over everyone with that characteristic, so a small group at the intersection disappears into the average.

The fewest training examples exist for those combinations — and that is knowable before training begins.