voluntary usage and protections against coercion

[npdoty]

A concern for both privacy and free expression is that if sites learn that digital credentials are broadly available, they may be increasingly willing (or increasingly coerced) into demanding presentation of credentials in order to access services. That may exclude, discriminatorily, people who are unwilling or unable to present a credential for whatever reason, and may increase the privacy and security risks to those who are able to present a credential.

API availability may provide a signal that leads to this sort of coercion, so we should document and mitigate it.

Don't let it be detectable that the user has a credential, or the site might demand it. (Withholding or greasing is often considered as a mitigation here, although it might not easily apply in this case.)

Require in some way that sites provide an alternative, in order to maintain access and decrease coercion for use of digital credentials.

[johannhof]

Yes, this is an important issue, which is also mentioned in my PR #262, but coercion from visibility into credential availability is a good perspective that I haven't really considered yet. I'm writing a PR for #245 which I believe could be an appropriate home for this topic?

Two thoughts on your suggestions:

Don't let it be detectable that the user has a credential, or the site might demand it. (Withholding or greasing is often considered as a mitigation here, although it might not easily apply in this case.)

Maybe I'm missing something, but how is this detectable in a way that we'd grease this information?

Require in some way that sites provide an alternative, in order to maintain access and decrease coercion for use of digital credentials.

I like the intent behind this, but have to say this sounds nearly impossible to do, unless I'm not considering something. Even if we, say, were to require websites to offer a PDF document upload besides accepting digital credentials, they could decide not to process it anyway.