Internet 1.0 crated the technology that allowed for creators to develop a footprint on the web. This spawned content generators who were in search for ways to find content consumers.

Internet 2.0 created the systems that allowed for more people to have friction-less access to curated content at the cost of content creators losing ownership over their creations.

The strengths of the web (unfettered creation and dissemination) is also one of its greatest flaws. As the web has become the foundational mechanism for consumption, the ability to determine which content is worth consuming and what can and cannot be trust (both directions) has dramatically decreased. Walled gardens curating user generated content lack the ability to understand where that data comes from and how it can be trusted.

The underlying mechanism of source identity and ownership of information doesn't exist in web 2.0. Origins must be traced back manually by individuals who can unearth where a meme originated from, where a rumor started, a tracking cookie, a finger-print. This lack of traceability creates an accountability void where the gap between who generates the content to who owns it on the server to who distributes it is lost.

And while anonymity is great, the disconnection between the creation of content is both bad for business (pirating & stolen art) and bad for authenticity (what is good content and what is content created by foreign actors). A transparency-first approach to public information is vital for an internet that facilitates the disemmination of factual information and the accountability of the distribution of that information.

Internet 3.0 (web3) will need to lean into a the possibility of distributed, real-life accountability tracking across web3 systems. I call this Ident0. In web3, we may have many identities, but Ident0 is the one you can trust.