Amazon Passkeys Launched: Response to Consumer Demand with Poor Implementation
Passkey transfer across ecosystems is still an unsolved problem, Linux support is lacking, Bitwarden&#x27;s implementation hasn&#x27;t launched yet, and there are host of ecosystem issues and caveats that people keep telling me will be ironed out in the future but haven&#x27;t been ironed out yet. Meanwhile, Amazon botching its rollout is a symptom of the specification not requiring standardized implementations. It&#x27;s a symptom of the FIDO Alliance just assuming companies will do a good job and won&#x27;t break everything.<p>Ideally, this would be the point where the Alliance would step in and say, &quot;okay clearly we need to standardize a lot more because y&#x27;all can&#x27;t handle this much leeway in how you implement the standard.&quot; Ideally it would give the Alliance pause about other parts of the standard like attestation where they&#x27;re also being painfully naive about how corporate implementations will go. But instead, the industry seems intent on barrelling forward with passkeys in their current state anyway.<p>Passkeys aren&#x27;t ready to recommend to normal consumers yet. We still have yet to see any proof that the portability and lock-out problems are actually going to be addressed. Words are cheap, talk to me when there is an official spec for transferring passkeys between ecosystems and when adherence to that spec and allowing export is a requirement for certification. Talk to me when the services that allow only linking one passkey are barred from official certification until they fix the problem.<p>And people say fixes are coming, but nobody in the industry is waiting for them to come. It&#x27;s not a priority for them. The major companies are showing that they are perfectly willing to recommend a product to consumers in a half-finished state at a point where there is literally no major implementation that allows transferring passkeys between ecosystems and where there serious caveats around linking passkeys to accounts. So what trust am I supposed to have in that? Don&#x27;t tell me the FIDO Alliance cares about portability or ease of access; the companies involved do not consider lack of portability and access to be a blocker.<p>I consider it irresponsible to recommend passkeys in their current state and irresponsible for companies to be rolling out wide support based on the current state of the ecosystem. I&#x27;ve lost a ton of faith in the entire standard because of how advocates have glossed over issues and because of how the industry is currently showing that actual universal access and universal support and real Open implementations are not a requirement and that they&#x27;re willing to try pushing consumers onto passkeys before those critical problems are fixed. The whole thing up to this point has felt dishonest and pushy and weird.<p>If the intent from advocates was to build support by papering over the problems, the effect has been the opposite. I&#x27;m still aware of the problems, but now I also don&#x27;t trust the advocates to be honest when talking about the problems. At some point I need to sit down and write up something more detailed about what the timeline has looked like, because I really feel like the conversation around passkeys and the way companies have moved forward with them is a really good example of how to just completely kill consumer trust in a standard that could have theoretically been good.