Accountability gap

Deployer liability works when there is a deployer. Forking, redeployment, self-hosting and distributed operation each put distance between the harm and anyone with an address, until the question of who should answer has no one to put it to.

Not a coinage of this site

The term is long established in AI governance and human rights writing, and the phrase does not appear in the essay that uses the idea. It is recorded here as an imported term with no single originator.

Distinct from persistent identity, which asks whether the thing in front of you is the same thing as before. This asks who is answerable, a question that can fail even when identity is perfectly clear.