this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2025
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So, I'm going to offer a dissenting opinion. Please hear me out before piling on.
The anonymous internet is going to kill the internet. Without verification and attachment back to a real human, eventually the internet will just be flooded with bots, misinformation, and unverifiable information. The dead internet theory.
So, yes, we all worry about "Chinese style social credit scores" or corporate ownership of ID or whatever other dystopian bullshit... But what if you just want to have a site where people can talk to one another and know that they're people that actually have to take responsibility for what they say.
Anyway, I suspect that this will start in isolation. Like when the internet was young and communities were forming with knots of small people... Forums with full verification requirements or similar. Then they will grow once their quality exceeds everything else.
Discuss!
I'm only partly ok with it if it comes with anonymization of my identity. It should be possible to authenticate yourself without anybody knowing who you are or knowing that you authenticated. Maybe we could use an ID card scanner that generates some sort of code that can be used for anonymous identity validation.
We should also be a lot harder on social media companies that abuse our data. These companies should not be allowed to exist.
It won't.
They're already too powerful, even without a monopoly on authentication.
Assuming the company running the service and doing the verification is acting in good faith (big leap here, I get it) couldn’t you verify an identity, store a piece of static information about that person (DL, SSN even tho that sucks) in a hash so that no one else could use that identity to create an account and then issue an account ID with no link to identity marker?
This would allow you to verify users, prevent people from using an ID that was already used, prevent you from being able to link an account to an identity, and prevent you from being able to easily return a list of everyone identified on the service. Best you could do is respond to an individual query on whether that person has verified with your service.
I think it could work technically, but I agree that in practice the US would use its power to make you conduct surveillance without alerting customers, or maybe enact some KYC type requirements for internet usage. This would likely be a first or skipped step on the way to that.