This is a pipe dream. The online world spans the globe and we can only enforce the law in our own respective countries.
And even if all countries were cooperative about enforcement, distributed communication tools already exist. The internet has always been a place where you can go to share your thoughts without worrying about what your family or friends think. I don't think that will change in our lifetime, if ever.
Anyway, the market can sort this out. If using an ID to authenticate your Twitter account makes Twitter more successful than its competitors, great! I would not count on it.
You already provide your name and phone number and email to Twitter. You already identify yourself. We're talking about making that exchange more reliable and more secure...
Can you list some examples of the types of places where you think this property holds true and explain what you mean by "good social structure"?
> History has shown time and again that those in positions of advantage will abuse their access to information for their own gains.
What are some examples of scenarios where this has happened in relation to online identity where there have been legal restrictions in place that would have otherwise prevented it? The healthcare industry and credit card industry seem to do a pretty good job of protecting sensitive information, for example.
> Increasing the surface of your online activity trail can and will be used against you by a bad actor when the opportunity arises.
How anonymous do you think you are online? If you're not deliberately taking steps to conceal your identity, your trail is thick and clear for the people who know how to track it. And that's an actual problem: people track you even if you think you're anonymous and we have no legal protection in place to prevent abuse of data that can identify you online. If you are in a position where you need to *depend* on anonymity, you simply can't because nobody will respect your wish. So the internet operates in this grey zone where because we have no rules governing abuse of PII, everyone throws on the cloak and turns to anonymity as the answer. This degrades our ability to fight spam and makes things like strong mutual authentication very very hard to do because platform vendors can't ever expose any sort of fixed identifier because privacy. Look at the insane things Apple does: zero out your mac address when scanning for wifi networks and recently issue a new certificate for every single use so that a persistent identifier does not show up. And look at IPv6, we invented "privacy extensions" where you generate a random IP every few minutes. These hacks break functional systems because we don't understand how to regulate the internet as a society.
All that is somewhat irrelevant, though. We're talking about the identity relationship between you and a service, not necessarily "the features of interacting with the internet that can be recorded and tracked either on purpose or incidentally". Do you think your email address makes you anonymous? Again, unless you're deliberately taking steps to maintain pristine op sec with your online browsing, you identify yourself to service providers one way or another. And again, the problem is people think they're anonymous when they really aren't so they misinterpret what it means to be anonymous and its importance in good societal structure. I honestly don't see a difference between providing a service your email address or your physical address or telephone number. What's so bad about having a third party say "yeah, this person is who they say they are" and optionally "and here's the list of verified fields"? The internet is the only place where people get weirded out when someone asks for an ID. Do you not show the bar tender your ID when asked because you need to be anonymous at a restaurant? How about at the gas station, the liquor store, the axe throwing range, the DMV, the hospital, when making a purchase on a credit card, taking out a loan, etc. What real world interactions do you have that are primarily anonymous? It's not normal.
Strong identity combats spam and abuse. I would choose strong identity over spam almost every single time. I do not disagree that there are some online communities that are respectfully anonymous. But do you think e.g. Reddit is one of those? Because I do not. Regardless, you can still both a) identity check and b) run an anonymous community (and c. not store identity information). You don't have to expose the identity data in the product/community/forum itself, so nothing about making identity easier to use and more streamlined defeats the ability to operate pseudonymous services in the least. I really don't understand the "anonymity by default is good for a wholesome society" angle whatsoever.
This is a completely baseless claim, as most arguments against weak (ie pseudo) anonymity seem to be. Outside of banks, healthcare providers, and payment processors, I see little of benefit. Before bringing up any arguments that involve poor behavior or misinformation, please refresh yourself on the current state of Facebook (where nearly everyone is using their full name).
I already think twice before (and often decide against) using a service that requires my phone number. I will _never_ use Discord or Twitter (in my personal life at least) for this reason. Except for banks, liquor, and the pharmacy, I am almost certain to decline doing business rather than providing my ID.
The claim is not baseless. There are strong technical reasons why identifying the components in your system is a good thing. and there are practical social reasons.
There are many people I'm friendly with that I know little about. They could very well be giving me fake information about their life. I don't see this as a problem.
> Would you rather be given a pseudonymous name to use for the duration of your trip to the grocery store?
Well in most cases I wouldn't give anyone any name at all. Why does the grocery store require my name?
> The claim is not baseless. There are strong technical reasons why identifying the components in your system is a good thing. and there are practical social reasons.
There are also strong technical reasons not to. And there are practical social reasons not to. As far as I can tell, you've provided essentially no argument supporting this general claim:
> The internet would be a better place if there were more identity requirements
I work on a product that doesn't collect any PII. We made the decision very early on not to collect any information we don’t need because that’s literally not our business. I am deeply aware of the landscape on these topics. However, as a society we cannot run in a “normal meatspace anonymous cyberspace” mode. We need to bridge civil identity in a secure and private (those are fundamental human rights) way into the online era. That is the core focus of the product I’ve been working on. In reality people have identities whether they use them offline or online. The goal is to protect those identities so they cannot be abused, not remove them altogether.
This is false. There are many cases in real life when this is not the case as explained in the very post you just responded to.
> The burden of proof is on an anonymity advocate to demonstrate why that is harmful and should be changed.
You are making certain claims and then saying it's up to others to disprove you? If that's your attitude why are you engaging in this discussion at all?
> But it’s also not my problem if you aren’t aware of the nuances surrounding how security, privacy and anonymity work.
Frankly I don't have the energy to engage with you. Take that as you will. You clearly think you know much more than everyone here already anyway.
My point is that generally (not in all known cases) we are okay, in meatspace, (and quite familiar) with (and even require at times) exchanges that identify us whether it's putting our name on a coffee order, using a credit card to pay, signing a waiver, buying alcohol, visiting the hospital, opening a bank account, sending children to school, filing taxes, driving a car, etc. So to take the stance that anonymity is absolutely better to the point where it should be considered a fundamental human right and we should be worried about some company providing an identity verification api to online services because the whole shroud of pseudo anonymity of the internet is going to fall to pieces does require some supporting material, in the least. Otherwise it's just FUD.
> You clearly think you know much more than everyone here already anyway.
If I seem quip it's because I responded to a question asking if this API would mean we see more identity requirements because it possibly lowers the barrier to adding one with an affirmative "I hope so" and the tone of the responses has been "dude what a terrible thing to say this is hackernews doncha know anonymity is chic" followed by anectdotes about how sometimes you use an identity when doing business and sometimes you don't (so see! anonymity works). That's not a discussion it's just virtue signaling.. and it is certainly the responsibility of the virtuous (in this case those who are supporting the stance that my statement is terrible because anonymity is righteous) to back up their conviction (otherwise it is, simply, a virtue and nothing more). I've presented an argument that we needn't worry because meatspace society has figured out a good balance of security, privacy, and the occasional but rare anonymity, and it is perfectly functional so I don't think there's a qualified threat to the internet. I've described how strong identity backed security and accompanying privacy are not the same as anonymity and suggested that many people are conflating the two. And I've laid out rationale explaining that strong identity is better for security (this is not simply a "claim" if you know the first thing about security) and how if we want to see real privacy on the internet, not just the fake privacy that you get by being pseudonymous, then we need to fundamentally understand and legislate and engineer policies and systems that support such.
So far nobody has presented an argument as to why anonymity is, specifically, better than strong identity with privacy rules beyond "well sometimes you don't need strong identity for things to work so it should be the default" which is talking past me because I never made a claim to the contrary. I've backed up my assertions with the as far as I know factual evidence that identity both enables better security and deters spam (which are problems that are worse on the internet relative to meatspace). I don't know what else you want. I'm sorry my responses are laborious.