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Most companies shouldn't need this information. I don't give my id to most businesses I visit in person. The ability for online services to "verify" me does not need to be easy and it doesn't need to be cheap otherwise it will just be abused.

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But if you're out in public and you start shouting harmful, hateful or abusive messages there can be real-world consequences.

On Twitter you can be the most vile person possible with absolutely no fear as you're entirely anonymous.

But bots can't walk into most businesses in person. My point is that I don't want to hear from an account that isn't at least verified to be set up by a verified specific human being.

And you should be able to filter to only accounts that are verified and pay $5/month. I think this is an issue with twitter and their product. "verification" is one possible solution. But, other product changes would probably work better. E.g., I rarely have such negative interactions on hacker news and they don't even require a CC or a phone.

Agreed, and I want to see more than one change and some experimentation, too.

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