Verifying your identity on Twitter will require taking a selfie
pcmag.com
pcmag.com
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
...but first I drew them an ID in crayon which they rejected, then one in acrylics, one in color pencil, one in pastels, etc, etc... My goal was to make one for each of the 50 states, but I only did like 5 before I got bored of sending them and having them rejected as not valid IDs.
Anyways, I'm not ever sending a social media company government issued IDs. Not gonna happen.
The only time I've submitted government ID online was for banking sites where it's only online sign up. I am OK with this because I understand this is a requirement set by the same government issuing the IDs with rules around how it can be used.
Social media sites have no such requirement. They have no such rules around the collection of this information. They can do whatever they want with it once collected. Privacy policies aren't enough. They can shift on a whim.
For me the only one that hurt was AirBnB when they imposed the picture requirement. That was a useful service.
Only 45 more to go, send me the invite!
This is my breaking point. I will not give up anonymity on this platform.
I keep hearing this, but people keep using Twitter.
That he’s “gutting” Twitter seems more like something you hope to see, not something that’s actually happening.
I don't find that kind of an argument very convincing. It doesn't seem to hold true in the long run.
In the early days of the web, a username and password were typically enough for creating an account for the web sites that even required an account in the first place.
Then more and more sites started also requiring an email address be provided to create and/or keep using an existing account.
Then more and more sites started also requiring a phone number.
Then more and more sites started also requiring a real name.
Now more and more sites want to see some sort of government-issued ID.
Over time, more and more personal and private information seems to be demanded in order to use many web sites.
Even if some particular piece of information isn't demanded today, it seems likely enough to me that it will be demanded in the future.
They've just been on the front-page of all the Western media today, from the FT, to BBC to the NYTimes, they're doing quite all-right.
Meanwhile I realized today that I have genuinely forgotten the name of the Twitter clone put forward by Zuckerberg, C...something. Ah, no, I've just googled it now, it's Threads. Yeah, that project is dead in the water.
b) After its initial peak Threads started to lose users largely because of missing features e.g. web app, search, hashtags, chronological sort etc. One by one these are being added and users are slowly coming back. Meta is not going to kill Threads whilst it is providing rich behavioural data into their Instagram/Facebook ad serving.
That's not really a very useful metric, because Musk paid way too much for it in the first place, and even without that it was probably overvalued to start with (IMHO). Besides, in the end a valuation, especially for a private company like Twitter/X, is not really all that useful and just a bunch of people going "well, I'd pay this much for it, I guess..."
I don't know if Twitter is doing okay or not, but I do know this is not a good metric.
They are what investors will be looking at to decide if Twitter/X heads into bankruptcy or fights to live another day.
I cannot recall the last time the-site-formerly-known-as-twitter was in the news for positive reasons.
A bank has traditionally been the place where we keep our most valuable physical assets. They are secured and insured. Security is part of the service they’re providing. Moving to the digital world, banks could also have been a natural place to store digital assets such as identity info, credit info, and email addresses/phone numbers.
Then, instead of every random website asking for this info and storing it for an indeterminate amount of time, the bank would proxy it to them.
Being a “data bank” would be a highly regulated privilege, with license to store this info. Any non-licensed entity would be prohibited from storing things like SSNs. This reduces the attack surface to only the most important entities. As critical infrastructure, these data banks would also receive periodic stress tests, just as physical banks do today.
Using the driver's license as a default document seems like it was an accidental thing. You then get the Department of Motor Vehicles involved in tasks outside their scope (i. e. the parallel non-license ID document), and it guarantees a lack of standardization and then trying to hack it back into place (see: Real ID).
We should have had a meaningful federal ID probably from the 1960s if not earlier-- once it became evident we needed some uniform way to identify people. Whatever department ended up owning it would be the obvious place to provide an API collection, which would probably end up looking a bit like oAuth with a variety of different grants (age, address, citizenship, other qualifications) that would be very evident through the login prompt.
But that would freak the hell out of the Mark of the Beast people.
maybe x/twitter, linkedin etc. plan to add financial transactions and will need to be kyc compliant - so this is just a first step?
or is there a new 'driver' for this model to cause companies like these to prioritize this 'feature'? is there really that much destructive fraud or impersonation today?
Verifying Your Identity on X Will Require Taking a Selfie and a Gov. issued ID - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37200989 - Aug 2023 (7 comments)
The question of whether the use of "Israeli software" (whatever it is specifically; too broad to make any useful comment) is appropriate is up for debate, but the fundamental act of verifying identity based off government identification is reasonable.
Besides, if you don't like it you don't have to get verified nor use the service for that matter.
It’s a problem for services which have little need for that kind of (intermediate level) verification, because it increases the threat surface for identity theft that can be used againt the kind of services that actually do need it.
It’s also, on the other hand, a problem for services which need actually need strong identity verification, because while government IDs do generally have security features, they are generally not secure for use via a photograph.
I mean, the guy lies like ducks quack. How long has the cyber truck been a year away from purchase now? His reputation is garbage.
It doesn’t really matter, because Musk isn’t even trying to hide that he is actively trying to gradually make X practically unusable if you aren’t a paying (“verified”) user.
I bet you could pay less than $10 per id+selfie combo
Nowadays, you could autogenerated both, and it's way more expensive to check the I'd than to generate one
If you fake it, of course the recourse is the legal system for identity fraud.
Is it though? Are there sets of federal or state laws [in the United States] that say you must never misrepresent your identity to a private party (X) if they ask for it? Wouldn't their recourse just be their ToS? What if a retail store clerk asked you when buying toothpaste? I suppose the law would probably be around the fake identities themselves? (e.g. creating a fake driver's license) But that would still be up to the state to prosecute, right?
I presume there are of course laws about misrepresenting your identity to the government, but now I am curious to what extent that's the case for private parties.
(I don't know much about the law in this area)
720 ILCS 5/16-30)
Sec. 16-30. Identity theft; aggravated identity theft.
(a) A person commits identity theft when he or she knowingly:
(1) uses any personal identifying information or personal identification document of another person to fraudulently obtain credit, money, goods, services, or other property;
> Nowadays, you could autogenerate both, and it's way more expensive to check the [id] than to generate one
This section seems the most relevant (?):
(5) uses, transfers, or possesses document-making implements to produce false identification or false documents with knowledge that they will be used by the person or another to commit any felony;
To your second point, yes, you would have to be committing a felony, which you wouldn't necessarily be. I got someone off a burglary charge that way once, since a burglary is defined as entering a premise for the purpose of committing a felony or a theft and the defendant only entered the premises for the purpose of slapping his girlfriend, which was a misdemeanor o_O
You do have to be careful though, violating the terms of service of a web site is at least a misdemeanor in a number of states (including Illinois), and is a felony for repeated violations.
I am curious how it would play out for X, if someone created a new identity and simply attempted to subscribe to their service in that sense.
I admit my experience in this domain has primarily been in financial services. We have different motivations than say, a social network. We plug into…as much signal is as commercially reasonable. Regardless, your identity assurance level will be governed by the effort and resources you’re willing to sink into the effort (data sources, remote identity proofing, device fingerprinting, activity heuristics, etc). If X wants to make sure you are who you say you are, they can, for a few dollars per user. And if you can’t identity proof because you don’t have a government credential, I’d hazard you don’t have much economic value to the platform (just facts, not a sleight).
For X, if you can show a gov ID that matches your credit card you’re paying with, that’s pretty high confidence you are who you say you are. Otherwise, you’re breaking the law (financial fraud if it’s not your credit card, edge cases aside if someone else is authorizing you to use their plastic).
It it worth a night in jail, a couple thousand dollars in legal fees and being felon to find out?
2) it isn't even illegal to fake your identity towards a company, is it? I mean only if you do it to commit fraud, not pay, or get alcohol under the legal age or something like that.
I hope someone archived this stuff. I never figured out how to pull all of Twitter myself.