Reminder that the UK arrests 12000/year for online posts, by far the most in the West.
The UK already has government issued ID, the proof of age card. This is about tying your identity to your online behaviour.
The UK already has government issued ID, the proof of age card. This is about tying your identity to your online behaviour.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/tommy-robinson-uk-speech-cla...
Yeah, not really online posts though is it.
After the UK implements this, other western countries will follow. For example, here in Australia, it's a simple solution to the under-16 social media ban which is about to come into effect. The bill was given deliberately weak verification requirements so it didn't seem too big-brother, but I'd bet real money that there's already an amendment in the works to tie it to digital ID after they discover what everyone already knows (i.e. that it'll be easily bypassed), followed by another amendment to tie the digital ID to site/app ID, for online safety reasons of course.
In time, websites/apps may offer your government's digital ID as an alternative to their in-house identity provider. If this becomes globally ubiquitous, many of them will stop maintaining their own authentication and rely solely on government ID providers. The identity provider you use will depend on where you are, so VPNs will become useless.
This was all inevitable from the day the internet opened up to everyone. Governments have an insatiable desire for power and limitless paranoia about threats to their power.