Yes, that's why we should deanonymizing the internet. Everyone should need a government-issued license to access websites. That's exactly what the modern society needs. (in case it's not super obvious, /s)
Social media is a public platform. We can't enforce moderation if we can't identify the abuser, they can always just make a new account. So deanonymize social media access, but for private communication? Let's leave that free from prying eyes.
To bring it back to cars, roads are public infrastructure, that's why you need a license. No one cares if you drive licenseless on your private track.
(also everyone in this thread saying deanonymisation does not on its own solve the problem is correct)
Discord and group chats will be considered private. Basically anything that requires an invitation / permission to view their content is considered private. To your example, I'm not sure if J6 members were organising publicly themselves. If the FBI wanted to, they could easily infiltrate these groups as an anonymous member themselves, so I don't see a contradiction there.
Legislatively, it means that platforms will be held responsible for their public content, which I think is fair. If there are too much content to moderate, it's up to them to find solutions. I hear rumours of a promising automating tool called LLMs.
Social media sure.
What about what you watch on PornHub? Should that be tied directly to your government ID?
I know that's an easy one to cherry pick but just consider all you use the internet for and how an adversarial governmenft could use some of that info.
Personally I'd love to see all social media corps required to verify ID but leave the rest of the internet alone.
Interesting question though, because IRL, before the internet, there was also ID verification to access that kind of content. And that was actually worse, because the person checking your ID lived in your city and could see you buying groceries.
I suppose what you would want there is a verification mechanism that proves that you're an adult, but gives absolutely no info on which adult you are.
This - to my understanding - is possible with the technology we have. But whether that will actually be what happens remains to be seen.
Not everyone has a life that is all sunshine. Not every use of anonymity is criminal or unethical.
To bring it back to analog, newspapers are platforms, where journalists are identified members of the public and can be held accountable for their words.
If you would like more personal stories, by all means, search for the personal blog online and share them with your friends privately. But if you share it on a public platform like HN, you are making an editorial decision that this is worth sharing to the masses and thus should be scrutinized.
Identification schemes would be fine if there were never abused, but every single instance of them has been abused in the past. There is zero reason to believe it will it be different on the internet.
Are you familiar with how the DMCA gets abused? Do you really believe that bad actors will not find similar ways to abuse an identification system?
Think of it like advertising on billboards. When you partake in an activity with explicit intent to persuade others, you should declare who you are first. That's why my target has been solely focused on social media. Personal blogs don't advertise, social media does. Just like how a private business conducts themselves privately, but advertisements of a company should make clear if it is self advertisement or someone else advertising on behalf of them.
The goal of a state is stability. The free, open, anonymous global internet otoh is a force of change.
The west really liked that, back when it was useful to its geopolitical goals, but now, not only does it have outlived its usefulness, but also, it's suddenly being pointed at the west itself.
At least I do not see how it could be any other way. You cannot simultaneously have high-trust and low-filtering in a space.
I think a lot of confusion stems from the fact that this was actually always kinda the case. It was just not enforced by law, but by the fact that computers were weird, expensive and complex.
As the technology matured, these core assumptions started holding true less, until, eventually, we've ended up where we are now.
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This doesn't necessarily mean that we will have no more anonymous networks though. But they will be less global and less accessible.
Thanks to open weights LLMs, we will have more capabilities within them than we did in the 90s and earlier, but, we will lack the leverage of tidal proportions that social media held.
This, to me, sounds like the compromise to be found with the powers that keep the states we live in running.