It looks like in the future, we’re gonna verify our identities. Social media for the masses will be done with Identity verification. That’ll be the way to tell bots and people apart, stripping anonymity in the process.
Word that Mastodon is talking of age verification, we will definitely see instances adopt it. All is pointless if federating with an instance without age verification, and that makes me wonder if the Fediverse might split apart under that pressure.
It’s pure speculation, but we might see a verification tag, for those who did verify their identity, and those without are left without any tag, same as bot accounts. If the majority of people do eventually verify, that’ll cast doubt onto accounts who lack the tag. Instances could also go full whitelist mode, and all of those instances force you to verify to join. If that is to be the case, we either verify to talk to people, or we don’t and face the overwhelming bots.
But what do you think, how will the Fediverse navigate a dying internet?
I wouldn’t mind age or “is a person” verification done with privacy protecting means, such as GNU Taler blind signed token solutions that are open source and audited by independent security teams, but that isn’t getting implemented. Instead every “verification” service is a literal privacy nightmare simultaneously linking identity to speech and harvesting user data for sale.
Non-EU parts of the world should be encouraged to have better data privacy laws as part of their trade deals with the EU.