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What would be required to prove your identity? Would you be able to tweet anonymously, or must you tweet under that identity? There are some issues with that, f

What would be required to prove your identity? Would you be able to tweet anonymously, or must you tweet under that identity? There are some issues with that, for example people without government identification would not be allowed to tweet. Perhaps you could use unique fingerprints, but that turns into a huge privacy concern and I can never see that being accepted. Maybe there are some unique bio-markers that could be used which people feel would be irrelevant or otherwise useless enough to not be an invasion of privacy.

cwhiz 6y ago
Drivers license, utility bill, phone number, credit card, etc. The same types of things that other services ask you to provide to prove that you are a real person. Tweeting anonymously is a non-starter unless they can curtail the bot problem in some other way. If they could curtail the bot problem then they would be doing it already and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Half the content on Twitter and Facebook is from bots. I would say this is the most fundamentally urgent problem to solve to protect Democracy in this country.
- ll931110 6y ago
  That would be deal breakers with whistleblowers (Edward Snowden).
- metrokoi 6y ago
  The point of proving identity would be to curtail the bot problem. If someone can fake identification in order to get an account created, then it's trivial to just make up a fake name and picture of a person. Forcing people to not be anonymous does nothing to solve a bot problem, and causes a lot of problems. What if that person is gay with a very conservative family that would not accept them? They would be unable to speak how they please with mandatory non-anonymity. Twitter already requires a phone number, prepaid credit cards can be very cheap, and not everyone has utility bills in their names. Many people cannot get drivers licenses. These are great for privileged people, but discriminatory against unprivileged people. I don't think stifling their voices is something we need more of.

cwhiz 6y ago

Drivers license, utility bill, phone number, credit card, etc. The same types of things that other services ask you to provide to prove that you are a real person. Tweeting anonymously is a non-starter unless they can curtail the bot problem in some other way. If they could curtail the bot problem then they would be doing it already and we wouldn't be having this discussion. Half the content on Twitter and Facebook is from bots. I would say this is the most fundamentally urgent problem to solve to protect Democracy in this country.

ll931110 6y ago
That would be deal breakers with whistleblowers (Edward Snowden).
metrokoi 6y ago
The point of proving identity would be to curtail the bot problem. If someone can fake identification in order to get an account created, then it's trivial to just make up a fake name and picture of a person. Forcing people to not be anonymous does nothing to solve a bot problem, and causes a lot of problems. What if that person is gay with a very conservative family that would not accept them? They would be unable to speak how they please with mandatory non-anonymity. Twitter already requires a phone number, prepaid credit cards can be very cheap, and not everyone has utility bills in their names. Many people cannot get drivers licenses. These are great for privileged people, but discriminatory against unprivileged people. I don't think stifling their voices is something we need more of.