Only when you enter that key you are from then on allowed to post on certain subforums.

This way you'd get anonymity and a fair certainty that the people taking part at least lived there at some moment in time (which IMO also entitles them to speak about local topics).

... Like Reddit and HN, with improvements: https://www.talkyard.io/-32/how-hacker-news-can-be-improved-... (sorry for promoting my own thing ... I don't know any other seemingly okay open source Reddit alternative though)

Interesting, that there's "lots of" discussion software, but not yet any single login system like the one you describe. (?)

> need a real physical ID to get [a crypto key]

How can that work :-) People would submit their national ID number or full name, and get back a crypto key, and there could only be one key per national ID? How can one know that the one that submits the ID number, is the person him/herself? Maybe by looking up the person in the country's telephone directory, and sending a snail mail or making a phone call to verify?

What if there was an open-source verified-real-life-identity + crypto key login system, which could be connected to all different discussion software with a Single Sign-On API?

https://telegram.org/blog/passport, for example.

> People would submit their national ID number or full name, and get back a crypto key, and there could only be one key per national ID?

Usually, with a KYC service, people submit photos of their identity documents, and sometimes also video of themselves vouching for the document (as if you were having an asynchronous conversation with a notary public.)

Later, if someone else comes along and tries to register the same credentials and also presents the same level of evidence, you get a human arbitrator involved and ask each party to present more evidence, e.g. another primary identity document, or an actually-notarized letter of identity claim, etc. The same sort of things you give the police in an identity-theft case.