What you're suggesting is a dystopia.

I think they were being sarcastic, given that they're writing it under a pseudonym.

Almost all of us are writing under pseudonyms.

Are cellphone numbers a dystopia?

Yeah, I keep getting solicitors and I can't easily change my number to something only my friends know. I also can't easily separate my business number from my personal number without paying for a second phone subscription, even though it wouldn't cost the phone company anything more.

Completely not that important, but I did this a year or so ago, committed 'the number' to google voice, and handed out my new one to close contacts. It took a bit for people to filter their calls correctly, and I could always answer the 'business line' regardless, but I have zero regrets about it now.

Unfortunately, using Google Voice in that manner is USA-only, and much (most?) of the rest of the world has no comparable alternative.

Just as an alternative to a different dystopia though.

My guess is that most people who use the internet by 2050 will be strongly authenticated, whereas the current anonymous internet will remain as a relic of barbaric times for most, but still in use.

I expect we'll have one or more protocols enforcing end-to-end route verification at the packet level on most Internet routers by 2050, so I'm not sure how anonymous any Internet served over that infrastructure will be. I expect bans will be much more effective, international traffic will have much more advanced filtering and blocking, and that proxying will basically be illegal without some kind of business arrangement and being subject to surveillance & ban-supporting laws (and anyway, proxying weird traffic will get you banninated by the entire "legitimate" Internet, much faster than it does now).

I'd go so far to say that by 2030, at least one OECD country will have a law requiring ISPs to enforce remote-attestation of the Secure Boot of every device accessing the internet.

Such a government could then require app stores to remove "dangerous" technologies like Tor and messaging apps that support end-to-end encryption.

Perhaps ISPs would be allowed to support "legacy" devices and OSes, but with a special "Evil Bit" set on packets, so that websites could (and in some cases would be required to) refuse access.

I agree that there needs to be some way for identity to be strongly represented on the internet but there should be a way or places where it isn't required. This could be something that perhaps allows indemnity for user generated content as long as the content is attributed to a person otherwise the site is responsible. This would allow the small time cars forum to (with identity) operate safely as they do today, but would also allow 4chan to (anonymously) operate as long as they ensue the content wont get the website operator in trouble.

The other problem you run into is ease of use. Most users of the internet can't understand PKI based certificates so I don't know how an interface could look that would provide a strong guarantee of identity but also allows my mom to use it and not get phished.

I agree on the general problem of identity. Implementation-wise one could also think of some kind of digital numberplate, which can change, so that people can't follow you around on the net, but is still unmistakenly linked to you or your device.