You should never ever say that!
You either act, or you don't, but you don't "threaten".
If you act (court), and then they act (deletion), it becomes a retaliation, which in itself is illegal - and therefore will not happen so easily.
Retaliation is not illegal.
I really do wonder what happens when someone uploads a fake ID. Can they catch that (after all, the check is probably automatic in most instances since they don't have the personell), and if they do, would they try to take that person to court?
Just block out the ID numbers and all and how will they identity?
I think we're very near the point where a system can change letters and numbers on a moving ID in a video, if we're not there already. (And if one is patient enough, and the video is short enough, it's not impossible to do it by hand.)
I got somewhat blindsided and I needed the service, so I complied. The alternative would be to show up in the cell operator shop and show the employee your ID. I find it even somewhat nice that I was able to register online at all.
It's mandated by Swiss law. Cell service operators must identify their customers by ID. You know, south of Switzerland is Italy and sometimes the honorable crowd is trying to put up bases here or already did. It's also a fight against money laundering.
Re your suggestion to tamper with the video: be careful, it's illegal. You don't know whether the hologram or other features encode the identification number. If you get caught it can get expensive.
I wonder how they would react if everyone would start trolling Airbnb and Facebook by submitting photoshopped IDs :D
Good point about the holograms. But since public companies are verifying them -- and not the gov't -- the information what is on them must be public as well. Heck, I'm even willing to bet someone in this crowd might be working for such a company and might know the answer. And if the info is out there it can be photoshopped (or tampered with via AI, stable diffusion ID generation, my next weekend project maybe haha ;)
Ok, returning to more serious matters (that before waa a joke BTW), the only ethical way of verifying an ID would be an eyes-only approach, where you only show your ID to an employee, no copies being taken (this requires Airbnb to habe offices everywhere, which is not feasible they would claim). Then you'd use your ID to generate a number that can't be tracked back to your ID, akin to how datasets are anonymized. That way all the company knows is that a certain string of numbers identifies a semi-unique person. I have heard the German postal office had implemented such a system once, so it could be done actually.
One can see this on a large spectrum: taking away abortion, not selling alcohol, and lately forcing people to ID themselves for a measly Facebook profile - people will just resort to the black market to get these things anyway. This cat and mouse game is as old as time.
These days I guess you'd actually need to actively change the ID numbers.
But this is definitely something they can't do at scale, since their whole operation is set up to work at scale by automation.
So with high probability I'd guess not having an account is the worst.
But I may be wrong, maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in.
The truth is, FB demands an ID but they have no real right or basis for making this demand.
Now, if I want to register a new account with a new e-mail and phone number, I also need to show my ID and get banned immediately.
In 2012 my PayPal account was deleted after one of my clients reverted payment after getting source material. After contacting PayPal and telling them that I would go to court with that. After just seconds, I was signed out of an account, and it was gone. Nothing was associated with my e-mail address... :-)
In the end, most likely every company does something like that. Maybe not on such a scale, but...