Most companies shouldn't need this information. I don't give my id to most businesses I visit in person. The ability for online services to "verify" me does not need to be easy and it doesn't need to be cheap otherwise it will just be abused.

But bots can't walk into most businesses in person. My point is that I don't want to hear from an account that isn't at least verified to be set up by a verified specific human being.

And you should be able to filter to only accounts that are verified and pay $5/month. I think this is an issue with twitter and their product. "verification" is one possible solution. But, other product changes would probably work better. E.g., I rarely have such negative interactions on hacker news and they don't even require a CC or a phone.

Agreed, and I want to see more than one change and some experimentation, too.

But if you're out in public and you start shouting harmful, hateful or abusive messages there can be real-world consequences.

On Twitter you can be the most vile person possible with absolutely no fear as you're entirely anonymous.

Twitter’s blue checkmark isn’t just authentication. The reason anyone cares about it is that it means “I’m a somebody”.

I understand, but unless via a crony system, it's hard to do that kind of IDing without expense. However, I would like to see a not-someboy-but-a-verified-specific-human-not-bot account designation, too.

So to flesh this out, I'd like to see three or four kinds of members on Twitter. All would be authenticated in one sense: their real names would be known to the site and verified. But...

1) Some users would pay extra to be anonymous or pseudonymous to users of the site (but not to corporate Twitter)

2) Most users would be under the real verified name but no blue check to say this is their real name. No charge (unless just for the initial verification, maybe.)

3) Blue check users pay to show everyone they are not just a person, or just a person of the same name shown, but a person (or company) of note with that name. (And the most well-known person with that name.)

4)? "Ordinary" or less well-known people should be able to pay a little for, say, a blue circle (but no check) that shows they are not pseudonymous accounts and any geographical location, job description given has been verified.