I am having a hard time to imagine a scenario that is more dystopian
How don't see how making our lives more dystopian can be a net benefit.
How many of us expose different aspects of ourselves through different identities? Maybe most people are happy to show everyone all aspects of their lives, but I'm not, in part because who I am could get me or the people I meet in trouble, harassed, imprisoned or worse in some places.
Anonymity should remain a fundamental right. We have the right to live and expose different parts of ourselves to different audiences without overlap.
Anonymity is also a counter-power to governments. A government that knows all about its citizen is bound to abuse this power.
We see it in many democracies; elected governments enact laws that restrict freedoms to keep itself in power (Russia of course, Turkey, Algeria, but also EU countries like Bulgaria). Tools like government-issued ID that become mandatory to express yourself online are doubly dangerous: they make it easy to target those who cause trouble, and they can be used to remove means of expression (who can listen to you if you are denied an ID and there is no freedom of press to expose the abuse?).
The danger is not that you'll lose anonymity. The danger is that if you use anonymity, no one will listen to you. I'd wager a lot of algorithms will just shadow ban you. This is because you become viewed, effectively, the same way as the AI agent generating brand placement tweets for Bob's Bargain Basement Bar-B-Que and Bitcoin.
No one will know the difference between you and the corporate AI's. Only the verifiable humans will end up with opinions that anyone pays any attention to. It's like everything else will be a banner ad. Whether it's a banner ad or not.
This depends on people valuing who is saying something rather than what is being said. I'm not saying you're wrong, but I'm saying that if we're just trading in celebrity rather than ideas that I'm pretty sure we can also create celebrity AIs people would listen to.
Jokes aside, now that i think about it, "article summaries" are kind common on reddit, but i've never seen such an algorithm used for comments, yet. Guess Up&Down-votes are still the best we have.
Society makes things like blackmailing, etc possible too. In a truly free society we wouldn't judge each other for all the stupid stuff we do now; the majority of people are still extremely prude/immature sexually & will judge others for anything outside the norm in a heartbeat - hell even mentioning inside the norm sex stuff is still somewhat taboo.
As a gay dude involved in a few fun subcultures both in & out of bed it's so refreshing to be able to be so open about sex, if only everyone else was the same, about all topics. Y'all are missing out.
I've seen some pretty reprehensible behavior from people who put their full name and a photo of their face on Facebook.
I think the solution to all of this is smaller tight-knit discussion groups where all the participants know and trust each other. Echo chambers will inevitability form. I don't think there is any way around this.
edit: I find it very bizarre and very fashionable to defend the integrity of a verification service that does not exist, and to already dismiss the non-existent people who could suspect that this hypothetical system of verification was corrupt as conspiracy theorists.
My point was not that such verification systems are incorruptible. My point is that such verification systems are pointless because they will inevitably be perceived as corrupt. Whether or not the verification system is actually corrupt makes no difference. Such systems are worthless because people won't trust them. Any system will be accused of being corrupt by "both sides" of any heated debate, and they're not both going to be right. But it doesn't matter of one, the other or neither are correct. What matters is that the system won't work because people won't trust it.
IMO this is long overdue. And I think people should/will eventually even pay for this feature.
> Powerful nation states will be more than eager to assist them in this regard.
I agree - world governments could consider even subsidizing this in some way in order to foster fewer anonymous botnets sowing discord. The web of trust could be useful to help bolster this - if only in providing the process by which new social networks could eliminate anonymity.
I hear a lot about SSI [1] from a family member who works on this stuff. I'll be honest - I don't know whether it's promising or dystopian. Maybe a little bit of each. But I optimistically think it could be a way to help mitigate some of the problems created by anonymity.
The loss of anonymity won't be a panacea -- for example: people with legitimate accounts bound to their identity today accept bribes to create positive reviews of goods. And the loss of anonymity comes with significant drawbacks: criticizing government and powerful people becomes more difficult.
Having a digital reputation that you can taint could put people on their best behavior. But then again it's a bit dystopian [2, 3].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-sovereign_identity
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Credit_System
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosedive_(Black_Mirror)