I don't see much of an internet in 20ish years without it. It's getting filled up with trash and this will be exponential. Data quality on the internet will rapidly decline and only platforms that can provide authenticity will be able to provide value imo.

If I can run multiple person bots in 10 years on my cpu, governments around the world will abuse it to 11 and forcing all actors to such measures.

Twitter almost requires logins and yet it's full of crap. Usenet can be anonymous, and once you set up kill files to filter all the SPAM, you can get really high technical discussions in lots of groups.

Those forefathers had no idea we'd be using a global digital medium.

In the 18th century your word was everything, and your identity was tied to your word. When you came into town, or a tavern, or wherever, you had to identify yourself. And if you lied about who you were your word was tarnished forever.

Now we're doing the same thing in a digital world. It's time to adapt to that.

But you could write letters (and later telegrams) anonymously around the world back then.

Online and offline is not the same.

And it would be fraud. And it was a huge problem when people did that.

If you got caught you were done.

In a digital world we can combat such fraud in vastly different ways.

It was fraud to write a letter without signing it?

Now you're splitting hairs.

Obviously I mean any letter of substance where identification is a crucial factor. Not your anonymous love letters to your childhood sweetheart.

Dear Penis,

I must write you this letter to show you my burning eternal love since your 4th grade for legitimate, anonymous and encrypetd communication.

In shivers.

Your uncle.

They are not splitting hairs.

The GP comment was about the right toward anonymously sending telegrams and letters, then the response was about fraud, which makes no sense given the context of anonymity; you can't be fraudulently anonymous.

facebook, tiktok, hacker news, are not of any substance to me. They can go pound sand on my actual ID.

Signed,

Publius

Sorry liberty and privacy will never go out of fashion, whatever old towns used to do I don't care. I will always fight and send my $$ to companies that continue that fight against the government tracking every little thing I do in my day to day life. The people who need to know who I am do (the bank, my tax prep service, the state comptroller) already know and everyone else can go pound sand lol. These "think of the children" issues are easily solved by involved parents imposing boundaries.

Good for you, but we're talking about identifying users of large social media platforms to ensure children don't use them.

The whole "think of the children" excuse is so overused that it's useless at this point. Let parents think of their children and keep them out of trouble, the whole world doesn't have to give up their anonymity because someone chose to procreate. I keep my kids off social media via nanny software and I lock down their devices. It's not hard. They know the consequences if they go around the social media block. If you let your kid get on social media before 15 or so then it's on you to take responsibilty for that.

> the whole “think of the children” excuse is so overused that it’s useless at this point

Folks seeking to profit from your loss of freedom find it extremely useful.

Why is it unconstitutional?

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Nothing in there prohibits a national eID.

It absolutely does, as a national eID creates a chilling effect that can negatively impact my right to free speech and to peacefully assemble. Digital anonymity is not a joke, it is a fundamental human right whether or not you or any state agency recognizes it. It is crucial to a healthy democracy.

You mean if the issuer of the eID violates people's privacy, in violation of the first amendment. That's what you have courts for.

yeah that's worked out fantastically against any hundreds of companies that leak user data every year.

same thing will happen, a leak will occur and the authorities will be thrilled to offer me a 45 cent class action suit -- meanwhile bad actors will have the data and do who-knows-what with it.

if bad internet data is really the problem here then I would suggest more rigorous filtering of results rather than involuntarily signing up the world for a club that every individual may or may not want to be a part of by way of an eID.

> It is crucial to a healthy democracy.

And yet democracies predate the existence of digital anonimity by quite a few centuries (or at the very least decades, depending on how many slaves you accept in your definition of a "healthy democracy").

Digital anonymity is the higher-level concept being discussed, but the underlying issue which it relates to is that of a chilling effect, which is a timeless phenomenon.

> The "chilling effect" refers to a phenomenon where individuals or groups refrain from engaging in expression for fear of running afoul of a law or regulation.

> Laws that chill free expression do not provide the appropriate level of breathing space for First Amendment freedoms.

https://www.thefire.org/research-learn/chilling-effect-overv...

I guess the argument would have to be the admittedly stretchy one of by requiring an eID you are requiring people declare who they are when communicating, which would then be compelled speech.

since this is HN I better clarify - I'm not sure I agree that should pass or would pass, it seems a stretch to me. But if I wanted to make the argument that is where I would go.

Not necessarily.

An eID can also just make a call to the eID issuer, identifying the person, and then a callback to the service indicating that the identified person complies with certain requirements like age.

Think of it as a bouncer at the door that does not divulge any details to the club owner. ;)

The requirement only applies to certain platforms, though, you're still free to communicate what you wish.

How do we decide which platforms it applies to? And once the infrastructure is in place, how do we ensure the list of platforms does not grow at the whim of the administration of the month?

Exactly. Nothing in there prohibits electronic anything. It's talking about people. If you so choose, you can still do everything in person. The fact that computers currently make it easier and it's about to get harder doesn't change the fact that computers are entirely irrelevant.

The key insight is that the government should never be allowed to mediate the interactions I have with other humans on platforms which allow these interactions, and should never be allowed to mandate a platform to adopt policies which prohibit such activity.

If we share information which is a true risk to national security or the general welfare of the People, that's something the Constitution allows for. But wholesale enforcement of eID is reprehensible and must be met with rigid disobedience.

It wouldn't be restricting your freedoms, just your ability to exercise them.