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drsimonz t1_iuc9yl1 wrote

I've been saying this for like a decade. There is only one way the social media story ends: people will post under their true name, using cryptographically secure identity verification provided by their government or some kind of international cooperative. Something more secure than a credit card. You get exactly one identity. You do not get to create a new account. Every post is tied to your birth certificate, or your passport, for life. Sure, you can still post on others' behalf, but you're literally selling your identity. Eventually, even the dumbest members of society will understand that if you see a post without a verified identity, it's not trustworthy. Like, it's basically guaranteed to be advertisement, propaganda, or scammers. When Facebook first came out I remember people being really put off by having to use their real names, but at this point it seems like we've gotten over it, so I don't see the problem. The sooner this kind of platform takes off, the sooner we can reclaim our democracy.

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kn4- t1_iud37qr wrote

Sounds ripe for manipulation. Governments or the owner of the service could easily create burner accounts for spewing propaganda, and it would be even more effective because most people would believe they were hearing it from a real person.

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fuck_your_diploma t1_iud8spf wrote

Not if the identity is universally verifiable. Governments can create the fake history they want, if what your /u/drsimonz described is in any way tied to a temporal blockchain the governments can suck it, because they won’t be able to forge natural people anymore.

Also, this is the sole reason why we DONT use blockchain related social records in 2022, because intelligence agencies gotta be able to forge and forget people on a whim, and I’m talking about democracies.

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drsimonz t1_iuh0z47 wrote

As much as people love to hate on blockchain, it does seem like a promising solution here. Most people don't really understand how powerful cryptography can be, when applied correctly. Still I have no idea which specific technologies might suit this problem best. It's hard problem.

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drsimonz t1_iuh18cy wrote

Definitely, though I would argue that the same issue exists for currency, which is why USD is used so widely in other countries besides the US - people feel much safer using the dollar, backed by a world superpower, than they would using the local money with some dictator printed on just one side. Is the US banking system actually trustworthy? Absolutely not, but I guess it's all relative?

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