I have gotten massively downvoted on various social media platforms for suggesting verifiable identity so I think there are some people that are just really resistant to this idea.
I don't think it would solve all problems but it would be useful for cutting down on bots and spam for certain types of websites. Many people don't realize that a large chunk of content on sites like Twitter and Reddit (and probably HN) are propaganda from marketing agencies or hostile foreign governments. That argument that you had with someone on Twitter - you could be trying to chat it up with a Chinese paid internet troll. How would you even know? There is a complete lack of good faith on the internet now and verifiable identity, it would be nice to think of how the internet would have been different with it. Unfortunately, we also have a huge number of people/groups/companies that depend on lack of verifiability so I think this is why the idea has become so controversial.
I feel your pain. This is one of the few industries that doesn't value experience. Unless you're spending all your time learning new technologies, it's really easy to become irrelevant.
As someone who hasn't done much web development in the last 10 years, it is mind-boggling how much you need to know in order to be a full-stack engineer these days. I tried to start a project a few months ago and just trying to decide on a technology was difficult. Npm, Gulp, Grunt, Webpack, React vs Vue vs Angular...I don't even know what half of these tools even do, why they're needed, not to mention the learning curve to get up to speed.
I don't think it would solve all problems but it would be useful for cutting down on bots and spam for certain types of websites. Many people don't realize that a large chunk of content on sites like Twitter and Reddit (and probably HN) are propaganda from marketing agencies or hostile foreign governments. That argument that you had with someone on Twitter - you could be trying to chat it up with a Chinese paid internet troll. How would you even know? There is a complete lack of good faith on the internet now and verifiable identity, it would be nice to think of how the internet would have been different with it. Unfortunately, we also have a huge number of people/groups/companies that depend on lack of verifiability so I think this is why the idea has become so controversial.