I agree that it's an exaggeration to say that every website, platform, app, and service will require identity verification. I don't think it's inconceivable to think of a future where every website, platform, app, and service that matters will require identity verification (every one that has a significant userbase.) I can easily envision a future where it's impossible to anonymously or pseudonymously post a controversial opinion on any online forum where it's likely to be seen by a significant number of people. Such platforms are likely to be targeted by whoever mandates identify verification and imposes penalties for not implementing it.
It's very hard to stop being their users/customers when they're the only platform where people are gathering for that particular purpose. The nature of walled gardens and network effects often mean that there isn't a viable alternative.
It's bad when the choice one has is between 1) using a platform that's significantly problematic or 2) being disconnected from everyone you'd like to connect with because they're only using that platform.
In some cases, it also seems like a lobbyist-driven effort that would benefit certain companies likely to be hired by the government to provide identification services.
Maybe requiring identification to speak online is not the intent but it would likely be the practical effect of the laws that were originally intended just to help children. It's not enough to think about laws' intent, but also their practical effects.
We haven't even mentioned the censoriousness that already takes place in various online forums not because a user said something racist or was stirring up trouble, but because moderators were vindictive, petty, or lazy, or because the automated moderation tools in place were heavy-handed and unintelligent. I don't look forward to that kind of moderation spreading everywhere and made more efficient by reducing everyone to a single identity. (Maybe Joe Contrarian has some opinions worth listening to, but it's just easier for the moderator of a forum to see that he was already publicly blacklisted by another unrelated forum, and just blacklist him on this one, too.)
As with many detractors of anonymity, it seems that you're assuming that the authorities and neighbors you'll deal with will always be virtuous, and not corrupt nor vindictive toward opponents. Maybe you'd like to expose the town's government's corruption or mismanagement at the town hall, but the town is run by a family with a lot of influence and power over everything that happens within the town. You live in the town, fear for your safety, and have no good way of anonymously opposing their corruption, so you stay silent and they get to keep their power.
I don't see how these laws wouldn't make your identity public to someone, even if it's not the public at large. But it'd be enough for that someone to be an individual or entity who turns out to be interested in silencing your voice. Their knowledge of your identity would probably give them power to silence you not only on their platform but also on other platforms, if access to those other platforms is also tied to one single identity.
Bots are a problem but I suspect there are other ways of dealing with them, ways that don't involve making anonymity or pseudonymity impossible.
You would think so but some future authoritarian or paternalistic government might disagree. Maybe the government will say that a newspaper should not report on the poorly built bridge that collapsed and killed some people. News of disasters (or death in any form) might be considered two sensitive for children to accidentally be exposed to through a newspaper.
My first question to you is whether you are a pro-privacy advocate yourself, znnajdla. I don't see any biographical information listed in your profile so I'd initially assume that you value privacy on some degree. I am curious as to whether there are contexts where you want to be able to post an opinion through a pseudonym, without your ideas being easily tied to and subjected to judgments based on your legal name, your ethnic background, national origin, etc. Would you be willing to give up pseudonymity forever?
You speak positively about peer pressure, but on a basic level, peer pressure is power excercised against non-conformists. Robbers and abusers are non-conformists, but activists and reformers are also non-conformists. Peer pressure is often used in certain highly oppressive societies to enforce values I'd consider downright evil. Such societies take great care in limiting independent, anonymous access to digital tools and networks. Personally, I'd really like to keep living in a free society where there are ways to communicate and express non-conformist ideas without having to worry about who can easily stamp out such ideas. I think digital ID opens the way to oppressive societies which can wholesale block specific individuals' access to any effective communication tools. Digital ID us an overcorrection to a problem that DOES need to be corrected, but not in a way that destroys various essential aspects of free societies.
I was similarly upset and also dropped Carbonite over 15 years ago over something along these lines. Backup services should be agnostic about the data they back up for their customers.
I strongly disagree. Many technologies aren't neutral, with their virtue dependent on the use given them. Some technologies are close to neutral, but there are many that are either 1) designed for evil or 2) very vulnerable to misuse. For some of the latter, it'd be best if they'd never even been invented. An example of each kind of technology:
1) Rolling coal. It's hard for me to envision a publicly-available form of this technology that is virtuous. It sounds like it's mostly used to harass people and exert unmerited, abusive power over others. Hardly a morally-neutral technology.
2) Fentanyl. It surely has helpful uses, but maybe its misuse is so problematic that humanity might be significantly better off without the existence of this drug.
How about giving less profit to the shareholders? How about making customer support legally mandated so companies don't have the "greedy shareholder" excuse?
Unlike the author, I think featureless slab phones are an improvement, yet I'd like my phone to have several user-customizable buttons on one side (or maybe both?) in order to be able to call up some of the phone's functionality solely by touch. An on-screen app shouldn't always be the sole interface to a device, in my opinion.