Once you realize it’s not “age verification”, but actually “identity verification”, then it’s easy to understand that the real goal is “papers, please” for the entire internet.

@mhoye Unpopular opinion:

Identity verification isn't so unattractive in 2026 — social media is destroying democracies via anonymous armies of bot people steered by aggressive foreign actors like Putin and Musk.

The libertarian model that the Internet was built on is failing societies.

@txtx @mhoye Rightfully unpopular. This is not a libertarian position but an anarchist and antifascist one. It's not Ayn Rand bros who are harmed by needing to show ID to participate in public life. It's queer youth, undocumented folks, unhoused folks, dissidents, ppl living under regimes that don't want them having international contacts, etc. who this shit harms.
@dalias @mhoye Facebook & X are anarchist/anti fascist? I don't agree.

@txtx some people will accounts there are, and so are people with accounts in other places, because social media it's not just those places, and because the requeriments for id verification are way broader than social media.

@dalias @mhoye

@DiogoConstantino

I don't agree with the premise that there is no possibility for a solution that takes various factors into consideration.

@dalias @mhoye

@txtx that's like telling us to nerd harder.

@dalias @mhoye

@DiogoConstantino So? What's wrong with trying harder? Is laziness an excuse?

I want more fellow tech people to step away from the libertarian ideals of the current Internet, and start coming up with ways to help save democracy from aggressive states and their disinformation campaigns.

@dalias @mhoye

@txtx @DiogoConstantino @dalias @mhoye

Stepping away from the libertarian ideals of the internet is just an indirect way of saying you want the internet to step towards authoritarian ideals.

And you can take that evil shit and shove it. Have you not noticed what authoritarians do with power yet??

Are you aware that all of our social security information and most of our medical records have already been compromised? You REALLY want to fork over more personal information to some cloud where hackers and data brokers and fascist regimes can just play around with it? Once that data is getting hacked and spoofed, they'll just keep demanding more invasive data to prove ID-- right down to our retinal scans and fucking DNA.

None of this shit is about protecting kids, no matter what pretty claims they put on the tin. NONE OF IT.

@violetmadder

There are so many really good things in the world that are neither libertarian nor authoritarian.