Identity Verification

The pseudo-anonymity that digital platforms offer is typically the core reason that they are used by nefarious actors for intentionally harmful or illegal activity. The physical distance and opacity of identity that the internet offers is a temping shield for those that wish to do harm without being held to account for it. For this reason, concrete identity verification (often through some kind of vetting of a state issued document), has the power to dramatically curtail the appeal of digital platforms for deliberative use in illegal or explicitly harmful activity. Though this frames the intervention as a mechanism to create explicit accountability, this intervention, can also be viewed as an intervention to prevent automation, because identity verification makes it dramatically easier to enforce constraints of one person, one account.

Though powerful in providing a potential source of accountability, identity verification also has a significant chilling effect on speech and the capacity for it to be heard. Political dissidents, investigative journalists, and members of marginalized populations may have good reason to try to avoid the consequences of their online activities. Children may benefit from accessing the internet without the threat of disclosure to their parents. Anonymity plays a critical role in the facilitation of some of the best parts of the internet - see the Identity feature.

The most pervasive approach to balance these competing objectives is to try to gate powerful features that have significant capacity to cause harm behind identity verification, without requiring it for all users. A media platform might want to require that users verify their identity before they gain access to live-streaming or monetization features, while allowing other features of their platform to be used by unverified accounts. A dating site might hold some power-user features (like messaging non-matches) contingent upon the user verifying their identity.