this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2025
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I saw an interesting video suggesting that the real motivation is to give megacorps like Google a new business acting as "banks" for identity, i.e. the Internet would get so inconvenient that people would just save their identity with Google (or Meta, etc) and then use them to log in to other websites.
I probably explained it badly, but the video I saw is here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tAd-OOrdyMw
People in the comments pointed out that those companies would also have the ability to delete or suspend your identity verification if you did something they didn't like (or refused to do something they wanted). Reminds me of the SIN from Shadowrun .
Yeah, but the governments obviously want to know exactly what you're doing as well.
I think their only objection to Google et al having so much data is that they need to jump through hoops to get hold of it.
I suspect this will be in browser before too long. Mostly so they can automatically provide your full unique ID code to anyone who asks, so your government can keep track of you if you say "I support Palestine Action" anywhere, or so Google can look it up when you dare suggest AI is not our glorious future.
But also because there's only so many "let us check your ID" services you can use before you end up giving your details to somebody who is going to sell them directly. How long before a dodgy porn site does a "show us your face" check, before generating deepfakes starring yourself and demanding payment not to send them to a social media profile it's already detected based on your face?
I don't really want to be on an internet where instead of blackmist@feddit.uk, somebody can just click that and go "Oh, that's Jeff Timmons of 48 Badminton Way, Stoke-on-Trent. Ring Staffordshire police so they can go and grab him"