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by kgen 3268 days ago
I like this idea, but because websites have the content, they can simply throw up a button that requests showing your identity to view the content and most people would blindly click it leading to the same situation we have now. The HTTPS push is important and works because the search engines can leverage their importance and the browsers can (effectively) scare people without any user input.
2 comments

I should clarify what I mean: if you have a login page (form element of type login, perhaps), you get a real login button with trusted chrome (i.e. you can't restyle it to look like a kitten). If you push it, the website gets your TLS Channel ID or similar. This isn't a global identification -- it just lets the site match you up to the last time you went there. But the browser could give you an alternative that gives you a fresh transient identity.
It would just be another case like the EU cookies thing. Every website would have the button and everyone would click it immediately to get rid of it. It would just be an annoyance.
If done well, the chrome would be more clever than that. There should be "log in as [username]" and "stay anonymous". Unless websites want to start validating email addresses to let you read their content, they'll have to accept "stay anonymous" because it would be indistinguishable on the server's end from getting a brand-new user.

So you'd have an idiotic banner pissing off your users and the considerable majority would click "stay anonymous", gaining the site operator nothing.