[g2graman]

If we had a worldwide, federated identity system, there's a problem with this I can already see: what's stopping nation's like China from expanding their social credit system to the population of the world then, against their will for example? For what purpose, I can't know, but it doesn't seem ideal.

On one hand, it would be incredibly useful to only ever have to deal with one service or standard for identities (and that could include the possibility of making things easier for identity theft products to do their job) but it brings with it these other risks around centralizing that kind of information.

[Nextgrid]

What prevents them from doing so now? They can already scrape public internet activity and create social credit profiles based on that.

Here I am posting a picture of Winnie The Pooh which I know Xi Jinping absolutely loves: https://ohmy.disney.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Pooh.jpg and my "social credit" is presumably now at zero.

Thankfully I am not in China, never will be, so even if the Chinese social credit system hates me I can still take a train, get on a plane, etc.

[scarmig]

China already has identities for most people in developed countries. Everyone reading this is already in their systems.