[AaronFriel]

> KR (Korea) requires national identity numbers for gaming, which opens up a convenient opportunity to ban cheaters at the “soul” level. It is remarkably effective at keeping them out of game for longer periods of time—cheaters have to buy whole new identities to keep playing, so the bans really stick.

I detest "real name" policies and believe pseudonymous/anonymous discourse is helpful, perhaps even vital. But I am starting to believe that tying accounts to a "soul" or more expensive to forge identity is going to be the only way we get out of the Commentdämmerung we have today on social media. Whether it's posting invective, hateful diatribes on a platform or cheating in online games, it has to be more expensive than an email address to participate, but somehow also effectively free for most average people.

Maybe that takes the form of Worldcoin, or maybe some clever zk-snark proof of uniqueness-without-disclosing-identity from state or national ID programs, I don't know. But the current situation of a minority of people making vast swathes of the internet unpleasant is really quite untenable.

Of course the second hard part is figuring out how to do that without fully giving into the people who would want to spy on us all.

[kg]

Part of the problem is that "who's making the internet unpleasant" has a different answer depending on who you ask, and having a list of real identities and thus addresses to associate with your pet out-group is really appealing if the in-group has access to levers of power (or just firearms)

[Dylan16807]

It wouldn't take a very complicated system to have a unique ID token per app that can't be traced to you but you only get one. Which OP addressed.

[aidenn0]

Which means if a ban test is insufficiently specific, you're toast just because you're unlucky.

[ordinaryradical]

I think that’s overanalyzing where this comment is coming from.

At the level of something like spam or cheating, it’s not really a matter of opinion whether or not someone is participating in good faith. Someone who’s only ever one email address away from exploiting your platform that way really needs to be boxed out in a more permanent way.

[AaronFriel]

I don't think those real identities should be public or deanonymizable from outside a given platform.

[rootusrootus]

I may be missing some big downside, but my current thought on this is that I'd like to see the return of true walled gardens. Modern versions of Prodigy or Compuserve, something like that.

I would seriously consider paying to be part of a nice walled garden, somewhere that had tight controls over advertising, spam, anonymous trolls, etc. I obviously can't have anything like the Internet I grew up with (in the late 80s, early 90s), that ship has sailed, but I would pay actual money if someone could offer me an online experience that absolutely did not have scams, spam, incessant advertising, etc.

The biggest headache is probably the difficulty in maintaining communication with people who choose other gardens to join. Though perhaps that's more a problem if you want to communicate with people who want to stay outside the gardens and use only the 'free' Internet.