[jarrett]

There are a few scenarios where I, as a developer, would find it very helpful to be able to verify real-world identities. For example, I've worked on applications where there were incentives for Mallory to impersonate Alice and attempt to legally bind Alice to something. Having a way to verify that the end user is truly Alice would be great in that type of scenario.

On the other hand, there are lots of apps where you don't really need to be able to verify the end user's identity. Like Twitter. I can imagine a world where such applications require verified ID from all users, just because the government makes it really easy to do so. That would be a big loss for privacy an anonymity. As has been discussed at length elsewhere, providing an anonymous (or pseudonymous) voice for people is one of the Internet's most important function.