ID, or no ID: that is the question
Like so many issues facing us when it comes to online interactions, this is an utterly nuanced conversation. Yes, online verification is important for protecting real people from bots, scams, and impersonators. Yes, anonymity is also crucial for vulnerable people, or people who are very privacy-minded. No, it’s not necessarily in social media conglomerates’ best interest to police the content on their platforms. No, that doesn’t mean they should be above retribution when it comes to extremist, hateful, violent-inducing content that has very real-life consequences for their users.