X is working on ID verification, what’s next?

Jat620DH27@lemmy.world to Technology@lemmy.world – 367 points –

First, I'm not going to give any social media my ID.

If someone intends to expose your ID to hackers due to Twitter's poor security performance, this presents a perfect occasion for them.

I don't know why these social media companies are so fixated on asking for personal information. And I'm sure this is just the beginning of Elon's grand plan.

Perhaps it's time to abandon Twitter and move to other fediverse or decentralised platforms? I would love to see a mass migration.

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First, I'm not going to give any social media my ID. If someone intends to expose your ID to hackers...

This doesn't have anything to do with hackers. I'm not going to give any social media my ID, period.

Basically the only reason to collect that level of ID if you’re not a bank is so you can fulfil anti-money laundering requirements necessary to allow trading of some commodity, or currency.

Wait! The darling of the conspiracy theory wingnut flat earther, pizzagate crowd is pushing government certified identification requirements???

We have found the number of the beast, and it is X (and the neurochip he's pushing)

It's always the guys the conspiracy theorists love most that do the shadiest shit.

Trump and Elon do hit a lot of the typical and biblical high notes for the anti christ. More research is needed.

Edit: I randomly selected this source for characteristics of the anti christ, in the Bible. Let's do it!

https://folcc.org/who-is-the-antichrist-15-characteristics-of-satans-coming-world-leader/

  1. Originate from the Revised Roman Empire Not really clear what this means. Elon hails from a white, protestant, colonial culture in South Africa. Not an Italian colony, but rather Portuguese and then British? Idk Rome ruled Portugal right?

  2. A Deceiver. This probably needs little explanation. I think tesla owners and Twitter investors think Elon is a deceiver.

  3. He is a man OK, Elon fits this one, as do roughly half the world population.

  4. Gay? This source really seems to think that the antichrist won't desire women, and is therefore gay. OK. Weird. Maybe asexual? But specifically to Elon, he dated Grimes who may be non binary? And further, Elon could be say to protest too much about traditional masculinity. Let's say that's a maybe.

  5. From a religious family. A quick Google search shows he was raised evangelical. So this fits.

  6. He has a number, 666. Yes famously he changed Twitter to X, a Roman numeral. Apparently I'm not wise enough to see the connection to 666. Fits.

  7. Miracles Yeah I think being a "tech" CEO is probably the custom of devil magic. We all know God hates tall towers and global communication. Fits.

  8. He is known by many names. Elon. Muskrat. Elongated musk. Space Karen. Elmo. Need I continue?

  9. Desecrate the temple Sure. I could see him doing that. Server farm in Jerusalem.

  10. Rise from the dead Well I guess that would be a tell tale sign wouldn't it be.

  11. In power for seven years Let's see how much power Twitter gets him.

  12. Kill christians Ah, yeah, now I see why christians have such a persecution complex.

  13. He will have influence in all the world Well yeah. Short of some sort of nascent one world government, you either have to be the president of the US, or some sort of tech/comm CEO to have influence in the whole world. I'd say owning Twitter fits here pretty well. Short of being the Smoking Man in the x files or something.

  14. Be arrogant and fight against God. Elon is pretty arrogant and God is pretty sensitive. Sending people to Mars or having a tool so that the whole planet can communicate does seem like something God would want to put a stop to.

  15. He will be defeated. Yeah Jesus! Knock Musk down a peg for us all!

And I can conclusively prove that Elon is the anti christ. I will be taking no questions.

I found this amusing, personally, but apparently about 50% of readers hated it... I wonder why? (And as important, why so many?)

Surely it's for a mechanism to prevent hatespeech, right? Right?

X is going to be a WeChat clone. Social features will become tacked on and transformed to fit. Musk will take a page out of the CCP's playbook in moderating the platform.

Twitter's zombified corpse will go on while former Twitter features drop away like bits of rotten flesh. Just... look away. Any talk about free speech or microblogging is pointless going forward.

The bird is dead. Pour one out and let her RIP.

mass migration. it would be cool.

I feel like the fediverse would be better off without a lot of current X users

Many of them are just unaware, but thanks to Elon's great plan, more and more people have started to realize that things are going wrong.

Facebook pulled that same shit on me in 2011, and I never went back. It was awesome!

I had to get a Facebook account in order to get an api token (for work). So I used a fake name. That apparently triggered something, because I then also had to supply legal id. What's a guy to do in that case?

Well, obviously the only sensible thing you can do under those circumstances. I just grabbed an example drivers license for my country online, photo shopped my fake name into it, changed since serial numbers, and pasted another face over the black and white photo. The original used a woman's face with curly hair - turns out that if you neatly paste a man's eyes, nose and mouth in there, he looks like a hardrocker. Next step: print it out on paper, take a picture of that from some distance, and submit it to Facebook as proof. Funnily enough, they approved it.

Since I didn't really need to use the account itself, I set it to only accept friend requests from Friends of Friends. But still, whenever I logged in with it, I got a popup that my account was showing "suspicious behaviour". And that's how you submit your id to social media.

not worth the hassle. honestly, i am thrilled that facebook kicked me out.

Absolutely. Like I said, I needed it for work, but there's nothing Facebook could give me that would be worth their spying.

Hell I’m not going to give my phone my goddamn Id. The further away from cameras my ID is the better.

I've never really considered it before. Should IDs be considered private information, or public information?

They very much are personal information not publicly available.

Yet you show them to the minimum wage earner before buying alcohol, or let a bouncer scan it before getting into a club? That doesn't seem like something you'd need to do with private information.

In both cases though, there is a legal requirement to prove that you're above legal age to buy/consume alcohol. However, there's is no legal requirement to provide such information to a social media platform.

Sure, but if they're not really private information, then what is the concern? It seems to function similarly to an email address, kinda? Something I'd really rather not be shown to the public but also something I'm giving out to the public all the time.

Although it's relatively not so private, I'd still rather not be giving it away to social media. Unlike an email, your ID, full name and DOB is enough for scammers to use your name for shady stuff, at least in my country.

It got to the point here that scammers get older/retired people IDs to open bank account and get loans, leaving these people with debt + the whole legal process.

Show, yes. Take a picture of, no.

You don't think there is a camera aimed at the register?

Ha.

Not one capable of registering all the minute details of my ID, no.

How sure are you? If licenses were such valuable troves of information, surely one person would have thought of a small hidden camera, right?

Over the years this has become more invasive. We didn't have to hand over our I'd for scanning potentially into a permanent record to do things. A quick proof of age was all people cared about for those things inappropriate for minors.

It's illegal to ask for your SSN, yet it happens all the time and we have no recourse if we refuse.

We're being desensitized to the invasion of privacy to the point we don't care any more. I think that is the goal. Death by 1000 pricks.

But at the same time, all they care about is date of birth. Theyre not looking for name, hair color, eye color, address, weight, organ donor status, etc.

Well, DoB and the picture. Are those other data fields considered private?

Many of the scanning apps allow for customer and patron lists be built off the scans, even without that feature they usually store everything contained in a scan. That barcode on the back of American Licenses will often have more information than even the front. I don’t know about current standards, but at least one American state had your ssn as your id# and a few others would include it in the barcode scan. It really depends state by state how much info is in a code but it almost always more than whats on the front.

I can't speak definitely, but I'm pretty sure it's been made illegal to have your driver's license ID be a derivative of your SSN. That was a thing that happened though.

But I can't tell if you're pointing this out to strengthen my stance, or weaken it. It's still something that gets scanned to get into a bar or buy alcohol, and that's effectively the public, right?

Its more towards the comment that only date of birth is seen, and that every scan is way more invasive than it seems. Overall I am not sure if I think its the best state, but the cat is so far out of the bag on this one its hard to consider it private. Almost every hotel has photocopied my license, and in many downtown areas, for a few years at least now, you have to scan your license to get a badge to enter the building to attend a meeting or appointment. Somehow the folder of license photocopies at the perpetually empty front desk inspire no confidence in privacy, hopefully the desk is locked?

You may be right, in person, you could probably figure most of that stuff out at a glance, but at the same time they dont also have access t one of my internet handles and access to my likes and dislikes. Well i defintely wouldnt want any of them to be associated with my twitter account

I think this may be closer to the reality of the situation. It's not so much that IDs are private, it's that people want their Twitter (X?) account to be anonymous.

I get that. My username on Twitter was my real name so I kinda messed that up right away. I didn't really use it though.

Can you refuse to produce ID to law enforcement in the U.S. without probable cause? Yes? Then it's private.

You give your ID info to whomever you want, including the minimum wage worker. But you don't have to if you don't want to.

That's not any working definition of private information I've ever seen.

We're talking about privacy in the context of information security.

Edit: for context, I'm not questioning whether people must give their ID to Twitter.

Well, in that context, again, it still works.

Show the ID to the minimum wage worker so they can prove identify; put it back into your wallet. Don't want to show it? Well, don't show it. Can someone snatch your wallet and see it without your consent? Sure, just like it happens on systems with weak security.

I'm sorry but I'm not following your point. I'm questioning whether the info on a license is really "private info". I am not suggesting that people be forced to give Twitter their ID

It depends on the country.

Source: lived in two countries, one of which a person's ID number can be publicly disclosed.

Can you elaborate? What makes an ID number unable to be disclosed? What is the point of identification that you can't show?

I never said unable to be disclosed. Private as in, you control who you want to see it - as opposed to public, which means, anyone can see it whether you like it or not.

Oh. I was thinking private like a password.

Got it. I don't think you or I are inherently wrong. What you describe, I call it secret. Not private. A password is secret. Giving it to someone else, even for a quick pick, is compromising it.

A driver's license is private, but if you show it to someone else, your personal information is not necessarily compromised - or so we are led to believe.

It's optional and only intended towards Premium users, but concerning nonetheless. This ID-gathering is probably not even regulated in a lot of countries - I haven't found any info on such regulation existing. And a migration is in fact happening - but it's more of just people being less interested in the new 'X' form of Twitter with all of its restrictions. That part of the cake is distributed between platforms like Mastodon/*key, Threads, Bluesky and Tumblr, not to mention Facebook still being a thing too.

So you're telling me people are going back to fucking Tumblr? Afaik the reason most migrated to twitter in the first place is still there

I haven’t found any info on such regulation existing

In Belgium, the RRN (SSN) is considered confidential data and its use is restricted to specific purposes, typically related to administrative, legal, or public interest matters. To ask for RRN, you'd need authorization and it's highly unlikely you'd get it just to validate someone's social media account.

So what are people paying $8/mo for then? Just a stupid emoji next to their name? (yes lol)

Facebook did this to me like 10 years ago. I think someone reported my profile as fake, even though I created mine in 2006. They asked for a form of government ID to be sent to them, I did an MS paint line drawing of an ID card. They blocked my account for good with no way to even try again. I wasn't going to send them anything anyways but I thought it was hilarious that they actually wanted me to do that.

These posts seem to always fail to mention that this only applies to accounts that want the verified tag. I'm just as uninterested in sending them a picture of my ID as the rest of you but it's not the most unreasonable thing to ask when you want a blue checkmark which by definition means that you are who you claim to be. Or atleast that's what it used to mean.

Honest question, wasn't it like this if you wanted a check mark before the nut job took the company?

Not 100% sure on that one but according to chatGPT - yes

As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, Twitter's verification process typically required users to provide some form of government-issued photo identification (ID) to verify their identity. This was part of their efforts to ensure that verified accounts are authentic and belong to the individuals or organizations they claim to be.

Because personal information = money, they can sell your data and they can also target you better with different ads to try and generate more clickable ads for you

The best time to leave Twitter was when Elon took over, the second best time is right now.

I think would be a step too far for most

What does “verification” even mean in this context? I thought to get verified now, all you had to do was pay $8

But think about it though, it could be a way for X users that are prone to identity theft to be easily recognizable, like for instance if you're notable enough they could verify your ID and then give something to your profile so people know it's the real you! I'm thinking maybe a Blue X ?

You all can't see Musk's genius, that's all.

Come on guys, stop using it. If ya need a sponsor, I am willing.

So it begins. With this they can track through the net easier, and block you from internet for good. Freedom on Net is dying.

And out political activists to dictators, their secret police, their street henchmen, etc.

When you surrender your data, you're surrendering your freedom on the internet too. They literally own everything on the platforms, including you.

I've been slowly moving away from the application formerly known as Twitter for months. I can't think of a large company I'd trust less with my personal information. This is going to accelerate my departure

the beginning of Elon's grand plan

funny you think this man has a plan

wait, isn't it for those who want to be verified? like previous checkmark etc?

Yeah but it's a lot funnier if we act like this is for normal users too so lets go with that and ignore the reality

Whaaaat. Is X a bank now? Why this kind of verification for a social media account? >___>

Good thing nobody here where I live is using that shitty platform

They're hilarious if they think they're getting my ID

If you're still on Twitter, you're supporting a #fascist symp's efforts to destabilize the USA.

I mean... I kinda get the point of ID verified accounts. I would like to be able to tell if an account is not a bot with 100% accuracy or to filter out troll accounts. I would like the option to choose whenever I like between a "real" social network and a "more chaotic" social network. Although that shouldn't be the responsibility of the social network developer because the obvious trust issues but your ID issuer. (Usually your country/state) Maybe a network of state-operated fediverse servers? It is hard and dangerous but I believe the idea has its merits.

Edit: I knew it would be controversial but I am genuinely curious about the opinions against it instead of plain downvotes