1 yr. ago • 91%

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

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.

89 comments

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.

87
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.

59
- They also do it to harm sex workers.
  
  7
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)

53
- It's always the guys the conspiracy theorists love most that do the shadiest shit.
  
  11
- 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/
  
  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?
  
  A Deceiver. This probably needs little explanation. I think tesla owners and Twitter investors think Elon is a deceiver.
  
  He is a man OK, Elon fits this one, as do roughly half the world population.
  
  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.
  
  From a religious family. A quick Google search shows he was raised evangelical. So this fits.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  He is known by many names. Elon. Muskrat. Elongated musk. Space Karen. Elmo. Need I continue?
  
  Desecrate the temple Sure. I could see him doing that. Server farm in Jerusalem.
  
  Rise from the dead Well I guess that would be a tell tale sign wouldn't it be.
  
  In power for seven years Let's see how much power Twitter gets him.
  
  Kill christians Ah, yeah, now I see why christians have such a persecution complex.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
  
  0
  
  I found this amusing, personally, but apparently about 50% of readers hated it... I wonder why? (And as important, why so many?)
  
  2
Surely it's for a mechanism to prevent hatespeech, right? Right?

34
- 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.
  
  17
mass migration. it would be cool.

27
- I feel like the fediverse would be better off without a lot of current X users
  
  34
  
  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.
  
  11
  
  The nazis yeah but they're going to stay for their daddy Elon anyway.
  
  5
Facebook pulled that same shit on me in 2011, and I never went back. It was awesome!

20
- 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.
  
  10
  
  not worth the hassle. honestly, i am thrilled that facebook kicked me out.
  
  3
Hell I’m not going to give my phone my goddamn Id. The further away from cameras my ID is the better.

20
- I've never really considered it before. Should IDs be considered private information, or public information?
  
  2
  
  They very much are personal information not publicly available.
  
  14
  
  It depends on the country.
  
  Source: lived in two countries, one of which a person's ID number can be publicly disclosed.
  
  3
Hackers could do so much with this.

20
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.

15
- That infamous Facebook? No thank you.
  
  4
- 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.
  
  3
- 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
  
  3
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.

13
- Honest question, wasn't it like this if you wanted a check mark before the nut job took the company?
  
  4
  
  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.
  
  0
So what are people paying $8/mo for then? Just a stupid emoji next to their name? (yes lol)

12
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.

9
Verify you have access to Photoshop and a color printer.

8
- Nah I'm just gonna use a papers please passport
  
  3
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

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.

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

8
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

8
I'm going to need the IDs of all Twixxer employees first. Gotta verify that my data is in safe hands, after all.

6
- Lmao. Fair enough.
  
  4
- Wouldn't even be that much work for you to verify after Musk fired half the staff.
  
  2
imagine giving musk of all people access to your ID

6
Come on guys, stop using it. If ya need a sponsor, I am willing.

5
So it begins. With this they can track through the net easier, and block you from internet for good. Freedom on Net is dying.

5
- And out political activists to dictators, their secret police, their street henchmen, etc.
  
  7
- When Elon bought Twitter:
  
  5
- When you surrender your data, you're surrendering your freedom on the internet too. They literally own everything on the platforms, including you.
  
  2
wait, isn't it for those who want to be verified? like previous checkmark etc?

4
- 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
  
  2
It all comes down to what matters most to you. Twitter will still be the best platform for finding celebrities and latest trends at least in the next few years. While if you're looking to have private discussions with close-knit groups without concerns about surveillance or privacy breaches, I recommend checking out Session and WireMin. On the other hand, if you value high-quality content and a place that respects freedom of expression, you should give Mastodon, Bluesky and Lemmy a try.

4
- Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I'm giving Mastodon a try and I've been using Lemmy for almost 2 months now. As for WireMin, I remember someone on Lemmy mentioned it too but I haven't really looked into it yet. Is it like a knockoff version of Wire or something?
  
  5
  
  http://wiremin.org/ It's a new decentralised messaging app that enables end-to-end encrypted chats. It's similar to Session but more interesting groups without annoying moderators. I personally like the fact that it doesn't require any personal information to log in and it doesn't have any cloud servers to store my data.
  
  3
the beginning of Elon's grand plan

funny you think this man has a plan

4
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

4
Twitter is being held together by bubble gum and duct tape at this point. What a great invitation for some hacker to Swiss Cheese their servers and run off with a ton of personal data.

4
They're hilarious if they think they're getting my ID

2
Is it turning into a real porn site now?

2
Whaaaat. Is X a bank now? Why this kind of verification for a social media account? >___>

2
- Not yet. But mysk has said he wants to make X like WeChat, which has payment and sending money as one of the key features.
  
  2
Good thing nobody here where I live is using that shitty platform

2
phew

0
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

-4
If you're still on Twitter, you're supporting a #fascist symp's efforts to destabilize the USA.

-4

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