Identity

There is a collection of rules, sort of spanning the planet, to deal with identity, loosely known as “know your client” (KYC). These are fairly well-known in the financial industry. We need something similar for social networks, although the C could stand for something else.

In the age of unlimited surveillance, while it is sometimes important to verify someone’s identity, we also have to make sure that privacy is also preserved. Everyone should be able to explicitly choose how much they reveal about themselves to others. It’s a delicate balance.

My sense is that there is a direct tie between fame, wealth, and desired influence. We can leverage that to craft a few simple rules.

First is that trustworthy verification of any individual or corporation is actually expensive. You pretty much need a bunch of different, totally independent, ways to really confirm it. It’s not a one-shot thing, the potential for identity theft means that it could change at any time. If the verification is tied to others or in a chain, someone, somewhere will figure out how to break one link and then corrupt it.

Second is that money needs to be on the line. If something is spoofed, someone is penalized. If the punishments aren’t real or enforced the system breaks down.

Third is that actual verification is a specialized skill. So, the people performing it need to be licensed.

In a lot of ways, it is similar to insurance. Without enforcement, any charlatan will offer it, only to renege on the payouts later.

To get there, any organization wanting to claim verified users would have to register with an international institution, probably part of the UN. They would have to pay a lot, and may also have to put up a sizable deposit as a stake.

If at any time, it was shown that their verification of identities was untrustworthy, not only would they lose their certification, but so would each and every person or company that they verified. Because of this, people will be very careful about whom they pay to do their verifications. If it is cheap, it is also very risky, it may fall apart quickly.

Then for everyone else, their accounts are ‘unverified’ even if they are tied to a digital asset like an email or phone.

So, from a technical perspective, it is very similar, if not nearly identical to certificates, but with harsher consequences for failure.

So, then, if any sort of social platform wants or needs to claim that its users are actually verified, it would have to get the specifics of the verification credentials from the person, double-check them with the verifier, and then keep them very secure. If the verifier of an account got into trouble, the social network would need to automatically, in real-time, remove any notice of verification.

For all other users, they would be classified as unverified (quite possibly a dog, or cat, or something).

As far as promoting content, all social networks would be restricted from doing any sort of promotions on unverified accounts. That is unless you pay to get verified, the stuff you put out there will only be visible to your friends. It won’t appear in searches, top lists, etc. Your connections might decide to pass on what you say, but anybody not directly connected to the unverified post would never be aware of it. The scope will be limited. Each hop to the next set of people would have to be manually triggered by one of the connections, one at a time. Even verified accounts can’t just widely promote a non-verified tweet.

Now that may seem to favor rich or famous people, after all, they have lots of money to get verified, and they do get a larger voice, but it’s not too bad. There is still a chance for everyone else to get their contributions to go viral, based on their network of connections, it is just somewhat less than it used to be. It would also be slower too, as it would only occur one hop at a time. This is the cost of not letting the really bad things also go viral.

In that sense, the general rule would be that no social networking site, of any type, can offer promotional or viral features to unverified users. If they did, they would be heavily fined and it would be enforced internationally. Unverified users could still join, most often for free, and still, contribute content, but it would be somewhat harder and slower for their content to spread. Growing unverified connections for new accounts would also be more difficult as well, as they are harder to find. This throttling does not stop the medium from letting the truth get free, but it does force it through a much longer process before it explodes virally.

In terms of allowing anonymous whistle-blowers, rather obvious they would only use unverified accounts. Anyone else that believes what they are saying can no longer ‘link’ to their posts, they would have to add what they say as their own content themselves. So a verified journalist might see something questionable, but can’t just blindly pass it through, which means that they would not just rush to be first, but be forced to have to confirm the information before they used it. People may lament the death of the truth being quickly accessible, but while that was an incredibly good thing, bad actors took advantage of it as well, in order to flood the world with lies. If we don’t want the lies anymore, and we probably don’t, then we have to return to some means of throttling them.