alt Hacker News> It's a problem in search of a solution.
The cynic in me suspects it's a way of slowly but methodically eradicating online anonymity and thus anonymity in general.
> It's a problem in search of a solution.
The cynic in me suspects it's a way of slowly but methodically eradicating online anonymity and thus anonymity in general.
I think it would make the web MORE anonymous, not less!
The reason it's hard to boot up a secure social network (such as Signal) is the handshake for (re)identifying people. Signal makes a ton of conceits here (the UX essentially asks people to assume phone numbers are securely held) in the name of low friction and it's why they grew so fast. The "real" secure social networks are essentially too difficult to get real adoption because they don't make these conceits around phone numbers, and demand real key exchanges.
But if you had a L1 set of private and public keys the government works to maintain and defend, the L2 social networks like Signal (or banks, or markets, whatever) can do this cheap and easily.