Well it's what we need unfortunately, unless you want to talk to potentially malicious machines and think you're talking to a human. Identity is vitally important for us, the end users interacting with each other. Far more important than it is for nation states and companies, who have always had ways to track us and care more about us in the aggregate than as individuals.

I'm not sure I share your concern about surveillance capitalism - that ship sailed long ago - you are stored in many nation-state and corporate databases under all the aliases, phone numbers, IPs you've ever used. I sincerely doubt your opsec has always been even near good enough to evade this surveillance, it's a little late to start worrying about it now, particularly when there are other concerns.

I'd be more concerned about billionaires spending on bots impersonating humans to sway elections in my local state than a nation state snooping on forum comments and linking them with something else.

Proof of identity is badly needed in order to use the online spaces we've come to know and trust, and time is running out.