alt Hacker NewsI don't think the only way is the ID verification. That's what the spying side pushes as a narrative, but there are ways to validate each other without global registries and any government connections.
Web-Of-Trust was a good idea with poor implementation way ahead of its time. Closed communities work pretty well and seem to be almost unaffected.
So yes, the public internet is dead but I believe that it will be solved with some sort of reputational/vouch systems and invite-only groups where you have to contribute to be accepted and have an incentive to protect that seat instead of posting slop/spam/other agenda to be banned.
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But how is that an "internet"? The point of the free internet was to be free to communicate with whomever.
When you seclude yourself in bubbles, you might feel protected, but really you expose yourself to becoming irrelevant.
The crucial problem is, people confuse message with messenger.
When comments are objectively true and faithful (representing the topic correctly), it doesn't matter who wrote them.
The other way around, knowing somebody personally doesn't guarantee their messages to be true and "not spam". The important thing is to check content thoroughly for actual truth and point out deviations. Just like in an ideal scientific discussion. The remaining social part is a question of civil discourse and enforcing that.
I think even pre-LLMs, the problem was more the size of a community rather than whether it was closed. The bigger it grows, the more it orients itself towards the lowest common denominator. Every community I ever cared about was rather small. Places like Hacker News, which I think is among the better large ones, I honestly don't think I'd care much if it disappeared tomorrow.
But now with AI unfortunately I agree. Not sure if there is a way around closing off communities. Even for communities that actively use AI within.