A short summary of my article below
This article is about how AI probably will render today's anonymity of social media unsustainable, untenable and intolerable towards the near future. Above all, to protect your children and mine. It proposes the only solution are so-called 'social media license plates'. My article is a lengthy pondering about why and especially about how 'social media license plates' offer a solution for tomorrow's unsustainable anonymity of social media.
Step 1 Email and phone providers, social media platforms, and dating apps will have to move toward a form of personal identification that remains anonymous to the providers themselves. This means a form of personal identification in which you do not have to share your actual personal data with the app or service providers. To achieve this, social media companies will need to work closely with governments, since only governments are capable of establishing the necessary foundation for such a system. You can compare it to vehicle license plates, only the police and insurance companies are able to check the personal data behind those plates.
Step 2 Such a one-time linking of an assigned 'social media license plate' to a person’s name, address, and residence details (NAW data) must make use of the government identification methods that are customary within the designated region. In the Netherlands, for example, this could include DigiD and iDIN. Apart from law enforcement authorities, no one else would be able to establish connections between your different 'social media license plates', not even within the same social media platform.
For true and honest people or AI bots there are basically no consequences
Step 3 And no, it doesn’t mean that you and I will no longer be able to move anonymously on the internet. As long as you register all your different accounts with the authority responsible within your region or country, you can obtain your verified 'social media license plates' without limitation. So, for legitimate users, very little will actually change. End-to-end encryption will remain fully in effect. And your secondary accounts and AI bots will also remain completely unaffected.
Step 4 Finally, only when you or your AI bot crosses the line and harasses people (either as a nuisance or in a criminal way), threatens, defrauds, or otherwise engages in criminal activity, will you come to the attention of law enforcement. The simple but powerful idea behind this is that you’ll probably think twice and refrain from doing it.
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Unfortunatelly Privacy and anonymity is a very big Safety concern on Social Media, so this tradeoff is not really a good one to make, having said that. Fake idendities and combatting spam is not new with AI, so the providers have some experience (but Not perfect solutions).
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Σε απάντηση του It’s not a tradeoff between… από Bernd Eckenfels
Dear Bernd,
- Nowadays there is no privacy on social media, through IP-adresses and Browser-fingerprinting advertisers know exactly who and where you are.
- Do you yourself drive without license plates and without a registered drivers license?
- As far as I'm concerned, your counterarguments mainly come down to unfounded fear of change!
- Bye the way, the EU is already preparing for it with it's Money-wallet and future age-verification ;-)
greets,
Art
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It’s not a tradeoff between Safety and Privacy (at least not so easily) since Privacy is a very important Safety aspect on social media and (and Spam Protection is a lesser Safety concern).
With AI the fake News rate and Missinformation might have increased substantially but the big social media providers do not even try to combat them with classical means (like ip address reuse, proxy detection or simple username patterns or behavioral detection). As long as i can look at a YouTube comment with a Telegram number inviting random people and can 100% say its spam there is no way Google could not detect that automatically as well - for example).
the chilling effects of a central registration system, even when pseudonym would harm society way more.
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Thank you for this thoughtful and very timely reflection.
The risks you describe – especially considering the accelerating capabilities of AI systems – show clearly that today’s model of unverified, anonymous social media is becoming increasingly unsustainable.
In the research work I am carrying out on verified digital ecosystems, I observe the same trend you highlight: we need a framework where identity can be verified, while personal data remains fully protected and never exposed to platforms.
The challenge is not to eliminate anonymity, but to transform it into a structured, accountable form of pseudonymity in which users remain safe, private, and responsible at the same time.
From this perspective, the idea of “social media license plates” aligns with several emerging directions in Europe. Three additional principles could further reinforce this vision:
- user-controlled, continuously adjustable, and potentially monetizable privacy;
- human-verified contributions that help maintain trustworthy information and improve AI training quality;
- a unified environment where citizens, experts, institutions, and AI coexist with clear roles and accountability.
Your proposal captures the essential need: responsibility without surveillance, identity without exposure, safety without censorship.
If the Commission or the community would like to explore this direction in more detail, I would be happy to contribute further analyses.
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