First, I'm not going to give any social media my ID.
If someone intends to expose your ID to hackers due to Twitter's poor security performance, this presents a perfect occasion for them.
I don't know why these social media companies are so fixated on asking for personal information. And I'm sure this is just the beginning of Elon's grand plan.
Perhaps it's time to abandon Twitter and move to other fediverse or decentralised platforms? I would love to see a mass migration.
Basically the only reason to collect that level of ID if you’re not a bank is so you can fulfil anti-money laundering requirements necessary to allow trading of some commodity, or currency.
Originate from the Revised Roman Empire
Not really clear what this means. Elon hails from a white, protestant, colonial culture in South Africa. Not an Italian colony, but rather Portuguese and then British? Idk Rome ruled Portugal right?
A Deceiver.
This probably needs little explanation. I think tesla owners and Twitter investors think Elon is a deceiver.
He is a man
OK, Elon fits this one, as do roughly half the world population.
Gay?
This source really seems to think that the antichrist won't desire women, and is therefore gay. OK. Weird. Maybe asexual? But specifically to Elon, he dated Grimes who may be non binary? And further, Elon could be say to protest too much about traditional masculinity. Let's say that's a maybe.
From a religious family.
A quick Google search shows he was raised evangelical. So this fits.
He has a number, 666.
Yes famously he changed Twitter to X, a Roman numeral. Apparently I'm not wise enough to see the connection to 666. Fits.
Miracles
Yeah I think being a "tech" CEO is probably the custom of devil magic. We all know God hates tall towers and global communication. Fits.
He is known by many names.
Elon. Muskrat. Elongated musk. Space Karen. Elmo. Need I continue?
Desecrate the temple
Sure. I could see him doing that. Server farm in Jerusalem.
Rise from the dead
Well I guess that would be a tell tale sign wouldn't it be.
In power for seven years
Let's see how much power Twitter gets him.
Kill christians
Ah, yeah, now I see why christians have such a persecution complex.
He will have influence in all the world
Well yeah. Short of some sort of nascent one world government, you either have to be the president of the US, or some sort of tech/comm CEO to have influence in the whole world. I'd say owning Twitter fits here pretty well. Short of being the Smoking Man in the x files or something.
Be arrogant and fight against God.
Elon is pretty arrogant and God is pretty sensitive. Sending people to Mars or having a tool so that the whole planet can communicate does seem like something God would want to put a stop to.
He will be defeated.
Yeah Jesus! Knock Musk down a peg for us all!
And I can conclusively prove that Elon is the anti christ. I will be taking no questions.
X is going to be a WeChat clone. Social features will become tacked on and transformed to fit. Musk will take a page out of the CCP's playbook in moderating the platform.
Twitter's zombified corpse will go on while former Twitter features drop away like bits of rotten flesh. Just... look away. Any talk about free speech or microblogging is pointless going forward.
I had to get a Facebook account in order to get an api token (for work). So I used a fake name. That apparently triggered something, because I then also had to supply legal id.
What's a guy to do in that case?
Well, obviously the only sensible thing you can do under those circumstances. I just grabbed an example drivers license for my country online, photo shopped my fake name into it, changed since serial numbers, and pasted another face over the black and white photo. The original used a woman's face with curly hair - turns out that if you neatly paste a man's eyes, nose and mouth in there, he looks like a hardrocker. Next step: print it out on paper, take a picture of that from some distance, and submit it to Facebook as proof. Funnily enough, they approved it.
Since I didn't really need to use the account itself, I set it to only accept friend requests from Friends of Friends. But still, whenever I logged in with it, I got a popup that my account was showing "suspicious behaviour". And that's how you submit your id to social media.
It's optional and only intended towards Premium users, but concerning nonetheless. This ID-gathering is probably not even regulated in a lot of countries - I haven't found any info on such regulation existing.
And a migration is in fact happening - but it's more of just people being less interested in the new 'X' form of Twitter with all of its restrictions. That part of the cake is distributed between platforms like Mastodon/*key, Threads, Bluesky and Tumblr, not to mention Facebook still being a thing too.
I haven’t found any info on such regulation existing
In Belgium, the RRN (SSN) is considered confidential data and its use is restricted to specific purposes, typically related to administrative, legal, or public interest matters. To ask for RRN, you'd need authorization and it's highly unlikely you'd get it just to validate someone's social media account.
Facebook did this to me like 10 years ago. I think someone reported my profile as fake, even though I created mine in 2006. They asked for a form of government ID to be sent to them, I did an MS paint line drawing of an ID card. They blocked my account for good with no way to even try again. I wasn't going to send them anything anyways but I thought it was hilarious that they actually wanted me to do that.
These posts seem to always fail to mention that this only applies to accounts that want the verified tag. I'm just as uninterested in sending them a picture of my ID as the rest of you but it's not the most unreasonable thing to ask when you want a blue checkmark which by definition means that you are who you claim to be. Or atleast that's what it used to mean.
Not 100% sure on that one but according to chatGPT - yes
As of my last knowledge update in September 2021, Twitter's verification process typically required users to provide some form of government-issued photo identification (ID) to verify their identity. This was part of their efforts to ensure that verified accounts are authentic and belong to the individuals or organizations they claim to be.
Because personal information = money, they can sell your data and they can also target you better with different ads to try and generate more clickable ads for you
But think about it though, it could be a way for X users that are prone to identity theft to be easily recognizable, like for instance if you're notable enough they could verify your ID and then give something to your profile so people know it's the real you! I'm thinking maybe a Blue X ?
It all comes down to what matters most to you. Twitter will still be the best platform for finding celebrities and latest trends at least in the next few years. While if you're looking to have private discussions with close-knit groups without concerns about surveillance or privacy breaches, I recommend checking out Session and WireMin. On the other hand, if you value high-quality content and a place that respects freedom of expression, you should give Mastodon, Bluesky and Lemmy a try.
Thanks for the suggestions. Yes, I'm giving Mastodon a try and I've been using Lemmy for almost 2 months now. As for WireMin, I remember someone on Lemmy mentioned it too but I haven't really looked into it yet. Is it like a knockoff version of Wire or something?
http://wiremin.org/ It's a new decentralised messaging app that enables end-to-end encrypted chats. It's similar to Session but more interesting groups without annoying moderators. I personally like the fact that it doesn't require any personal information to log in and it doesn't have any cloud servers to store my data.
I've been slowly moving away from the application formerly known as Twitter for months. I can't think of a large company I'd trust less with my personal information. This is going to accelerate my departure
Twitter is being held together by bubble gum and duct tape at this point. What a great invitation for some hacker to Swiss Cheese their servers and run off with a ton of personal data.
I mean... I kinda get the point of ID verified accounts. I would like to be able to tell if an account is not a bot with 100% accuracy or to filter out troll accounts. I would like the option to choose whenever I like between a "real" social network and a "more chaotic" social network.
Although that shouldn't be the responsibility of the social network developer because the obvious trust issues but your ID issuer. (Usually your country/state)
Maybe a network of state-operated fediverse servers?
It is hard and dangerous but I believe the idea has its merits.
Edit: I knew it would be controversial but I am genuinely curious about the opinions against it instead of plain downvotes