At the root of most issues we face today around digital free speech is the question of identity. If we could trust that we know exactly who is speaking in an online space, that would greatly diminish many of the speech issues we face today. With better identity in place, the mechanisms that work to moderate real-world speech would offer the same safeguards of accountability and reputation in the digital space.
I have written about this problem extensively over the last few years, as have others. But it is sometimes hard to know what we as a society generally, and the federal government specifically, can do to address this issue now. We can take concrete, easy and broadly unobjectionable steps that would make a big difference.
In short, I believe the federal government should mandate that all social networks of any size adopt a national version of the coveted blue “validated” check mark confirming an authentic identity that is popular among minor celebrities on services like Twitter and Facebook. That would make clear who has validated their status as a real citizen and who has not.
This should be easy to implement and very difficult for anyone—regardless of political persuasion—to argue against.
Most important, it should create an incentive for voices who want to be trusted online to prove their identity as American citizens (or really any nationality). It should make people question voices that don’t have that validation attached—without creating draconian or unenforceable laws surrounding identity and speech.
Here is how you could roll it out, and why it would be a key step for the government to take to extend identity and citizenship into the digital space.
How It Would Work
Step one would be to offer a digital identity as an optional add-on when you get a passport. This effectively already exists when you sign up for the Global Entry program, which requires that you create a government username and password for renewals and updates. We can argue about the strengths and weaknesses of specific technical implementations, but in my mind the details don’t really matter.
The key is that if the federal government is willing to give you a passport, it should be willing to let you have a simple username and password combination (with an embedded process for password recovery and reset) that it represents as you.
Step two would be some very lightweight regulation of all social and digital speech products that have over a certain number of users (let’s say a million for simplicity’s sake).
The regulation would state that a U.S. speech platform must:
(a) allow users to optionally connect their federal ID to their account on the system;
(b) guarantee uniqueness, so that only one identity on that system will ever be linked to a single federal ID;
(c) ensure that an account, once linked, shows a federal ID–certified check mark next to any display of a person’s name on the service. Clicking on the check mark must take the user to a government ID page for that person.
No legitimate internet platforms will object to this. If anything, it will help them by adding a third-party layer of validation that they don’t have to manage.
Doing this wouldn’t mean that people couldn’t have multiple accounts or identities. It wouldn’t force people to use any sort of federal identification in their speech. It would just provide those that want to be taken seriously a lightweight way to prove the validity and authenticity of their voice as a citizen.
Why It Would Work
This will work because many people who want to make their voices heard and trusted as authentic will use it on services like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. These people want to prove the validity of their identity.
People now lobby Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to get blue “validated” check marks next to their names to prove they are real (and “important”) people. In the same way, this approach would allow anyone to add a layer of trust and proof to a digital identity.
As this model doesn’t require you to link your digital identity, it is hard for people to disagree with it. It does not stifle other forms of speech and expression, but it does create an option for those who want their opinions taken seriously.
Nuances to Consider
Though creating an authenticated digital identity does present a number of potential roadblocks, they all have reasonable solutions.
For instance, people will point out that slightly less than half of all Americans have a passport, and only a small percentage of those have opted for Global Entry, which provides a federal login.
While the rate of passport holding in the U.S. has skyrocketed in the last few decades, I hope this plan would create a valuable incentive for more citizens to get passports. Then they could opt in to programs like Global Entry—which are effectively a form of federal ID—even if they don’t intend to travel internationally.
People will also point out that beyond simple passport issuance, the Global Entry process is expensive and therefore exclusionary. Expanding the program would either cost a lot of money or exclude people who can’t afford it.
While this is true today, there is a less expensive path. It would be reasonable in these times of frequent online transactions for the government to invest in providing citizens with a form of digital identity..
There is also the question of whether a person who validates their identity with this system should be forced to use their real name or allowed to use any name they choose on a given social platform. This presents an interesting set of trade-offs. Consider three different options for how the program could work.
In one version, people would only be able to connect their federal ID to a given social network if they use their real name. In another version, a person could use whatever name they want on the social service, but when someone clicks through to the federal ID, they would see the person’s real name. In a third version, the person could use whatever name they want on any service, and clicking through to their federal ID would simply validate that this is a real person with only one linked account on the service. In that scenario, there would be no way to see someone’s real name if they didn’t want it revealed.
The third version is probably the best starting point, though you could offer users other options if they want higher levels of validation.
Also, some may question how this approach would impact digital competition and existing social networks.
Providing federal digital IDs that people can use across services should actually increase competition in the social networking and speech space by allowing new services to easily bootstrap trust when people connect these IDs.
Finally, where this service will lead over time is something to carefully consider, because once you issue digital federal IDs they can evolve and be manipulated for good or ill in the future.
One positive extension I could imagine is effectively creating an internet version of the Library of Congress, where people could choose to sync their posts from services like Facebook and Twitter to a national archive of speech from trusted Americans (or people of any nationality). This could be useful for strengthening trust over time within a society, because it could provide a central repository where people could look up what their fellow citizens have been saying—a track record of their speech over time.
A future rule could require social products to allow this sync, although that might be challenging for legislators to enact.
One thing to watch out for is the possibility that over time, having a linked federal ID could become mandatory for using social platforms. It is easy to imagine that once a majority of people are using such a system, that will effectively force the rest into the system. The only way to avoid this would be to articulate new rights to digital speech and spaces, which state that you can access them with or without a valid federal ID.
Conclusion
It is pretty crazy that the federal government doesn’t offer any way for Americans to even optionally validate their identity in digital spaces. It seems like an unfortunate quirk of history that we find ourselves in this place.
There are many technically deep and nuanced ways to think about what real identity is and what it will become in the digital space going forward. But rather than get wrapped up in the big picture, we need to take the simple actions that are available to us today.
We can, of course, have the bigger debate in parallel. But it is obvious that the government should be issuing a simple digital ID and mandating very light regulation that tells services they need to let citizens connect that ID, as well as guarantee its uniqueness and prominently display credentials showing which people have government-validated identities.
It won’t fix everything, but it will help a lot, so we just need to do it.