[steve_taylor]

Governments aren’t just rolling out Digital IDs. They’re rolling out the platform to enable them to require that you authenticate with a range of apps and websites, ostensibly to keep children safe, with the real purpose being to link your unique identifier to all your online activity. They can then easily build an overall picture of who you are from that ID. Potentially, all this data can be fed into a pre-crime AI.

[bootsmann]

> Governments aren’t just rolling out Digital IDs. They’re rolling out the platform to enable them to require that you authenticate with a range of apps and websites, ostensibly to keep children safe, with the real purpose being to link your unique identifier to all your online activity.

This is just straight up not true for the EUDI which is probably the most serious and advanced approach to digital ID. The wallets are decentralized and the government does not see the individual authentication transaction in any way.

[sedatk]

They’re already doing that without digital IDs. I don’t see how this affects the other.

[steve_taylor]

Part of a Digital ID is an identity provider that implements protocols such as OAuth 2 and OIDC. Once this is in place, the government that owns the Digital ID system can mandate that platforms such as social networks, search engines, email providers, etc. link the users in its jurisdiction to its Digital ID via OAuth/OIDC. As this isn't as onerous as reviewing identity documents, governments can make this a requirement for a large range of platforms, even quite small ones.

Yes, I realise governments already have some powers to view private data, but they have to do a lot of legwork to link data to specific people. They'll always get false positives, false negatives, duplicates, etc. And they'll miss a number of platforms that have data on the person of interest. Digital ID combined with a mandatory identity platform and data retention requirements will make law enforcement far more efficient and give governments unprecedented power over what we see, hear and say online. The government will have a complete list of all the platforms on which you authenticated with their Digital ID.

We're already sleepwalking into this. In Australia, we have the under-16 social media ban taking effect next month. We're also in the process of rolling out our Digital ID, which has an OAuth/OIDC-based identity system. Numerous government departments have already integrated with it. It opens up to private sector integrations in December 2026, just in time for all involved in the under-16 social media ban to realise it's not working effectively and for Digital ID to save the day. The law states that Digital ID is a voluntary means of identification and other methods should always be offered, but the UX of OAuth 2 vs. uploading photos of your ID documents and a selfie, and waiting for it to be reviewed, will make Digital ID the de facto standard for Australians proving their age and, in the process, permanently linking their Digital ID Identifier to all their social media accounts. That includes "anonymous" ones like Reddit. And integrators can apply for an exemption to Digital ID being voluntary on their platform, making the case that the per-user cost of complying with the law without Digital ID is prohibitively expensive.

Once Australia rolls this out to social networks, it will keep expanding until virtually everything is captured.

[mrtesthah]

Why would you want to streamline that process for them even more?

[jjgreen]

s/Potentially/Obviously/g