Julie Inman Grant stands as the eSafety Commissioner of Australia, and has recently made an interesting suggestion. Grant has speculated that an ID solution powered by blockchain could have the potential to tackle issues of trolling and cyber abuse, all the while still allowing users a certain level of anonymity.
Balancing Privacy With Control
Grant suggested this while doing an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald, a media outlet of New South Wales. There, she explained that general online use finds great benefit from anonymity, but this causes a big problem in society where someone can just hide behind the Internet’s anonymity to harm others.
As such, Grant suggested that a blockchain-powered system of digital IDs might just be a perfect balance, as it hides a user’s data until law enforcement requests it.
Indeed, pseudonymity could very well be what the world needs. It would allow users to feel comfortable doing what they can only do on the Internet, but also allow authorities to start taking action against users should they harass others or try to incite violence.
A Popular Idea As Of Late
Indeed, many a firm is working towards similar goals. Layer X, a Japan-based firm, is already developing an electronic voting solution. This solution, done in partnership with xID, would see towards the use of blockchain to create a digital ID, much like what Grant is suggesting.
Even on a national level, blockchain technology is being utilized in this way. Over a million South Korean citizens have already opted for a driver’s license solution based on blockchain. This solution has only been up and running for three months, but Statista already shows that an excess of 3% of the country’s driving population is using them.
It should be noted, however, that Grant is quite well known in the corporate internet space. Back in the 1990s, she worked with Microsoft and took part in the shaping of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act within the US. This controversial Act allowed social media companies to gain immunity from liability for the contents of their users.
A Little History
It was a different time, back then, where the so-called “Big Tech” didn’t have any agenda with it, and social media was for more of a wild-west type of place.
These days, however, companies like Twitter and Facebook have taken to censoring their own platform, going as far as to deplatform Donald Trump, the former US President. Granted, Trump didn’t really help himself, and the riots on the US Capitol only worsened this.
Trump had actively encouraged, albeit indirectly, these types of behavior, but these tech companies seem to only persecute these people, and not the so-called “liberal” extremists.
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