Social networks and ID verification is here
A new social network arrived in Canada, Gander Social, and introduced ID verification tools. They haven't even completed their FAQs section on how this works which is suspicious. This should have been top priority to complete.
This new social network allows a new user to create an account to view feeds but not reply or post until they verify themselves. There is an option to use email addresses from approved universities, government or approved organizations. The other option is to use Canada Post ID service I’ve never heard of before to verify your human existence.
The overall feel for this Bluesky compatible network (it has an option in Settings to choose both networks) is incomplete. From the app to the website, I found links that went nowhere and incomplete FAQs as I stated above. I can't imagine this or other country specific social networks will succeed. In the end, humans are humans and we will bring out the bad unfortunately. It is not always the algorithm to be mad at from corporations but the people who use the service.
I said this in a previous post, forums were good because it had categories to hide subjects we didn't want to get involved in. Some forums kept politics, religion and other topics completely out so not to deal with the issues and focus on one theme. The doomscrolling one feed is what most users see and don't create Lists or follow hashtags of subjects. We end up viewing everything unless we invest time muting every word and blocking users. Once this becomes a task, I always ask myself why am I wasting my time here.
Once I spent enough time on Gander Social, I deleted my account. My curiosity was done and being a Canadian social network isn't going to change a thing I discovered. The ID verification was the nail on the coffin. No matter what any corporation says about how they handle your data, don't believe them at all.
Perhaps I'm too old now and don't want to adapt to online communities as they are at the moment. But the more I read about younger individuals under 35 struggling to interact with others in the real world, I don't think I'm alone on this issue. If more social networks start introducing ID verification and AI hacking becomes the norm, no one will trust any corporation with their data once they lose it the first time.