Institutional identity providers (from government passports to FB) are getting more abusive. They want more from you in exchange for being allowed to use their platform.
Hard to know what the causes are here: could be anything from the dominance of free services (i.e. you can't 'take your money elsewhere') to laws that make it harder to do business anonymously.
Institutional collusion. I don't mean explicit, agreed-upon conspiring; I mean the sort of industry signaling you see everywhere, like cellphone provider and airline pricing.
FB, say, ups the intrusiveness in one way, and the other surveillance firms watch carefully. If the blowback is manageable, yay, new normal has been achieved.
Are there any decentralized identity systems? If my government refuses to give me a passport, drivers license and copy of my birth certificate, how do I prove I am who I claim?
Ironically the UK identity "system" bootstraps in the other direction; you need a photo signed by somebody suitably middle-class ( https://www.gov.uk/countersigning-passport-applications/acce... ) to get a passport, and lots of places use utility bills and bank statements as proof of address.
There are other ways of proving identity but generally any one way isn’t enough on its own but needs to be combined. For example you might combine documentary evidence (e.g. passport) with some knowledge evidence (e.g. which company you took a loan with in year x) and potentially some biometrics. If you don’t have identity documents then knowledge based verification combined might be enough in its own for some uses? There are other sources as well, for example access to multi-year usage ‘real name’ social media profiles could be a contributing factor towards identity.
Hard to know what the causes are here: could be anything from the dominance of free services (i.e. you can't 'take your money elsewhere') to laws that make it harder to do business anonymously.