requiring a proof of identity or tracking users is a privacy disaster and I’m sure many people (especially here) would outright refuse to give IDs to companies.
The Blockchain/web3/Cypherpunk crowd already developed solutions for that. ZK-proofs allow you to confirm one’s identity without having to reveal it to public and make it impossible to correlate with other proofs.
Add other things like reputation-based systems based on Web-Of-Trust, and we can go a long way to get rid of bots, or at least make them as harmless as email spam is nowadays.
Right, but the problem with them is “bad usability”, which amounts to “friction”.
Like I said in the original comment, I kinda believe that things will get so bad that we will eventually have to accept that the internet can only be used if we use these tools, and that “the market” starts focusing on building the tools to lower these barriers of entry, instead of having their profits coming from Surveillance Capitalism.