Comment by perihelions
13 days ago
> "it's not unreasonable to think that by the end of the decade any site, including HN, might need to link usernames with their respective eIDs in case posts come from EU IP addresses."
A rule of thumb that works too often is "how is mainland China doing things?"[0], and assume the West will follow behind shortly.
[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/07/15/china-digita... ("Big Brother gets new powers in China with digital ID system")
(tl;dr: Mandatory digital ID, with central government attesting and holding personal data in escrow. The "privacy-preserving", "least-bad option" a sizeable portion of even HN itself advocates for).
> "This means that companies, like social media site Weibo or online shopping behemoth Alibaba, will no longer be able to see the personal information of their users with digital IDs — but Chinese authorities will be able to see the real identity behind online accounts across a range of sites."
Oh well at least the Chinese aren't Christians.
Believe it or not, China has far and away the largest Christian population in the world. (I know, I know, culture, percent of the population, etc, this is just a fun fact that runs counter to intuition.)
Is it worse than requiring a phone number?