There are good reasons to believe Instagram will soon begin verifying people's identities. This choice is alarming, but the goal is to keep posts and interactions authentic.
Social media platforms have struggled with the issue of user identification for years now. The internet can be extremely divisive, and that's in large part due to anonymity. Even on platforms like Facebook where people generally use their real names, people are far more likely to be rude or aggressive toward others when they don't expect to ever have real-life interactions with them. At the same time, people's distrust of social media companies has only increased as they've requested more data and continue to employ questionable policies regarding information and moderation. The 2016 US presidential election process was exemplary of how a lack of accountability online can have a negative impact on millions of people, and the controversies didn't end there.
It's hopefully in the name of transparency that Instagram is allegedly considering asking some users to verify their identities. Noteworthy Twitter leaker Alessandro Paluzzi (@alex193a) posted screenshots showing a series of menus presumably data mined from the Instagram app, prompting the user to confirm their identity with a photo ID. The process appears fairly standard. If the images are accurate, Instagram will ask users to upload an image of their ID along with a selfie video showing their face and head from different angles. The text field promises Instagram won't attach information from the ID to the user's profile. The types of identification accepted include driver's licenses, marriage certificates, and passports.
Facebook's Recent History Makes This Leak Viable
This concept will certainly turn some people off. At first glance, it seems like yet another way for tech companies to invade our privacy. Taking the company at its word, though – and remembering that every social platform likely already has far more valuable information about you than anything that could possibly be on your driver's license – it seems like Facebook wants this information to make the platform safer. This leak pertains to Instagram specifically, but it seems plausible because its parent company, Facebook, recently implemented a similar policy.
In a blog post from March of 2020, Facebook announced it will request identification from the owners of accounts that quickly go viral in the US. The stated goal is "We want people to feel confident that they understand who’s behind the content they’re seeing on Facebook and this is particularly important when it comes to content that’s reaching a lot of people." Monitoring content output from pages that frequently go viral and have a wide influence is a responsible step to take. These kinds of ideas would have mitigated the impacts of the various controversies we've seen with Facebook in the past and could be stepping stones towards making more informed social media consumers. Most importantly, it's less of a privacy risk than it initially sounds, since it only affects "high-reach" profiles. The billions of us who just use social media for memes don't have to worry.
Sources: Alessandro Paluzzi [via Twitter], Facebook