Consider the implications of this word puff masquerading as a serious political policy.

To know if your social media account is a True Name, we need a government register of all accounts. We need a register of all people. We need to *give Facebook et al access to that register*. https://twitter.com/aighne_kearney/status/1390942534478831623

This is not the first time FG has proposed sharing a Government register of all citizens, and their PPS Numbers, with Facebook.

Minister Jim Daly even acknowledged it was illegal under GDPR but wanted to do it anyway.

https://www.thestory.ie/2018/02/20/correspondence-between-government-and-facebook-on-controversial-plan-to-tie-social-media-accounts-to-official-identification-documents/

Of course, Senator Doherty’s historical adherence to the principles of Data Protection law as the Minister who brought in the PSC are the subject of a finding of illegality by the DPC, under *very slow* appeal by her Dept.

As @loughlin points out, this idea of creating a State identity register and then sharing it with Facebook exerts some strange gravitational appeal on the minds of Fine Gael Ministers. https://www.independent.ie/business/technology/government-td-meeting-zuckerberg-wants-facebook-to-require-passport-or-pps-number-37974854.html

It is certainly the case that there are time’s when it is appropriate for an anonymous or pseudonymous account’s real world controller to be identified. But that is dependent on their behaviour, not anonymity.

To create a panopticon of public comment- to allow everyone- employers, government, estranged family members, companies and advertisers- to monitor everyone’s every utterance and associate it with an individual, without limit of time.

That is quite the proposal.
Perhaps not?

Here is a thread from 2020, when last this idea bubbled up out of the cauldron of intellectual juices we call public discourse. https://twitter.com/tupp_ed/status/1312313701106700288

It includes this little hint on who our Fine Gael True Name advocates may have been talking to, to have all landed on the same idea, over and over again. https://twitter.com/tupp_ed/status/1312331804142170113

What is rarely acknowledged or discussed when the advocates of a social media panopticon advance their pet project is that the highest Court in the EU, the CJEU, has already decided on the legality of generalised watching of individuals’ communications.

And, you know, academic research shows that even the supposed benefit of a less toxic SM isn’t achieved.

Citation: Rost K, Stahel L, Frey BS (2016) Digital Social Norm Enforcement: Online Firestorms in Social Media. PLoS ONE 11(6): e0155923. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0155923

“Non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals.”