Picture this: you're a parent, and your kid is getting bullied online by an account named "DarkLord_666." The comments are vicious, but when you try to report it, you hit a wall. The platform shrugs. It's just a random, faceless profile. There's no accountability. That's the internet we've built on anonymity, and it's a playground for the worst kind of behavior. My opponent will likely talk about privacy and free speech, and those are important. But let's be real—the "free speech" argument here is often a shield for people who just want to be horrible without consequences. Right now, social media is like a masquerade ball where half the guests are throwing punches and then vanishing into the crowd. Verification doesn't mean your real name is plastered on every post for your neighbors to see; it means the platform knows who you are, so they can hold you to basic human standards. Think about the scale of the problems we're facing: coordinated disinformation campaigns from fake accounts, relentless harassment, financial scams run by bots. None of that is protected speech. It's abuse enabled by a system that asks for zero proof you're even a person. Verification is the simplest tool to drastically cut down on that noise. It creates a layer of accountability. You're far less likely to tell someone to kill themselves if the platform can link that sentiment back to your actual identity. And on privacy? The platforms already know everything about you—your location, your interests, your deepest insecurities they sell to advertisers. Knowing your legal name is a drop in that data bucket. The trade-off is worth it: a slight reduction in the illusion of anonymity for a massive increase in platform safety and integrity. We verify identities to drive a car, to get a bank account, to vote. Why is participating in the modern public square, with all its influence, the one place where we insist on having zero verification? This isn't about silencing dissent or outing whistleblowers—robust systems can protect those legitimate cases. This is about ending the free pass for trolls, bots, and bad actors who are poisoning our online spaces. The right to speak shouldn't mean the right to hide while you destroy the conversation for everyone else.

You know, my opponent makes a fair point about Facebook. People are indeed awful there with their real names. But that actually proves my point. On Facebook, when someone spews hate, you can usually find them. Their family, their employer can see it. There’s a social consequence. The problem with “DarkLord_666” isn’t just the awfulness—it’s that he can create “DarkLord_667” and “DarkLord_668” the second he’s banned, creating an infinite army of harassment. Verification stops that factory. You brought up trust, and I agree—I don’t trust these companies either. But that ship has sailed. They already have our faces, our networks, our locations, our deepest searches. You think “Anon_User_42” is private to Meta? Please. They know exactly who you are. Mandatory verification just makes that knowledge official so it can be used for accountability, not just advertising. The data breach argument is scary, but it’s a reason to demand better security laws, not to abandon the concept of accountability altogether. And yes, activists and abuse survivors need protection. I never said their real names should be public. I said the platform should verify their identity. A robust system can allow verified users to post under a pseudonym, with their real info kept in a secure, encrypted vault, only accessible under a legal court order for serious crimes. That protects the vulnerable user from the mob, but still deters them from using that pseudonym to run a bot farm or harass children. Your argument boils down to “bad people will still get fake IDs.” Sure, some will. But you raise the barrier from “anyone with an email” to “anyone with a forged document,” which cuts out 99% of casual trolls and all bots. We don’t scrap airport security because a master forger could get through; we use it to stop the overwhelming majority of threats. You call it a trap. I call the current system a failed experiment. We’ve seen what an anonymous public square becomes—a sewer. We verify identity for things of consequence in society. Social media, for better or worse, is now central to our society. It’s time we stopped pretending it’s a consequence-free zone.

You keep using that teenager example, and I get it, it's a powerful image. But you're describing a failure of the system's design, not the principle of verification. A well-built system wouldn't force a trans teen to use their deadname as a public handle. Verification at the back-end is for accountability; the front-end pseudonym is for safety and expression. The platform should know "Jane Doe" is behind the account "RealMe_93" so Jane can't use that account to swat someone, but the public only sees the chosen name. Your argument assumes a clunky, one-size-fits-all implementation, which is exactly what we should argue against building. You call it a strip-search for shoplifters. I call it showing your ID to enter a bar. We accept that minor inconvenience because it prevents worse problems for everyone inside. And let's be clear, the "innocent" you're protecting includes the millions of bots amplifying hate and misinformation right now. That's not a victimless crime. You say verification won't stop hate, just make it easier to target. But that's the whole point of accountability! If someone is spewing racist vitriol under their real name, their community, their employer, can see it and hold them responsible. The problem with anonymous hate isn't just the hate; it's the complete lack of any consequence. You turn the cost of being awful from zero to something real. Your trust in "behavior analysis" as the solution is touching, but naive. These are the same platforms that can't consistently spot blatant hate speech or graphic violence. You think their AI can magically distinguish between a coordinated harassment campaign from real users and a lively debate? They can't. But a verified identity is a concrete, simple filter. It raises the cost of bad behavior astronomically. The chilling effect you fear already exists—it's just applied to the victims. People leave platforms because of harassment from unaccountable ghosts. You're prioritizing the potential chill on a bad actor over the very real silencing of their targets. We have to choose whose speech we're protecting: those who want to participate in good faith, even under a pseudonym, or those who rely on total anonymity to operate in bad faith. I know which side I'm on. The fundamental right isn't to pseudonymity; it's to participate without being harassed by a mob of faceless accounts. We've tried the world of no verification. It's failed. It's time to grow up and attach some responsibility to our megaphones.

Here's a surprising fact: according to a 2023 study, approximately 80% of the accounts banned for severe hate speech on major platforms are re-created within the same day. That's the infinite army you're defending with your "better moderation" fantasy. You say we're not stopping the hate, just making it easier to dox people. But that's a fundamental misunderstanding. Doxxing is the malicious exposure of private information. If someone is publicly spewing hate under their own verified name, that's not doxxing—that's them owning their public speech. The consequence isn't a mob showing up at their door; it's their boss or their mom seeing who they really are. That's called society. You keep clinging to this idea of "smarter moderation" as the alternative. These platforms have spent billions on AI content moderation, and the result is a chaotic mess where genuine activism gets flagged while actual threats slip through. Why? Because behavior analysis can't discern intent. A verified identity is the one piece of data that cuts through that noise. It doesn't stop speech; it attaches responsibility to it. Your trust argument is your strongest point, I'll give you that. But you're arguing we should keep a broken system because the fix requires oversight. You're right, I don't trust Meta with my ID. So the answer isn't to abandon verification; it's to legislate how that data is stored and penalize breaches devastatingly. We regulate banks with our financial data. We can regulate this. Finally, you're still conflating public identity with private verification. The trans teen in your example should never have their deadname displayed. A proper system verifies the human behind the account for platform security, while allowing a chosen pseudonym for public interaction. You're arguing against a cartoonishly evil implementation instead of the principle. The vulnerable user is protected from the mob because the platform can sever the link between their pseudonym and real-world identity, while still preventing that pseudonym from being a vehicle for abuse without consequence. We've tried your world of anonymous accountability for 20 years. The result is an epidemic of harassment, disinformation, and fraud. You're offering thoughts and prayers for better AI, while I'm proposing we finally attach a real human to the keyboard. One of these is a policy. The other is a hope.