Oddbean new post about | logout
 Why don't we, ourselves, verify each other? People who we know personally and know they Nostr profiles. Also users who we do not know but follow and have read a whole bunch of their notes, and we see others are interacting with them. The more verifications a user has the more genuine his account is.
For example, we all could now verify your account because we can acknowledge your identity,  and you can be the first person verified. Than you start verifying other users and so on. We will build a verification network whish is transparent, a spider web of interactions. Of course, we need a verification button for that reason.
Births, marriages, deaths all had witnesses for ages, and for the same reason to verify the event or person.
And, why our digital identity has to be the same as our government ID?
This probably has advances and limitations but could be worked on. 
 I am firmly against any type of verification even by friends. It makes it seem as if verified person’s note carries any more credibility than anon, it doesn’t. 
 we already verify ourselves via our follow lists, that's the basis of the social graph 
 Thank you for your input. I thought about the matter of verification before, but I actually agree with you said now. 
 Yesterday's like is today's quote 
 Why so complicated, when you can just follow someone's account (ideas)? :⁠-⁠)

What you're describing may only be useful in the meatspace, but probably impractical and counterproductive in cyberspace. 
 You can use nip-05 as your proof of write-access in case you have a website or other place you can put a file with history and existing credibility.