@[email protected] I agree that current verification is beyond most users, but I don't think it matters much for regular posters or lurkers.
What is your proposed solution?
Paid verification has issues both from money and personal information security management angle.
The same is true for "celebrity" verification, as it require storing personal information.
The easier way to verify identity is to cross-check if they link back to existing accounts.
@[email protected] I have no idea why Elk refuses to mention you properly. Might be a bug.
Relying on 3rd party platforms is far from ideal and like you mentioned unrealistic as it would require API access which would be easily blocked.
Realistically, I can only think of one idiot-proof verification system. Credit card, but that opens up instances to storing payment and identitity data or outsourcing it to a 3rd party service. Anything else would be user based and require at least some input from them.