How does a passport solve that? Most small private companies are entirely opaque. A government ID doesn't help you determine authorization. It won't even help you determine ownership since anyone doing things sensibly will be using a registered agent to hold the company on his behalf.

The correct approach here (AFAIK) is to punt the trust decision to the bank by requiring payment with a method that you can confidently trace to the company.

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mrtksn 11 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

My government ID card expired and I was too lazy to renew it but I had my passport at hand so why not?

BTW both the id card and the passport have cryptographic authentication and you are able to open a bank account or use govt services completely only by scanning it with the phone. They could have make me scan that and be done with the identity verification.

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kube-system 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah I would imagine that the value the get out of a passport is not anything to do with validating a company (they’re cheap and easy to make anyway) but validating the person (which is not a throwaway entity)

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fc417fc802 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Fair point.

However that invites those bad scenarios where someone gets blacklisted by BigTech in some manner, later gets hired by a small business, the new employer adds an association to the blacklisted account, and suddenly the company app is banned from the app store seemingly without reason. At least a few such stories have appeared on HN over the years.

I feel like pay to play ought to be sufficient because in addition to being a barrier to entry it also provides funds for moderation efforts.

	▲	kube-system 21 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		There are better ways to do it but Google has long demonstrated they’re not primarily concerned with accuracy or user experience, but instead, whichever solution can be automated and effective.