Katie Price's petition to stop online trolling has reached 140K signatures

A petition started by the infamous British celeb Katie Price to require new social media users to provide verified ID in order to open a new account has gained over 140,000 signatures.

Providing traceability if an offence occurs

The push for verified ID requirements is said to be a way to be ale to trace online abusers on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. The government will now have to respond to the petition and consider it for debate as it has passed the 100,000 signature mark.

Price says that the reason she set up the petition is to prevent online abuse of being as rampant as it is currently. She explains that:

My son Harvey is disabled. He is also the kind and gentle son of a person regularly in the public eye.The Online Harms Bill doesn't go far enough in making online abuse a specific criminal offence and doing what 'Harvey's Law' intended.

And addd that:

To make the law work [it] needs the removal of anonymity to ensure that users cannot cause harm by using online platforms to abuse others.

A risk for the LGBTQ+ community

Although Price's intentions are in the right place, others fear that removing the veil of concealment inherent to the Internet might actually affect negatively a community that is already greatly at risk of bullying.

With the lack of anonymity, comes the reveal of information that could be compromising for many. One twitter explained that:

Katie Price is tying to get a law passed in the UK that makes sure you have to show a form of ID when logging into social media apps, you would have to provide information such as: your gender, sexuality, pronouns.

And:

This is extremely harmful because this could lead to outing of thousands of closeted LGBTQ+ kids who may live in an abusive household. Please RT this, spread information and use the tag #saveanonymity even if you don't live in the UK you can still help!!