Outside the issue of yet another competing standard to do the same thing, there’s an inherent issue with verification in these kinds of apps. That is, how the identity is actually verified for the account. Is it the government itself, a for-profit company partnered in some way with governments, something else? The issue begs the question, is this something we should have in the first place?

I don’t think so. And it seems to me that those who do likely don’t realize how much of a slippery slope it is to complete privacy erosion. Others are simply trying to live their life and this is very far down on their list of worries. Yet here we are, where services are built around the assumption that every user has a phone (and phone number).

Some relevant media to the topic: xkcd 927 Electric Dreams S1E9