Carl Franzen for Talking Points Memo:

“This is just a general practice for both Facebook and Instagram to request photo IDs for verification purposes depending on what type of violation may have occurred,” a spokesperson for Facebook told TPM. “Unfortunately, I can’t share more with you beyond that as we don’t go into details beyond that.”

Facebook declined to state exactly why a number of users would collectively receive notifications to provide government issued IDs this week or what specific violations of terms prompted the notifications.

You gotta be fucking kidding me.

I’ll admit that when I nuked my Instagram account recently I worried that maybe I should loosen my tin-foil hat a bit, but this makes my trepidation that they’d sell my photos seem quaint.

No Web service is worth this kind of intrusion into your private life; no private company should insist on seeing a government issued ID and not be able to tell you why.

(via John Moltz.)