"Corporations want a way to verify the humanity of users" is a simple answer. "Governments want a way to easily prosecute users" is also a simple answer. I don't see why it can't be all of these things. There *is* actually a more complicated answer that I didn't bring up, which is that smaller websites will have a hard time complying with ID laws, which gives preferential treatment to large websites. That locks out potential competition, hinders smaller projects like lemmy or mastodon, and helps secure the current social media monopolies. That one might just be a useful side effect, rather than the intentional outcome.