[HN Gopher] Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the a...
___________________________________________________________________
Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online
abuse
Author : CapitalistCartr
Score : 227 points
Date : 2021-10-21 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| chomp wrote:
| I don't know... my Nextdoor group is pretty abusive to certain
| groups at times, and people post happily with their real life
| name and the rough area of where they live attached. Hate towards
| an individual person isn't super common, but it happens. If this
| extrapolates, I can't see removing anonymity doing much other
| than e.g. hurting LGBT groups online (imagine asking questions as
| a member of that group in a conservative community and forced to
| use your real name)
| NoraCodes wrote:
| Yes, this is the conclusion of the article as well.
| CapitalistCartr wrote:
| Nextdoor has had enormous racism/bigotry problems. They have
| had to revamp a variety of their interfaces to minimize this
| problem. It's like they have to do A/B testing to minimize it.
| Real identity doesn't do anything to slow down the oblivious.
| neartheplain wrote:
| >Nextdoor has had enormous racism/bigotry problems.
|
| Could you provide some concrete examples? I've used Nextdoor
| regularly in three major US metropolitan areas, and I have
| yet to see anything like an "enormous racism/bigotry
| problem." If anything, I see sanctimonious neighbors calling
| each other racist at the drop of a hat.
| Factorium wrote:
| https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2&selY.
| ..
|
| 51% of Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter is committed by
| about 7% of the US population. This is directly from
| Government data.
|
| There are real biological factors identified for this
| discrepancy:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I interpret comments like this as arguing that racism is
| justified by biology.
| tristor wrote:
| I think you are overstating your case, and I question the
| motivations for doing so. The vast majority of people with
| either the 2R or 3R allele have not committed any criminal
| acts, and in fact the 3R allele is heavily associated to
| the type of risk taking behavior that is often rewarded in
| society. There may be a correlation between those who end
| up committing criminal acts and their gene expression, but
| it alone is not a causative factor and it's completely
| unsupported by evidence to make such a claim. Stronger
| causative factors are environmental, such as poverty, which
| has a direct causative relationship with criminal behavior.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| The obvious factor behind this discrepancy is the
| distribution of resources in the real world, as well as the
| fact that organized violent drug crime is mostly operated
| out of black communities (again: poverty).
|
| This allele you've identified as the genetic reason for
| white superiority is most common among Asian men.
| throwaway879080 wrote:
| from my experience it's more dangerous to ask a question as a
| conservative in a pro-LGBTQ+ group
| formerly_proven wrote:
| > I can't see removing anonymity doing much other than e.g.
| hurting LGBT groups online (imagine asking questions as a
| member of that group in a conservative community and forced to
| use your real name)
|
| Consider that this could be one of the motivations behind the
| push for things like this.
| colpabar wrote:
| In all seriousness, do you really think that any current
| western government is anti-lgbt? Do you have any examples?
| formerly_proven wrote:
| I don't think you can generally expect LGBT support from
| western governments at large.
|
| However, I didn't actually mean the governments themselves
| with my comment above, but the various christian and
| puritan lobbying groups.
| tlholaday wrote:
| Yes.
|
| Search "Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act North
| Carolina"
| guerrilla wrote:
| Why would it matter if it's a government if it's public?
| Also, yes, definitely. Hungary and Poland on the extreme
| end to start with but really all of the Catholic and
| Orthodox countries to some degree not to mention some US
| states and rural areas even in northern Europe...
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Yes, in parts of Europe certainly and many state
| governments as well.
|
| Casual homophobia remained "in" in the US until at least
| 2010, which is not all that long ago.
| Schiendelman wrote:
| Nextdoor is a really interesting case because it limits the
| conversation to people in your immediate neighborhood.
|
| Because of that, it creates an inherent ingroup/outgroup
| dynamic that doesn't exist on most social media. In other
| systems, you have to create that through some kind of
| signaling.
|
| As a result, that dynamic overwhelms other topics.
| motohagiography wrote:
| Faint praise. The article does more to normalize and prime the
| idea of banning online anonymity with a weak defense than to
| argue against it. Some abstract principles about discredited
| freedoms won't stand in the way of progress. The sceptical are
| not alone.
| pluto8195 wrote:
| Could there be a way to guarantee that each account is "verified"
| ie: a real person,
|
| but still have the platform allow you to hide your identity to
| others
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| If someone can figure it out I'd love to see it. Having some
| way of preventing someone from making more than one account
| would be a tremendous help in my eyes. Whether you use your
| name or not, that account is you. If it gets removed, you're
| off the site.
|
| What I can't figure out is how you would do this while staying
| anonymous. If the users had some private key they could sign
| the account in some way to claim ownership without saying who
| they are, but then who issues and maintains the private keys?
| You'd need some large body to issue them, and that means
| storing personal data to know who has and hasn't been issued a
| key.
| willhinsa wrote:
| This comment talks about this idea:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947131
| schleck8 wrote:
| That would be labeled trojan horse for authoritarianism
| crawsome wrote:
| It's a huge start
| tristanMatthias wrote:
| How exactly?
| est wrote:
| It's a huge start towards Balkanized Internet. You can't have
| total de-anonymized Internet without blocking foreign user
| geneerated content.
|
| To ban foreign content, you got to install a China style
| national firewall.
| TurkishPoptart wrote:
| Anonymity is more important that ever. I'm glad most of the
| things I've written online and on message boards were under total
| pseudonyms, because if those messages were retrieved 20-30 years
| later, I could be "canceled" for anything, depending the social
| mores of the time of retrieval.
| bryan_w wrote:
| Not anonymity, but some method to ensure 1 "account" maps to
| exactly 1 person would go a long way to getting some sanity back.
| I don't care what you call yourself, as long as I'm sure you are
| a singular , real, person.
| anon22hdjsks wrote:
| No thanks
| thrownaway561 wrote:
| The best thing is don't join social network or unjoin the ones
| you are on if you find them toxic. if you find a person toxic,
| almost every social platform has a way of blocking them. i use it
| all the time. life doesn't have to be stressful.
| bigjimmyjohnson wrote:
| Why does there need to be one uniform solution? Some sites can be
| entirely anonymous, some can be pseudononymous, some with real
| names... some heavily moderated, some lightly moderated... some
| facilitating one on one conversation, some for small groups, some
| for the wider public... and so on.
|
| The web need not be homogenous. Omegle, Facebook, Twitter,
| Reddit, hacker news... They can all exist differently and that's
| fine.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| This is just another example of politicians using a tragedy to
| push an existing agenda. As noted in the article and in the
| comments here, most people don't have a problem posting hate
| under their own names.
|
| Who does like anonymity? Government dissidents. Reporters. Human
| rights workers and investigators.
| showerst wrote:
| Somewhat tangential to the article, but here's what I would like:
| A site like reddit, but you have to get your government ID
| verified when you sign up.
|
| You can still pick any alias you want, but mods see your location
| within, say, 100 miles.
|
| Imagine reddit with no bots, banning has consequences, and local
| subreddits can actually just be people who live there.
|
| The painful sign up flow makes that totally unreasonable, but it
| would vastly improve my online community experience to live
| without bots and more limited trolls.
|
| *edit to clarify* -- i don't want them to _have_ my ID, just use
| some kind of service from stripe or visa or whoever where they
| get a hash, so that banning is stickier.
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| Do you trust a site like reddit to keep your government ID
| secure? I don't.
| showerst wrote:
| I was thinking more of a "verified by stripe" type flow. They
| just need a location and a hash that prevents multiple
| signups. I realize that's just moving the problem, but hey
| the whole idea is impractical anyway.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| As an interesting alternative, imagine that the site asked you
| to print out a random number on a piece of paper and (within a
| 2 hour window, for example) film yourself holding it in front
| of a building or landmark that you claim is within 100 miles of
| your home.
|
| You could cover your face during the filming, or temporarily
| affix the paper to some surface, like a tree, and then upload
| your video clip to a selection of randomly chosen existing
| members who would cross-reference your location with Google
| street view, and try to check that the image isn't a deep fake.
|
| Of course people would eventually start offering a paid service
| of carrying out this process on behalf of the bot farmers, but
| the algorithm could demand that your filming location not be
| somewhere that a lot of people have already used for their
| recordings, which would push up the cost of someone trying to
| create multiple identities locally to them.
|
| Also, offering this location spoofing service could be classed
| as (conspiracy to commit) fraud, and the risks of getting
| caught by going to a specific location at a specific time as
| part of a sting operation should be pretty high, and not worth
| being paid minimum wage for.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Isn't this basically what Parler tried to do? They got hacked
| and the PII of their users was leaked onto the internet and
| they were derided for collecting so much information.
| bduerst wrote:
| You can do third party verification without storing the
| physical credentials. Parler was many things, and poorly
| designed was one of them.
| showerst wrote:
| I suppose, although Parler came at it catering to a very
| specific and volatile community.
|
| "Don't get hacked and dump PII" is sort of a prerequisite for
| starting any online business these days, so I don't see that
| as a huge downside beyond the already comically difficult
| signup flow. Ideally, ID verification comes from someone like
| stripe or visa who's core business is handling that data, so
| the host is only storing a hash and a location.
| Gunax wrote:
| I would prefer just making users pay some fee.
| showerst wrote:
| This doesn't really solve any problems, because it just makes
| trolling/harassment cost a few bucks. It also practically
| incentivizes commercial shilling since that has an easy to
| calculate return.
|
| Any amount of money that would make it cost prohibitive to
| get banned would also kill the userbase.
| anon22hdjsks wrote:
| Mods are the last people you want to give dox / location data
| to (especially if you have children).
| evgen wrote:
| Way back in the earliest days of the cypherpunk movement this
| was one of the things that people thought Chaumian blind
| signatures were going to offer and one of the crypto techniques
| that fascinated me the most. These signatures offered a way for
| a government to issue you an isa-person cert that you could use
| to sign up for various online services. The thing about this
| key was that it was like a blinded ecash token, if you double-
| spent it you could be revealed. If you set up your reddit
| account with your cert/token then you would get one account,
| trying to set up a second would trigger a double-spend reveal
| and your identity would be exposed. You could set up various
| ways to do blind reveals of specific info (e.g. gender, age,
| etc) for various types of classification purposes. Stefan
| Brands pushed this work even further, but it all sort of
| disappeared during the dot-com bust. Now if you search for
| 'stefan brands ecash cryptography' google assumes a typo and
| you get a bunch of links for some shitcoin being pushed by
| comrade Segal.
|
| A bit of a long and winding road to head off in the direction
| of noting that some of the old techniques that were being
| explored in the crypto cambrian explosion of the early 90s are
| still out there and still have merit. They just seem buried in
| the back-and-forth jousting between all or nothing when it
| comes to online identity.
| paganel wrote:
| As a reddit user for 15 years now I would just move to gab (I
| think that's the name) or whatever other platform there is if
| they start asking for government IDs.
| floatingatoll wrote:
| Seems worth trying, since we've never tried it before with the
| big social networks of today. We've been locked onto anonymity
| for decades now as a priority and we need more data for science
| to consider anyways.
| polartx wrote:
| The article cites the recent murder of politician David Amess as
| the purpose for revisiting discussions about banning anonymity on
| social networks.
|
| But Amess was stabbed to death by a Somali migrant with
| 'religious and ideological motivations'. What does that have to
| do with social media anonymity?
| twofornone wrote:
| Its offensive to me that if a white guy had stabbed anyone left
| of center, headlines would gleefully have rushed to announce
| far right/white supremacist terrorism, even prematurely; but
| when a white christian politician is targeted by a muslim
| immigrant, in a fucking church no less, not only do you not see
| "terrorism" in any headline, the vast majority of outlets fail
| to even describe the attacker beyond age and sex. Especially
| British publications.
|
| I had suspected that it was a minority specifically because of
| the cryptic reporting of the incident, and it turns out you're
| right, now that a handful of US/international outlets have been
| willing to provide details.
|
| And this article is part of a pattern of deflection. I watch Al
| Jazeera and they had the gall to interview three different
| minority MPs and heavily imply that minorities are being
| targeted.
|
| This collective demonization of a global minority by western
| outlets, together with the gaslighting that whites (and
| especially white christians) aren't being targeted, is not
| going to end well. If you want to argue that its a deserved
| comeuppance that's one thing, but the way that these outlets
| implicitly collude to protect the identity of minority, and
| only minority attackers, is underhanded and dishonest.
| 015UUZn8aEvW wrote:
| Anonymous people online might use this murder as an argument
| for limiting immigration. "As horrific as this tragedy was, if
| our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse."
| sharklazer wrote:
| Nothing. They simply continue to propagate the surveillance
| state.
| [deleted]
| ydhdbridjnd wrote:
| Nothing. There's a very common pattern you see in political
| responses to outrages and tragedies which is: Something
| terrible has happened. Something must be done. X is something.
| Therefore X must be done.
|
| It doesn't actually matter what X is, the important thing for
| the government is to be seen to be doing something. In reality
| the calls by UK politicians to end online anonymity will fizzle
| out in a few weeks once the media cycle moves on, as it's not
| something they can really do without spending an immense amount
| of time, money and political capital. In the mean time there
| will be a flurry of articles like this one rehashing debates
| that have been going on ever since the first troll posted the
| first comment on a BBS.
| kfprt wrote:
| More often X is something the existing authoritarians want so
| the solution to basically anything immediately jumps to the
| already proposed and planned X. The event is just the excuse
| and the details irrelevant.
| [deleted]
| colpabar wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/pm-urged-to-...
|
| >While police are investigating whether there are any links to
| Islamist extremism and have not connected the killing to the
| targeting of MPs online, allies of Amess said he had voiced
| growing concern about threats and toxicity within public
| discourse as they demanded a crackdown.
|
| >Francois, the MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, which neighbours
| Amess's Southend West constituency, added: "I suggest that if
| we want to ensure that our colleague didn't die in vain, we
| collectively all of us pick up the baton, regardless of our
| party and take the forthcoming online harms bill and toughen it
| up markedly.
|
| So there is absolutely no link between his murder and seemingly
| _any_ online activity, but they 're still going to use his
| murder to to justify... harsher punishment for being mean to
| government employees online? Never let a crisis go to waste I
| guess.
| Dma54rhs wrote:
| This is long lost fight, anonymity in the UK because under
| the banner of racism the vast majority of them want to get
| rid of it and footballers who rally it are very influential.
| It's just a matter of time.
| sharklazer wrote:
| > So there is absolutely no link between his murder and
| seemingly any online activity, but they're still going to use
| his murder to to justify... harsher punishment for being mean
| to government employees online? Never let a crisis go to
| waste I guess.
|
| Hitting the nail on the head.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Personally, I like not having to tie my identity to my HN
| account, and I'd like to keep it that way here and elsewhere.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Same here. Besides, what I type here today may not be
| controversial at all, but who knows how activists will change
| what society sees as acceptable vs problematic? All it would
| take is one motivated activist to dig through my comment
| history and find _something_ to get me cancelled in the future.
| xkcd-sucks wrote:
| "Enterprise software is totally fucked and working on it
| sucks, and b2b sales people are lying sociopaths. I just want
| to make more money with less effort and don't care about
| half-baked mission statements"
|
| If I weren't anonymous this could make me unemployable
| AndyNemmity wrote:
| Exactly. The net result is a complete hiding of the truth.
| Everywhere you go would be marketing vs. truth, because the
| truth is too dangerous.
| loydb wrote:
| Banning may not be the complete answer, but until we're allowed
| to shoot them, it will have to do.
| sharklazer wrote:
| But it IS the answer to monitoring what everyone is saying,
| posting, and doing so the state can have its panopticon.
| onion2k wrote:
| There is one simple, easy way to stop abuse (both online and
| offline): stop accepting when your peers do it.
|
| There are more people who think abusive behavior is bad than
| there are abusers who think it's good. If all the people who
| think it's bad call it out when they see it, avoid people who do
| it, make a point admonishing people who do it, refuse to accept
| working with people who do it at work, refuse to socialize with
| people who do it in social situations, _refuse to watch TV shows
| where it 's shown to be funny_, _refuse to pay to see it at the
| cinema_ , and so on then, eventually, it would start to stop.
|
| Literally the only way to stop it is if society _as a collective
| group_ makes it clear that it 's not acceptable.
|
| Sadly this means we're stuck with it.
| babyblueblanket wrote:
| The definition of abusive behavior is unfortunately ambiguous
| though. Not everybody agrees to it. That's how you get people
| claiming folks are too sensitive and other people claiming so
| and so is an abuser for some more ambiguous circumstance.
| onion2k wrote:
| That doesn't matter. If everyone just calls out the behavior
| that they think is abusive then eventually we'll get to a
| new, lower level of abuse. There'll be some contention where
| people disagree, but there is already so that doesn't change
| much.
| causi wrote:
| Online abuse is much easier to ignore when it's anonymous. What
| do I care if xX_BonerLord_420_Xx calls me the n-word? It only
| starts mattering when it's John Johnson, CPA and I have to drive
| by his house every day.
| DrBazza wrote:
| I wish people would go back to cutting out letters in a newspaper
| and gluing them to a bit of paper and sending that. It took
| thought, effort, and wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing.
|
| But in all seriousness, there are a lot of women (and men) who
| have suffered abuse by a partner. Not having anonymous social
| media accounts ends up being at the very least exclusionary, and
| at the very worst can lead to physical harm (even murder) by an
| abusive partner easily tracking someone down.
|
| The other elephant in the room here, is that abusive social media
| messages have nothing to do with the death of David Amess.
| criddell wrote:
| The first social media site I ever used was Slashdot and back
| then not only did they allow anonymous accounts but you could
| impersonate people. Mostly that was used to make jokes (like
| billg commenting on some Linux news).
|
| Then they added user accounts and a login. Anonymous posting
| persisted (the famous Anonymous Coward) but impersonating mostly
| stopped.
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| This just sounds ripe for abuse. Data mining, doxxing, swatting,
| more and more aggressive ads, identity theft and so on.
|
| Are people toxic on the internet (not just social media)? Yes.
| Does changing it so people have no protection or privacy change
| things? It instills fears in them, yes, but does it change human
| nature? No.
|
| The internet is just a reflection of what we are has a
| collective. You might not want to admit that we're twisted little
| things while also being altruistic and creative, but that's what
| we are, and saying mean things online shouldn't be punishable.
| Using this privacy to do other less savory things is a whole
| other issue, but they'll happen regardless and that's why we have
| people with the authority and tools to persecute those people.
|
| Also, I find it amusing that half the people defending this are
| also using online usernames with no photo or personal information
| directly attached to their account (maybe they have it somewhere
| or they'll give it to you if you ask nicely).
| jcun4128 wrote:
| > also using online usernames with no photo or personal
| information
|
| haha I feel the bias like when I get a downvote "what did I do
| wrong, conform". I'm not denying intelligence/facts and also I
| think it's "this is not Reddit" kind of thing.
| ls15 wrote:
| Where real data is required, why can't I see the names of all
| people who have access to my data and get notified when someone
| does access it or creates a copy of it. They look at my data
| after all. Shouldn't I know who is looking at my data, where
| exactly it is stored, how many copies exist and when it will be
| deleted? The relationship between a data-collecting website and
| its users is very asymmetric when it comes to data. Using the web
| as anonymously as possible is my only real defense against
| getting my data abused.
| gtvwill wrote:
| Well that's a load of bs if I've ever read one. I'm all for
| privacy but the big two social media companies Facebook and
| Twitter sure as shit should be forced to have options to allow
| folks to force only verified individuals are able to interact
| with them. Their promotion of criminal behaviour by allowing with
| such ease the impersonation of others and the unabated harassment
| of individuals is a load of shit.
| lionkor wrote:
| Anonymity is important because it allows you to have discussions
| purely based on the arguments and opinions, without the bias of
| _who_ youre talking to.
|
| I often find myself having a wonderfully deep discussion with
| someone online, and when I eventually find out what they look
| like (etc), I often realize that they dont look as friendly,
| educated, etc as they are.
|
| Humans are really bad at this, and you will put people into
| groups in your mind no matter how hard you try. Anonymity mostly
| removes this bias, and leads to _real_ and pure equal exchange of
| ideas.
| worrycue wrote:
| > Anonymity is important because it allows you to have
| discussions purely based on the arguments and opinions, without
| the bias of who youre talking to.
|
| Unfortunately often we do rely on the other person's
| reputation, giving us information as to their possible biases
| and an initial estimate of their level of competence on the
| subject matter, in order to assign the appropriate weight to
| their opinions - especially when it comes to topics outside our
| scope of expertise.
|
| With anonymity we often put everyone on the same level thus
| won't be able to properly weigh varying opinions and filter out
| opinions that are the least likely to be of value.
| Larrikin wrote:
| As someone who was a long time user of 4chan and that believed
| this once before, I now adamantly disagree that total anonymity
| leads to better discussion and believe that 4chan and the like
| are ultimately failed experiments.
|
| With total anonymity you end up with trolls or people who are
| just seriously misinformed arguing vigorously.
|
| You can spend the time and present arguments to possibly
| convince an actual reasonable person. It gets tiresome over
| time posting the same basic information. Most of the boards on
| there end up with a good baseline of information for their
| topics over years, but for anyone slightly knowledgeable it is
| tiresome to move topics to that eventual baseline and
| especially to move them past it. That same information can
| usually be collected from less toxic sources in a few months as
| opposed to years that the collective takes.
|
| Every once in a while you'll get a fresh expert that hasn't
| gotten tired of posting the same information, but I stopped
| years ago bothering to share any information I had. It's always
| an up hill battle and the posts will be gone in a few hours or,
| at best, days
|
| But trolls end up dominating. If you waste your time writing
| informed sourced posts about anything (slavery is bad, the
| Holocaust happened, Earth isn't flat, etc) all that will happen
| is the person will eventually just criticize basic grammar
| mistakes, insult you, and post the same garbage in a new
| thread.
|
| If you make the mistake of arguing with organized trolls,
| you'll get link bombed with shit sources and barely
| tangentially related long sources that suck up your time before
| you realize that they don't present any facts that are actually
| relevant to the discussion.
|
| Even 4chan knows this. The business board has measures in place
| to inform readers when a poster is the same person.
|
| Real names are not needed online to have good discussion. But
| it's absolutely needed for posters to have repercussions for
| past posts. True anonymity leads to shallow discussion and
| trolls.
| echelon wrote:
| You need anonymity with reputational score.
|
| Satoshi Nakamoto.
|
| Associate anonymous posts with an optional pubkey signing.
| Have tooling that can filter out bad actor signatures and
| highlight the ones you care about.
|
| Have your interest graph and peer graph suggest new public
| keys to follow.
|
| Identities can remain private.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| I'm not aware of any platforms, blogs or other internet
| entities (accepting public comments) that chose this
| system. I'm thinking there are reasons for that choice.
| nanomonkey wrote:
| Secure Scuttlebutt does exactly this. It is supper
| effective, and the only social network that I participate
| in, except for HN.
|
| It's effective because you follow the profiles that you
| find interesting, when a profile becomes abusive you
| simply block them from being replicated by your machine.
| Folks can have as many profiles/feeds as they like, so
| you can separate out portions of your life that others
| might find distasteful, or boring.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| The reason is that it's a technically difficult problem,
| and thus requires investment to solve (and the most
| profitable/successful platforms don't want to reduce the
| amount of information they have about their users).
|
| Fortunately there is work being done in this area by Free
| Software projects. In particular, the Matrix team are
| trying to implement a decentralised reputation system[0]
| and there's no reason this couldn't be applied to the
| Fediverse too.
|
| [0] https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-
| in-matrix...
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| What's the difference between doing this versus just using
| nicknames like everyone does already?
| Steltek wrote:
| The reputation graph prevents Sybil attacks (mobs of sock
| puppets, etc).
|
| The crypto aspect can obscure a series of posts by the
| same author although I don't think it would protect you
| from the site owner themselves.
| flipflip wrote:
| Well, you name quite the case, but besides that. I think the
| fact that anonymous discussions derail easier and don't
| exactly get the best out of people, isn't relevant at all. I
| would even say, it is a price, we should be willing to pay.
|
| First of all being anonymous is important if you want to call
| out far more powerful entities than you, which can lash out
| to you. Second I think it is important to see, what the
| darker side of society thinks. Even if you remove them from
| the normal internet, they will still find a way to
| communicate, but now it is no longer out in the open. It is
| better to know then to not know.
| rndgermandude wrote:
| 4chan's failure to me has little to do with perceived
| anonymity, and a lot more to do with the culture of an online
| community, what is tolerated within that community, where the
| red lines are, and how this is enforced. And "gamification"
| plays a role, i.e. virtual online points of some sort, be it
| "likes", be it "karma", be it "upvotes".
|
| Compare 4chan to HN, which is also open to anybody like
| 4chan, allows anonymous (or rather pseudonymous) posting, and
| has a somewhat sizeable community of people posting and many
| more "lurkers" just reading.
|
| Unlike 4chan however, HN does a reasonable job - in my
| opinion - of being clear what is allowed and what is not,
| enforces these community standards quite vigorously most of
| the time, through moderation not just by moderators but the
| community (flagging), and generally stops outright abuse and
| harassment, and more often than not stops trolls and people
| accidentally starting flame wars. That has to be balanced
| against not over-banning/over-flagging content, which
| happens, too. Not everything is perfect in the niche that is
| HN - nothing ever is - but the contrast to 4chan is quite
| stark, even to the supposedly more moderate and "sfw" 4chan
| boards like /g/ (technology).
|
| Gamification is a double edged sword. On one hand, it may
| encourage people to instead of their actual views post quick
| quips or hide their true opinions and opt instead to just say
| what they believe the community wants to hear. On the other
| hand, in places like 4chan which lack such gamification, you
| don't have to fear burning your reputation as nobody has a
| visible reputation, which may encourage people to cross lines
| as there is no way for the community to sanction such
| behavior.
| Loughla wrote:
| >which may encourage people to cross lines as there is no
| way for the community to sanction such behavior.
|
| It's also hard for some people to understand that
| individuals who hold extreme views and use poor
| sources/facts could, in fact, be people who actually hold
| those views. They're not trolls. They're not doing it to
| get a rise out of you. Sometimes, those people are
| legitimate in their beliefs, regardless of how ass-
| backwards they are.
|
| And I don't know why people don't understand that.
| smoldesu wrote:
| 4chan is also just a bad demonstration of how anonymous
| culture functions, too. It's become such a pop-culture
| hotspot that not a single board is really 'usable' like
| they were in 2012 ("I think I'll check /t/ for
| $NEW_MOVIE"). However, as you start to branch out into
| other imageboards, this lack of identity really helps drive
| the discussions. When you completely remove the upvotes,
| downvotes, score-based comment ordering and profiles,
| people are less interested in petty, pyhrric victories. IRC
| is also another great place where people are oftentimes
| more interested in fruitful discussion than saving face.
| theHIDninja wrote:
| Every imageboard besides 4chan functions just fine and has
| perfectly good discussions on things. You can blame 4chan's
| moderation and administration for its failure.
| ajvs wrote:
| 4chan is also a poor demonstration because you can't be
| persistently pseudonymous. It's an imageboard.
|
| Compare that to forums which are based on usernames, where
| there is usually higher quality discussion because you have a
| post history and this weeds out the bots and trolls.
| kordlessagain wrote:
| With AI, you'll never meet them and know what they look like.
| [deleted]
| oxfordmale wrote:
| I can see the pros and cons of anonymity. However, personally I
| would delete a lot of my social media accounts if they forced
| me to disclose my identity. The case of Monika at Stackoverflow
| suggest you have to be really careful when using your full
| name, even on reputable sites. Data miners would also
| absolutely love it and governments are powerless to act on
| abuse as many of these companies are outside an enforceable
| jurisdiction.
| kodah wrote:
| In case anyone else didn't know the story of Monica Cellio at
| StackOverflow it's a good one:
| https://cellio.medium.com/dear-stack-overflow-we-need-to-
| tal...
| HWR_14 wrote:
| That doesn't seem to tell the story of Monica Cellio, but
| be a story written by her. One maddeningly vague, unless I
| want to start digging through tweets to uncover all the
| things she is alluding to.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| The important part is that Stack Exchange mentioned Monica
| Celio by name in a press release in a manner that was
| perceived to be defamatory by Monica. The original
| disagreement was about the CoC. That
| disagreement/misunderstanding should have been handled in
| private, there was no need to throw her under the bus
| naravara wrote:
| > Anonymity is important because it allows you to have
| discussions purely based on the arguments and opinions, without
| the bias of who youre talking to. I often find myself having a
| wonderfully deep discussion with someone online, and when I
| eventually find out what they look like (etc), I often realize
| that they dont look as friendly, educated, etc as they are.
|
| Yes and no. Anonymity also prompts people to make lots of
| assumptions about you based on what and how you say things that
| may not hold and may even distort how the messages are
| received.
|
| For example, I'm an ethnic minority but if I break from certain
| aspects of identarian political dogma it is generally assumed
| that I am White. Women who deviate from a certain line on
| gender issues are, similarly, often assumed to be male unless
| they indicate otherwise. On issues where a person's lived
| experiences stemming from their identity might matter, the
| assumption of there being a 'default' identity ends up kind of
| polarizing perspectives and eliding nuances and potential
| middle-ground on a host of issues.
|
| Put another way, it has been said that "on the internet nobody
| knows you're a dog." But not everyone defines themselves by
| their "dogness" to the same extent, nor does being a "dog" mean
| the same thing to all dogs. But since we assume everyone is a
| default template until they loudly and proudly fly an
| identifying marker, the only voices who speak for the dogs will
| be the doggiest of the doggy, the people whose identity as dogs
| is the most important thing to them in that moment.
|
| Bringing that back to a concrete example, I remember when I
| first made the switch from Windows to Macintosh in the early
| aughts (in the peak of the Switch ad era). Initially making the
| switch was kind of a revelation. I had really just never
| experienced a computer that was well designed before nor
| technology that put this much attention towards--what I would
| later learn to refer to as--UI/UX. I could not stop
| evangelizing this to everyone who would listen because, to me,
| it was new and super cool and I was just really really
| enthusiastic about it. This happened often enough that Apple
| fanatics online got a reputation for being over-exuberant and
| kind of deluded. But the thing is, after a few years I just
| stopped posting about Apple stuff because I had grown into
| having more balanced and nuanced perspectives on computing. But
| the assumption in a place like Slashdot back then was that
| you're a Linux or Windows guy unless you state otherwise. Thus
| only the newly converted, over-excited Apple fanboys are taken
| as representative of Mac users and the ones with mellower
| perspectives are drowned out.
|
| With computing platforms it's all rather frivolous and probably
| doesn't matter. But when it comes to social or political
| issues, this dynamic can have real effects on what we think of
| as an authentically [group] opinion and who gets to speak for
| whom. I think it has a tendency to foster a certain
| essentialist way of looking at the world that is rife with
| ecological fallacies.
| majormajor wrote:
| Anonymity _can_ enable that but it also enables far nastier
| things.
|
| There are pros and cons. Simply pointing out pros is not enough
| to win the day.
| vangelis wrote:
| my favorite part about non-anonymous accounts is being able
| to find their employer if they say something that's annoying.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >my favorite part about non-anonymous accounts is being
| able to find their employer if they say something that's
| annoying.
|
| An excellent (sarcasm registered and understood, BTW)
| point.
|
| I am a practitioner of BDSM[0], which is, in some circles,
| quite controversial.
|
| Despite the fact that my activities are always consensual
| and never cause harm _to anyone_ , if my employer, clients
| or others with whom I have unrelated interactions with had
| negative ideas about such things, I could suffer serious
| repercussions.
|
| I generally don't discuss such things online (or offline,
| if those I'm around aren't trusted), but if I did (as I am
| now), forcing me to link those discussions with my "legal"
| identity, could inflict real damage on my life -- even
| though nothing that I do is illegal or harmful.
|
| As such, Vangelis is 100% correct. My private activities,
| unrelated to my work, are none of my employer's (or anyone
| else's) business, nor is it a danger/threat to anyone. If I
| didn't have the veil of pseudonymity here, I would never
| even hint at it.
|
| And _that 's_ the problem with de-anonymization.
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/BDSM
| kbelder wrote:
| I'm upvoting you because I think you make a good argument,
| using sarcasm, for anonymity. If you were indeed serious,
| please let me know, and I'll remove the upvote. Thanks.
| vangelis wrote:
| that's right (about the sarcasm)
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| It _should_ be enough to win the day.
|
| There is nothing other than anonymity than can provide the
| pro put forth by the OP. On the other hand, the "cons," you
| are making non-specific reference towards are achievable by
| any number of strategies and are a common facet of everyday
| life.
| [deleted]
| JasonFruit wrote:
| When the conversation starts with, "Let's ban anonymous
| accounts!", then enumerating points in favor of anonymous
| accounts is the right response.
| slg wrote:
| This is troubling logic if we expand it to other areas. For
| example, what if someone says "Let's ban killing other
| people"? Is it enough to point out that sometimes killing
| people saves the lives of other people? Should we outlaw
| killing in self defense? Should we outlaw killing people
| who are an imminent threat like active shooters? If you
| agree that sometimes killing can be justified, does that
| mean we need to allow all murder? Obviously not. These
| issues have nuance. There are always pros and cons. So I
| will repeat majormajor's point, the mere existence of a pro
| is not enough of an argument.
| burnafter182 wrote:
| You're diverting.
|
| Being attacked and/or killed is almost never voluntary.
| Viewing anonymous posts on the internet is almost always
| voluntary. Whatever damage _is_ caused is emergent from
| the framework of interpretations of the individual. This
| is closer kin to victimless crime as opposed to real
| crime than it is conditional rules of engagement. I 'm
| under the impression you're engaging in sophistry though,
| "This is troubling logic if we expand it to other areas."
| You're correct, a square peg does not fit in the round
| hole. And you've also failed to negate the myriad
| arguments favoring continued anonymity with any salient
| cons, but have instead erected a strawman.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| People spread harmful lies better when they aren't banned
| from doing so and when the harm they do is attached to a
| pseudonym not their actual life.
|
| It is vastly harder to exclude people spreading harmful
| lies when they can do it under 27 trivially created and
| then discarded identities across 12 platform.
|
| It's trivial to argue that people agree to engage with
| online communities as they agree to engage in in person
| communities but what is the realistic alternative? Both
| huddle in your basement AND don't engage online either?
|
| It is unrealistic when your online life is a large part
| of people's gateway to communication and culture. People
| deserve to be able to engage in such without also
| expecting harm.
|
| Furthermore people's online hate touches people's lives
| with or without their opting for engagement when the
| festering hate nurtured online gives birth to real world
| violence, mass murder, coup, collapse of civil society.
|
| It seems trivially true that anonymity enables hate and I
| support both people's right to voice unpopular but not
| harmful ideas and consequences for those who call for
| hate and violence.
|
| You may note my username is simply a plain old name and
| it's my real name. I cannot any longer support anonymity
| save for cases where safety demand it.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >You may note my username is simply a plain old name and
| it's my real name. I cannot any longer support anonymity
| save for cases where safety demand it.
|
| Please ask yourself how you would feel if this site did
| that -- or even, in fact, if HN didn't actually make anon
| accounts (without even requiring an email confirmation)
| so easy that it's an incredibly common occurrence.
|
| One of the things I like about HN is that while anonymity
| is certainly possible having an identity which is known
| to the community (whether that be one's actual identity,
| or in my case a _pseudonymous_ one), allows us to build
| (and /or repudiate/destroy, as we choose) credibility and
| engage in discussions over time.
|
| I will say that 'nobody9999' is not the name on my
| passport, nor is it the name I use with my bank or (when
| I actually used such things) social media accounts.
|
| However, a search through HN's archives will,
| nonetheless, provide a history of my comments and
| submissions.
|
| Should I turn into a raving asshole, the
| admins/moderators can sanction/ban me without ever
| knowing my 'legal' name.
|
| That makes a lot more sense than forcing folks to tie
| their legal identities to _everything_ they do online.
| burnafter182 wrote:
| > People spread harmful lies better when they aren't
| banned from doing so and when the harm they do is
| attached to a pseudonym not their actual life.
|
| Do they? To me it seems that people demand credentials in
| most cases to merit trust from an unknown. I certainly
| don't hop on 4chan and assume literal factual information
| is being doled out in every post. Nor on Twitter, nor
| Fecebook. I _might_ backtest whatever they 're proposing,
| but remain skeptical until I've seen it with my own eyes.
| And in any case if we look into the annals of history,
| this is blatantly false, there are reams of examples of
| people lying in plain sight. Tyrants and demagogues,
| kings and courts, basically every politician,
| corporations, and just regular people. Of course we've
| always had the issue of "determination of truth", history
| to the victor and such.
|
| >It is vastly harder to exclude people spreading harmful
| lies when they can do it under 27 trivially created and
| then discarded identities across 12 platform.
|
| Let's assume we've actually objectively determined the
| truth: what happens when the liars are let free? They're
| running around screaming 1+1=3, how is it that they're
| going to intuited by everyone else? I suspect, as idiots.
| Naive interventionism in this case turns them into a
| divided minority instead of an integrated (and stupid)
| extremity. Upon being separated they go off and get more
| and more wild, 1+1=5, 10, 0... Their bonds grow in
| strength because they're made a separate minority, and
| far less likely to cease their stupidity.
|
| >It's trivial to argue that people agree to engage with
| online communities as they agree to engage in in person
| communities but what is the realistic alternative? Both
| huddle in your basement AND don't engage online either?
|
| For one, I'm not saying that everything everywhere had
| ought to have the facilities of anonymity, but that
| instituting a mode of state coercion blanketing every
| site on the internet is plainly a hazard. But this line
| is non-sequitur anyways, we're talking about anonymity in
| social media not in-person interaction.
|
| >It is unrealistic when your online life is a large part
| of people's gateway to communication and culture. People
| deserve to be able to engage in such without also
| expecting harm.
|
| How do you define harm? Here's a salient conundrum: a guy
| asks a girl out, she tells him she's not interested. Or
| the obverse, however you like it. In either case they're
| very likely emotionally wounded. Then what? What do we
| take from this?
|
| >Furthermore people's online hate touches people's lives
| with or without their opting for engagement when the
| festering hate nurtured online gives birth to real world
| violence, mass murder, coup, collapse of civil society.
|
| The Nazis did this, the Khmer Rogue did this, the
| Bolsheviks did this all in plain sight. Millions dead in
| their wake. Violence was often a means to a better end -
| depending on _perspective_. The Hellenic empire was
| established through warfare, Alexander has been intuited
| as a great unifier, bringing together a vast and highly
| integrated culture made of many diverse cultures. The
| French revolution was a supermassive turning point, and
| largely lead us to be where we are today, but it was
| extremely violent. The USA was founded after a
| revolutionary war. The concern is wanton violence, which
| in any case is rare, and I suspect anonymity on the
| internet has little to contribute to it overall, despite
| the narratives espoused by many.
|
| Civil society is free discourse, but we've long been
| eroding it.
|
| >It seems trivially true that anonymity enables hate and
| I support both people's right to voice unpopular but not
| harmful ideas and consequences for those who call for
| hate and violence.
|
| If we adopt the relativistic standpoint, every opinion is
| harmful to someone. Utilitarianism is flawed, not
| everyone can be happy, even negative utilitarianism is
| flawed.
| slg wrote:
| >Viewing anonymous posts on the internet is almost always
| voluntary.
|
| No it isn't. Social media is a near required part of
| modern life for a lot of people, especially those in the
| public sphere. For example, it is near impossible to be a
| freelance journalist without a social media account. Once
| you have that account, people are free to push their
| anonymous posts to you.
|
| >This is closer kin to victimless crime as opposed to
| real crime than it is conditional rules of engagement.
|
| This is just a baffling comment and shows you are out of
| touch with the type of abuse we are talking about. I
| can't imagine you have seen any of this first hand if you
| think this is "close kin to victimless crime". There are
| very much victims on the end of this abuse.
| burnafter182 wrote:
| You literally just indicated that anonymity is important.
| Freelancers could publish under a pseudonym - a form of
| anonymity to protect themselves from the public.
|
| And I mean, there was that one time that some dude, in
| person at a press conference threw a shoe at George W.
| Bush, the President of the United States of America, he
| wasn't anonymous, and what level of force could've been
| deployed as recourse ran up to death, evidently not
| adequate disincentive.
|
| I can make a victim out of myself by a few alterations in
| my personal narrative. I _choose_ not to.
| slg wrote:
| This is classic victim blaming. It is the fault of the
| person being abused for either not being preemptively
| anonymous or for "choosing" to allow doxing, death
| threats, and the like being part of their "personal
| narrative"?
| JasonFruit wrote:
| The conversation (from the MP quoted in the article)
| started with those cons, so the pros were the necessary
| response. Our agreement on your point might have been
| more evident had I been less terse.
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| I agree with that. My concern, and what I assume is the
| concern of others, is that those putting these
| regulations in place would have neither the knowledge or
| intentions to consider that nuance. Considering that
| nuance myself, I don't think I could properly implement
| such laws.
| slg wrote:
| "It is hard to make a good law" is a bad reason to stop
| people from even trying.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| That's true. On the other hand, "The pros and cons of
| such a law are so mixed as to make a good one
| impossible," is a good reason not to make such a law. I
| think many of us see any law that could be described as
| "banning anonymous accounts" as being written with too
| broad a nib to be useful.
| Cycl0ps wrote:
| " _No rule_ is better than _bad rule_ " may be closer to
| my argument, though it dips further into anarchy than I'd
| like. People are welcome to try as they like, but
| governments aren't people. If Facebook wanted to try some
| system like Parler had I wouldn't protest against it, but
| the UK government mandating it would have far more reach
| and requires more consideration as a result.
| ethanbond wrote:
| The conversation didn't start with that. The conversation
| started with widespread abuse online originating from
| anonymous accounts.
|
| Communities without abuse problems never even float the
| idea of banning anonymity. One reason being it's extremely
| expensive to do that if not effectively impossible.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| > Communities without abuse problems never even float the
| idea of banning anonymity.
|
| This implies that many communities with anonymity don't
| face abuse problems, so anonymity is not the root of the
| problem. Maybe the problem lies in the subject matter
| that the community handles and the sort of people that
| attracts.
| evgen wrote:
| Anonymity makes abuse easier. It diminishes the cost to
| the abuser and places almost all of the cost on the
| victim. I would also recommend that you not be so quick
| to push the blame back on 'the community', because when
| you do so you tend to end up with the gatekeepers for
| those communities being forced to shoulder the cost and
| then we end up with twitter bans, Facebook moderation,
| and a lot of pearl clutching by the online free speech
| brigade. Most of the general pubic puts up with
| anonymity, but they certainly do not demand it and if it
| becomes too costly or too toxic they seem happy to chuck
| it overboard.
| ethanbond wrote:
| No it really doesn't imply that, and I don't think many
| people would argue anonymity is " _the_ " root of the
| problem. It just appears to be a contributing or
| exacerbating factor.
|
| Of course if you attract only polite people you don't
| have abuse problems regardless of anonymity.
| baloki wrote:
| Wasn't there evidence that anonymity doesn't actually
| play as big a part as people keep saying? Most of the
| Twitter abuse, you can generally identify who it is
| behind the account, it's more the forum than the
| anonymity?
| handrous wrote:
| It's the Internet. One of the things baked into the
| Internet is the abuse. It's been there from very early
| on, and it's never been substantially curbed. Some would
| probably rank it as a _defining characteristic_ of the
| Internet. Many communities have grown on the Internet, in
| which part of what defines the in-group is _when_ and
| _how_ you 're abusive, not _whether_ (of course you are).
| This isn 't a one-off, but a part of what communities
| grow around over and over again. Facebook and Twitter see
| tons of it, even when anonymity isn't a factor.
|
| The medium is the message. One of the messages of the
| Internet, as a medium, is abuse.
|
| Now, whether the take-away is "we should try to regulate
| it to stop that", or "people should stop using it to post
| details and thoughts, alongside PII and all tied to one
| traceable identity, that they wouldn't _ever_ post to the
| public-use notice board at the local grocery store,
| because it 's _fucking insane_ (as Zuck might put it,
| they 're 'dumb fucks') to post like that on the Internet
| and expect it to go well", or something else, is a matter
| for consideration.
| KingMachiavelli wrote:
| Then don't use those platforms? If you need a community
| that is going to be prone to abuse problems then make
| your own platform. Politicians and government offices
| should know better than to be using a commercial social
| media as their primary platform especially when it's not
| even based in your own country.
| ethanbond wrote:
| FWIW I agree _governments_ should not ban anonymity, but
| that's a position I'd hold regardless of whether it
| impacts abuse at all.
| drdeca wrote:
| The conversation here, I believe, refers to the posting
| of this link, and the replies to it.
| cortesoft wrote:
| Then wouldn't you say THIS conversation started saying we
| shouldn't ban anonymous accounts?
| drdeca wrote:
| I misread the title
| hellojesus wrote:
| What's wrong with just allowing users to mute/ignore others?
|
| Instead of banning anonymity (which is a ridiculous thing to
| do), platforms can provide better tools to allow users to
| curate content or join discussion rooms.
|
| If you want some type of troll blocker to prevent spam
| accounts, you can use an anonymous crypto in junction with
| sign-up for a small fee that is inconsequential to a single
| user but painful at scale for users that generate many
| accounts.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Simply pointing out pros is not enough to win the day.
|
| It's enough to convince vulnerable people who are calling out
| the misdeeds of the powerful.
|
| It might not be enough to sway the powerful who compulsively
| deploy (Gov/Corp/LEO) revenge on people who call them out.
| slg wrote:
| >It's enough to convince vulnerable people who are calling
| out the misdeeds of the powerful.
|
| Vulnerable people like the trans community that is often
| the victim in this type of anonymous social media abuse?
| Are they allowed to call out the powerful and
| disproportionately white straight cis men who control
| social media companies and allow this abuse to continue?
|
| I just find it funny that you are using an argument that is
| identical to the one used by some of the people you are
| arguing against.
| White_Wolf wrote:
| You know... I'm starting to think you are correct to be
| entirely honest. If anonimity is banned we can actually
| see who is part of those twitter cancel mobs and actually
| fine and imprison those harassing other people and send
| death threats.
|
| 50% /s
|
| I'm 100% against it tbh. There are people that would be
| dead without it(just in case anyone missed the sarcasm)
| slg wrote:
| >I'm 100% against it tbh. There are people that would be
| dead without it(just in case anyone missed the sarcasm)
|
| There are also people who are dead because of the abuse
| they took on social media. Once again, the same argument
| from both sides.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| What you are talking about is not anonymity, it is identity
| protection. There are many pre-digital examples of what it
| could be: witness protection programs, confidentiality of
| journalist sources etc. They are all established, well
| regulated and with lots of precedents of analysis of those
| practices in courts. Full anonymity can and should be banned,
| but we need to develop some sort of new professional privilege
| to protect digital identity, where you can speak as Jane Doe,
| but someone knows who you truly are. Whether it is an
| independent identity platform, a notary keeping an encryption
| key, a government agency or anyone else who can be hold
| accountable, that can be discussed and established not just in
| a law of a single country, but ideally in an international
| treaty.
| hpoe wrote:
| So two points: First you advocate special people should get
| special protections for being in a special job, I am sure
| that will work out real well.
|
| Second all of these arguments seem to suggest just letting
| the government know you identity as some sort of compromise,
| but what about when it is the government I am trying to
| avoid, sure someone can dox me, or can tell my employer to
| fire me, but only the government can arrest me and execute me
| if they determine I've done something to upset someone
| powerful enough within the government. Sure the government
| can eventually track me down with their resources, but
| anything that makes it harder is better.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| I did not say ,,special people". The confidentiality
| privilege applies to the keepers of the information about
| identity, not to the people who own the identity - that
| could be anyone. If some government wants to control what
| you say online, they will make sure you do not have any
| anonymity at all, like China does with Uigurs by forcing
| them to use devices with pre-installed tracking software.
| Many countries do not have technical capabilities to do so,
| but this also means that main beneficiaries of anonymity
| there are radical political and criminal groups rather than
| ordinary people, which may not even have good access to the
| Internet.
| EGreg wrote:
| The more I questioned why we need profile pics or real names,
| or even usernames online, the more I realized ... we don't.
| They are just vectors for deanonymizing people across sites.
|
| Will I remember "lionkor" among thousands of other HN posters
| and think about your previous posts? No. But I can click and
| see your other posts, if the site lets me have that feature.
| And more importantly, your REPUTATION tells me how many people
| have upvoted your content that you produce. That's what's
| relevant. I could also maybe see how strongly you support
| certain positions (tags/badges) in your profile. It's the
| latter (reputations and badges) which can serve as a filter for
| people to set up if they want to ignore trolls and sybil
| accounts: https://xkcd.com/810/
|
| Similarly we don't need human-readable URLs, we could do
| perfectly fine with hashes and no politics about domain names.
| The domain name system is just a glorified search engine, and
| URLs are only useful for landing on the homepage of a site ...
| anything longer becomes increasingly hard to verbally
| communicate, and if we're doing it non-verbally then we may as
| well send a non-readable URL (e.g. via a link or QR code or a
| javascript variable).
| Kafkish wrote:
| I just discussed this with a bunch of my friends. If you're
| having a high level technical exchange with somebody that you
| don't know, then you find out that that other person is a
| female, you're really impressed, that a girl will be that good
| at this very technical topic.
|
| If, OTOH, you find out that that other person is a black guy
| (assuming you're white), you go through one of two reactions:
| If you're opinion of blacks is low, then you're really
| impressed. If you don't particularly like blacks (read:
| racist), then you're disappointed, and slightly pissed off -
| that that other guy knows more than you do, or know so much
| about a very technical topic, when he belongs to a group that
| you've been told are not very bright.
|
| Humans are interesting creatures in this regards. That's why
| the right to remain anonymous online should be a given.
| kodah wrote:
| I'm white and a male and I don't share any of these
| expectations when I interview or speak to folks. I'm further
| saddened that anyone thinks there's an expectation enough of
| white people or men that is concrete enough to put it in
| plaintext like this.
|
| In my head, this is an example of a problem moderation or
| lack of anonymity won't fix. People have to learn to see this
| kind of comment for the dud that it is on their own.
| LocalH wrote:
| You make a lot of assumptions regarding people you have never
| met. Why do you discount the white people who don't have the
| reactions that you presume they all do?
| batch12 wrote:
| This doesn't describe me at all? I am impressed by someone's
| understanding of a topic and bring no expectations to the
| table. Not everyone is fixated on race and gender
| stereotypes. This is a sad lie being pushed by people who
| want us to stay divided.
| [deleted]
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > If you're having a high level technical exchange with
| somebody that you don't know, then you find out that that
| other person is a female, you're really impressed, that a
| girl will be that good at this very technical topic.
|
| What nonsense is that? I've never noticed any correlation
| between gender and technical skills. I mean, I've noticed
| that there are fewer women in the technical space, but not
| that their skills are lower.
|
| You then seem to go on to assume all white people are racist
| against black people. Because both of your examples are
| racist.
| majormajor wrote:
| This seems to say a lot about you but not so much about
| others. You're saying your default opinion is that women
| wouldn't be good at a technical topic. And that you believe
| that white people only have two possible opinions coming in
| to an encounter with a black person: your opinion could be
| low, or you could be racist.
|
| That's a very limited perspective.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I also don't see how those are two separate opinions.
| Having a low opinion of someone based on the color of their
| skin isn't racism?
| Kafkish wrote:
| You're free to deny reality. Trying to keep your head
| buried in the sand will not change the fact that there's a
| sky above you.
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Not all people that use this site will have undergone the
| same sort of intellectual journey into race as those of us
| in more diverse areas. True tolerance would be to
| understand that not all people in the HN demographic come
| from places like the US that are true melting pots. There
| was no evidence of racist thinking in the OP's remarks, and
| you don't have to go about suggesting there was to make the
| point you're attempting to make.
| shuntress wrote:
| Being rebuked for saying something ignorant and harmful
| will just be part of their "intellectual journey".
| AndrewUnmuted wrote:
| Look, you are clearly chastising an account whose first
| language is not English, and for not having penned their
| remarks in a way that would satisfy the crypto-fascist
| tendencies of the average tech worker living in SF. You
| can call what he said ignorant on some level if you read
| into it enough - why would you, is my question? - but the
| idea that it is harmful is ridiculous. Your remarks and
| others calling this guy racist are far more harmful than
| anything he's said so far.
|
| Many of us may be programmers but we should still be able
| to grok things with more nuance than this.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >you are clearly chastising an account whose first
| language is not English
|
| Why do you think this? Their spelling and grammar show
| few obvious mistakes to me, and after reading your
| comment I looked at their history and they seem to be an
| American for at least twenty years.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| You don't have to come from a "true melting pot" to know
| not to be racist.
|
| I do believe there was some racism to GP's remarks, that
| this hypothetical white guy can only make prejudice
| assumptions.
| dncornholio wrote:
| I have no idea what you are talking about. I think I feel
| offended even.
| bell-cot wrote:
| My reaction is to say that people should have the choice of
| being either (1)anonymous or (2)nasty when on-line. Not both.
| (Non-anonymous and nice obviously being allowed.)
|
| Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at
| scale.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at
| scale
|
| That is the problem. It's an unsolvable problem for the
| near+ future - unless we shift so much power from the
| public to the powerful that they can silence the public on
| a whim.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at
| scale.
|
| There are technical solutions to this. The old one was
| called hashcash, which a predecessor to cryptocurrency.
|
| To get an account you would have to do something like $5 in
| electricity worth of computation one time, which you can do
| without giving anyone your name. But then if you do
| something foolish and get banned, it'll cost you another $5
| (or however much is necessary to provide a sufficient
| deterrent) to get a new account.
|
| Obviously now you could just have them pay (or mine for
| you) a small amount of cryptocurrency, which would then go
| to offset the cost of banning the spammers who still try
| their luck.
| ademup wrote:
| This just seems like punishing the poor, very much like
| fines for speeding. "Rich" people get the freedom to do
| and say what they wish, but the poor must sit still and
| only convey favorable opinions.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Fixed fines always have that issue. Bezos racked up tens
| (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars in parking tickets in
| DC while visiting the site of his new house.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This just seems like punishing the poor, very much like
| fines for speeding. "Rich" people get the freedom to do
| and say what they wish, but the poor must sit still and
| only convey favorable opinions.
|
| It's $5, not $500. Anybody using an account long-term
| will experience more cost from having it deleted than
| from paying that amount for a new one.
|
| The reason it works is that a poor person gets to
| amortize that $5 over the life of the account, typically
| ten years or more, which makes it a negligible amount
| even for someone making minimum wage. Whereas the spammer
| gets banned and needs a new account every 90 seconds.
|
| And if the problem is that your mods are imposing
| censorship on disadvantaged people, you don't _want_
| something that makes that sort of "moderation"
| effective. But that's a different problem. Maybe try not
| having such a small number of large platforms so it's
| easier for people to abandon the ones doing such things.
| vincnetas wrote:
| but it also has a dark side that you can pretend to have deep
| and meaningful discussion and push your agenda and abuse naive
| person on the other side of conversation.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| How does a mandatory profile picture help with this?
| anyonecancode wrote:
| I think the relevant property is not anonymity, it's
| accountability. The argument against anonymity is that it will
| make people more accountable, but that's not always true. Rather,
| it's the way an online community structures itself.
|
| For instance, here on HN we have the ability to be anonymous (on
| a sliding scale -- people can say who they are in their profiles,
| or be completely anonymous, or somewhere in between, posting
| contact info so that with effort they can be tied to their
| offline identity). But compared to many online communities,
| there's very little abuse here, and I'd argue that's because
| there's accountability -- there are clear standards, and those
| are enforced both by the moderators and by the community itself.
| Whether you post as yourself, fully anonymously, or somewhere in
| between, there's a community standard that hold you accountable
| for your posts.
|
| I, personally, highly value the ability to have online identities
| somewhat separate from my offline one. I'm not trying to hide
| anything, I simply find it freeing to be able to enter a
| community without dragging around the weight of previous personal
| history, and to be able to establish an identity specific to that
| community I'm participating in. I always found this one of the
| amazing things about the internet, and I've been saddened to see
| that undermined. At the same time, I absolutely try to be
| accountable for what I say online, I expect others to hold me to
| that, and I hold others to that standard. None of this requires I
| know someone's "real" name, or that they know mine.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| > I think the relevant property is not anonymity, it's
| accountability.
|
| Indeed. There has been quite a bit of discussion in the UK
| about the lax sentences given to people posting racist comments
| on social media. The platforms don't seem to take these issues
| seriously and the courts don't seem to either.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Part of why this works on HN is our small size. I will almost
| certainly bump into you again on here, and likely have before.
|
| Prisoner's dilemma is altered when it's a repeated trust
| action.
| anyonecancode wrote:
| One interesting design choice on HN is that the user names
| are not very prominent. I often don't even notice them,
| skipping right past the user name and to the comment. So I do
| think what you're saying here is partly right, but not
| completely.
| pixelgeek wrote:
| Back in the 'olden days' you almost always knew the people in
| your groups and knew the trolls. Heck you sometimes knew who
| the trolls in other groups were.
|
| Then AOL came and ruined it for everyone. Millions of new
| people. No-one read the rules and the quality of content went
| down precipitously.
|
| And that news group apocalypse now seems quaint in comparison
| to Facebook and Twitter.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Why not go the other way, and make all social broadcasts be
| anonymous? Then we would talk about policies instead of
| personalities. It just becomes ideas and thoughts in the cloud.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| "Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small
| minds discuss people."
| travisgriggs wrote:
| Has the internet degraded along these lines over the years?
|
| In the beginning, largely unknown (essentially anonymous)
| people discussed technical things. The net felt like a cool
| place. I was enlightened by it.
|
| And then as more people showed up, news outlets pivoted more
| and more to keep us up to date with what was happening via
| the internet. Families took to keeping family blogs to share
| news with each other.
|
| Now days, it's largely a platform to build and promote cult
| personalities.
| psyc wrote:
| I once made the rookie mistake of repeating this quote to my
| SO when they tried to engage me in gossip. Wow that did not
| go over.
| high_5 wrote:
| Banning anonymous social media accounts would just amplify the
| similar behaviour to swatting.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Reducing anonymity is the solution to easier advertising and
| targeting, and convincing investors that your users and growth
| are organic and not bot-related. The "minimizing online abuse"
| aspect has always been PR.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Social media needs make it closer to like you are talking to
| someone in real life. Probably better real ID verification.
| anonypla wrote:
| BTW https://anonymousplanet.org
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Pro tip: when you see a string of mush words, like navigate,
| negotiate, access, pathways, marginalized, manifest, and
| discourse, you can safely skip the article.
| teddyh wrote:
| For anyone wanting a more complete list:
|
| https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Re...
| LongTimeAnon wrote:
| Long-time anon here.
|
| You will need a team of data scientists to express the formula
| capable of counting how many websites, social media, forums, and
| entire internets I've been banned from.
|
| And yet, here I still stand.
|
| You think banning deprived me of influence or participating in
| the conversation.
|
| And yet, here I still stand.
|
| You think that we can't get you addicted to banning people. That
| we can't make you fixate on trees and ignore the forest you leave
| aflame in your wake. All in the name to hunt us.
|
| And yet, here I still stand.
|
| You think we can't steer the conversation by making your new
| addiction to censorship the center piece of our influence
| operations.
|
| And yet, here I still stand.
|
| We taken the eternal flame war between overeducated face-saving
| keyboard activists and trolls from BBSs and over the course of
| decades, scaled it to consume the entirety of actual meat space.
| And you, dedicated banners, have always opted in, telling
| yourself that with greater scale, you can finally defeat us.
|
| And yet, here I still stand.
|
| You will never overcome your addiction to censorship. We control
| you. We own you. You slash and burn everything you touch and we
| steer you into our political enemies at will.
|
| And when you have finally made so many enemies that they
| retaliate against you, here I still stand in the aftermath.
|
| You will never defeat the long-time anons. You are our servants.
| woeirua wrote:
| The simplest solution here is to require users to present
| government recognized credentials when signing up for accounts.
| Users can then create pseudonymous accounts that preserve some
| notion of anonymity, but when they become abusive the user can
| then be held accountable in the real world. Any solution here
| needs to be gated by the courts though, otherwise it would be
| ripe for abuse in and of itself through doxxing.
| anon22hdjsks wrote:
| How is this "simple"? how do you imagine I would implement this
| to allow people to comment on my blog.
| wackro wrote:
| I heard a discussion on the radio where a lady was describing
| the potential use of a third party identity provider for all
| social media. This would be instead of the government.
|
| If I understood it correctly, the third party would hold your
| ID etc, and would vouch for you on signup to services. Users
| would be anonymous/pseudonymous until a warrant was acquired by
| the police.
|
| A third party would be better IMO than the government. Not sure
| I like it either way tho. Who is the third party? Breaches
| would be an issue as the other poster has said. And too much
| like big brother.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I don't think having a third party instead of government
| control would be any better because the Snowden leaks showed
| us that the intelligence agencies will simply secretly co-opt
| the service to their own ends.
| tzs wrote:
| Instead of _a_ third party make it shared among multiple
| third parties such that it requires agreement among N of
| the third parties to reveal an identity.
|
| Spread the third parties among jurisdictions and make N
| large enough that no government has enough of the third
| parties under its jurisdiction to be able to coerce an
| identity reveal.
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Yes, and I'm surprised that mandatory data retention by
| ISPs hasn't already gone further down that slippery slope.
|
| Now that people are used to that idea, I expect a
| government to say "Why don't you store the logs on _our_
| computers instead, to save money and be protected with
| military-grade security. We promise we will still go to the
| hassle of getting a warrant before _reading_ from the
| database... Unless of course there 's an emergency...".
|
| Perhaps the reason they haven't said this yet is because
| government cyber-security agencies have already gained
| real-time unwarranted access to the ISPs' logs. I don't
| suppose a company could be sued for not correctly securing
| this data against the government, since the government
| could hide behind "national security" to block any evidence
| being admitted in a court case.
| C19is20 wrote:
| Imagine the effects of a data breach, though.
| gjs278 wrote:
| abusive how? for calling them names? what if an admin starts
| leaking your details for defending them?
| specialist wrote:
| No, there is no silver bullet.
|
| Yes, banning anonymity is dumb idea.
|
| Also, opt-in authenticated identity is necessary.
|
| It's ridiculous that bots, trolls, and sockpuppets are given the
| same esteem and protections as real people.
|
| To curtail harassment, nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic
| newsfeeds) and ad revenue biz models.
| hatchnyc wrote:
| > nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic newsfeeds)
|
| Yes, if my feed is composed entire of accounts I follow sorted
| by date descending, there is little to no opportunity nor
| incentive for bots to exist at all. Sure, our proverbial crazy
| uncle is still going to send out conspiracy theories to
| everyone in his contacts, but this has existed forever and
| never seemed to cause that much trouble compared to algorithmic
| newsfeeds.
|
| Even if you include results from followed topics sorted by
| explicit upvotes, so long as there's none of these inferred
| engagement metrics used in ranking then the blast radius of a
| malicious account will be severely limited as it's a lot harder
| to game explicitly expressed user intent.
| specialist wrote:
| Totally agree. If UX of social media was like a RSS
| newsreader, I'd mosdef use it on the daily.
|
| Yes and:
|
| Nerfing could be as modest as dialing down virality. Like
| maybe a rate regulator.
|
| IIRC, the velocity of rage posting is way greater than
| puppies and kittens. So just slow that crap down. Or just
| don't turbo boost it to big with.
| bilbo0s wrote:
| > _To curtail harassment, nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic
| newsfeeds) and ad revenue biz models._
|
| Speaking only on the money side of this, that is a very easy
| (and popular) thing to say, but a very difficult thing to do.
| How would you support these services without the ad revenue
| business model? Most of the other business models people have
| tried do not pay the salaries of the network operations people
| required to run the service.
|
| And I can only imagine that even today people are still going
| to be reticent to pay for most of the social media services
| they get online. Most will just wait for another free social
| media service to come along.
|
| To rid ourselves of ad revenue based business models and
| algorithms, we need to find, and prove, new business models
| that work at scale. They don't have to rake in as much money as
| ads, but they do need to pay for operations and the resultant
| salaries. And that's not a small amount of money at scale.
| specialist wrote:
| Who has a right to profit? Especially when profit comes from
| harm.
|
| I believe but cannot prove than most targeted advertising is
| fraudulant. When whistleblowers leak those metrics, this
| might be a self correcting problem.
|
| Meanwhile...
|
| There are plenty of other ways to run a business.
|
| metafilter, craigslist, ravelery.org, others do well, without
| harming their users.
| xanaxagoras wrote:
| Depends on the platform. On Reddit for example, I'd rather hear
| from the bots, trolls and sockpuppets.
| specialist wrote:
| Heh. Examples or recommendations?
|
| I'm fine with bots if they're obviously bots. I think it was
| US Senator Mark Warner that proposed that reform.
| colpabar wrote:
| > _It 's ridiculous that bots, trolls, and sockpuppets are
| given the same esteem and protections as real people._
|
| Agreed. I think any talk of the problems of online anonymity
| should be focused on bots first and foremost. From my
| understanding, it's pretty easy to detect like 90% of bot
| users. Can't we go after those instead? I don't really care
| that real people online can be mean anonymously, because at the
| end of the day, it's just one person. But an army of bots? That
| has a much stronger affect, especially when they all amplify
| each other's posts and game the algorithms so that they get
| promoted and seen by more people.
|
| Any talk of the "dangers of online anonymity" that isn't about
| bots is just a deceptive way of arguing for more online
| surveillance. This example seems especially egregious, because
| they're somehow using an MP's murder to push it even though it
| has literally nothing to do with it.
| saddlerustle wrote:
| > it's pretty easy to detect like 90% of bot users
|
| How to tell someone's never worked on anti-abuse at scale
| liquidise wrote:
| That's unfair. I was in charge of anti-abuse for a dating
| site with millions of users and my gut reaction was "just
| 90%?".
|
| The problem with anti-abuse at scale isn't catching the
| 90-99%. It is the remaining 1%. Have 10M abuse accounts
| with a 99% success rate and you are left with 100k spam
| accounts. That, and making sure you aren't catching too
| many innocent customers in your efforts.
| specialist wrote:
| Why is it hard? I have some experience with demographic
| databases.
|
| I take it as a given that Facebook, NSA, whomever, have
| uniquely identified every person, living and dead. I just
| don't understand how or why fake accounts are created.
|
| Smaller outfits like metafilter need some kind of
| gatekeeper. Like require nominal fee or scan of ID or
| verification photo.
| bell-cot wrote:
| While banning ~90% of the bots sounds pretty good to me - how
| long would it take the folks behind those now-banned bots to
| replace them, with new & "improved" & less easily detected
| bots?
| ChicagoBoy11 wrote:
| Part of a sophisticated bot-banning operation is then
| trying your damned hardest to make it as hard as possible
| for the bot itself to detect that it's been detected. Dunno
| how actually successful those efforts are, but people
| try!!!
| colpabar wrote:
| Of course people will come back with more sophisticated
| bots, that's inevitable. That happens with everything: bad
| thing is happening, we figure out how to protect against
| bad thing, bad people figure out how to get past
| protection, rinse and repeat.
|
| My point was more that bots are way more harmful than real
| people online, and any policy on online anonymity intended
| to "help" people should be focused almost entirely on bots,
| not people.
| [deleted]
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > I think any talk of the problems of online anonymity should
| be focused on bots first and foremost. From my understanding,
| it's pretty easy to detect like 90% of bot users. Can't we go
| after those instead? I don't really care that real people
| online can be mean anonymously, because at the end of the
| day, it's just one person.
|
| Strong disagree in that I think most of the problems people
| identify with FB are due to the collective actions of mostly
| real people in conversation.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| Follow the broken logic.
|
| 1. "Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to
| online abuse."
|
| 2. Primary section in support of #1 makes the far weaker claim:
| "Many abusers are not anonymous"
|
| 3. Primary support for #2 is the sentence: "However, research
| [link] shows that people using their real names perpetrate abuse
| and bullying too."
|
| 4. Linked article actually contains no scientific research, or
| even data gathering, on the topic at all.
|
| This was just a festival of bad argument.
| deadalus wrote:
| Banning anonymous social media accounts = good for authoritarian
| governments and corporations
| myfavoritedog wrote:
| Authoritarian governments run troll farms that plague social
| media through anonymous accounts.
| smolder wrote:
| "Anonymous" social media accounts can be tied back to a real
| person already a lot of the time. People are terrible about
| "doxing" themselves in places where pseudonyms are used.
| (Usually that's fine, since nobody is really out to get them
| and the sleuthing takes work.)
|
| In the case of certain governments, the account owner is likely
| identifiable near 100% of the time, with not much effort.
|
| Depending on what social media we're talking about, (and what
| corporations,) there may be corporations assembling pseudonym
| to identity mappings, too.
|
| Making a law that forbids anonymity does help authoritarians,
| but it's mostly formalizing what is already an unspoken rule:
| that you can't truly be anonymous online. Other parties can
| throw away knowledge of you, like logless VPNs or TOR, but its
| next to impossible to verify they really do that.
| [deleted]
| saasaccount2 wrote:
| totally agree, cyber-bullying is mostly due to anonymity, and
| technology is well developed, and hackers find their way to do
| heinous acts and hide behind, this type of abuse cannot simply be
| prevented by banning social media, the cause is deep within the
| society's roots.
| ydhdbridjnd wrote:
| Not really on the anonymity front. I worked for an anti
| bullying children's charity back in the late noughties and we
| found that online bullying was often a continuation of real
| life bullying, and that kids who bullied online (and were
| generally trollish) were the same kids who did it in real life.
| Anonymity certainly didn't help a lot of the time, but it
| wasn't the cause.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| My bullies were very public in their bullying. Bullies don't
| care if it is public.
| throwaway743 wrote:
| Soooo your solution is to dox yourself and everyone else, even
| to those who you are not affiliated with or are not on a
| platform you're involved with?
| smolder wrote:
| > totally agree, cyber-bullying is mostly due to anonymity
|
| That isn't the conclusion of the article at all. No one was
| proposing banning social media either.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| The actual solution is to limit your social media use unless
| you want to be subject to abuse.
|
| I only have my Facebook for friends to contact me via
| messenger. As well as it's original purpose, commenting on a (
| real life )friend's engagement photos with a nice congrats.
|
| The moment you get into stuff The Facebook wasn't designed for;
| like actually meeting new people, arguing with strangers, etc ,
| then you run into problems.
|
| I have some very strong personal beliefs regarding how I live
| my life. I don't need to argue them though. I also have various
| strong political/ societal beliefs. Again no need to argue
| them.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Why should you have to shut yourself away from a large
| section of modern daily life just to not be the subject of
| abuse? Why is not even an option to work to fix the abuse?
| brutopia wrote:
| The technology isn't the problem, it's us. Our primitive
| instincts just aren't compatible to deal with such big
| groups of other people anonymous or not.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Because the platforms themselves make more money when
| there's rampant abuse. Facebook is largely profitable since
| super users are enraged and engaged.
|
| If you're scrolling mindlessly consuming content which
| keeps drawing you in you're more likely to click on an ad
| for some new toothpaste.
| shaan7 wrote:
| > Why is not even an option to work to fix the abuse?
|
| It is difficult for even human judges to clearly define
| what counts as abuse and what doesn't. Automated algorithms
| (or manual reviews) will be much worse, most likely.
| ianai wrote:
| Wouldn't that be more easily achieved by building in some
| limits? Not sure how it'd look.
| G79 wrote:
| I agree. If people lack the emotional intelligence to realise
| when it is time to stop a conversation ( in real life and on
| social media), then they are simply being infantile by asking
| government or tech companies to do it for you. The
| block/ignore buttons are there for a reason.
| [deleted]
| _0ffh wrote:
| >Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to
| online abuse
|
| Entirely true, but it is also not the reason for the push to de-
| anonymise (and de-pseudonymise) the internet. It is merely the
| pretext. The true reason is to make it impossible to speak your
| mind without fear of retribution. The democratisation of the
| public discourse haunts and frightens the ruling classes to their
| bones. The broad dissemination of information and opinions was
| firmly in the hands of a feudalistic elite until just a few
| decades ago. The fact that the masses are no more just bonded
| serfs in the information ecology has finally firmly arrived in
| the minds of the feudal lords and they are pushing back to
| preserve their powers to guide public opinion by interpretation
| ex cathedra. Strap in firmly everybody, we are about to enter
| stormy waters - the enlightenment 2.0 is afoot, methinks!
| Hokusai wrote:
| > The democratisation of the public discourse haunts and
| frightens the ruling classes to their bones.
|
| "democratization" does not exist in social media. Algorithms
| designed to maximize profit rule what people read and watch.
| It's not a meritocracy, and you even can buy credibility of you
| want. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dum0bqWfiGw)
|
| So, be careful on thinking that no rules means that everybody
| has the same opportunities.
| fouric wrote:
| Social media is indeed not "democratic" - but the reasons
| that you gave are completely wrong. "Algorithms designed to
| maximize profit" are a feature of _specific_ social networks
| - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok - _not_ the
| concept of social networks. For instance: Mastodon
| /Fediverse. Sure, it's not popular at all - but it's still
| social media without manipulative profit-maximizing
| algorithms.
|
| So, if anything, the issue is with those algorithms, or
| specific platforms.
| naravara wrote:
| The profit-maximizing algorithms are ad-supported, which
| means they maximize profit by maximizing engagement time
| and attention. This means things that don't maximize around
| those things will inherently be disadvantaged against the
| manipulative ones (barring regulation against the
| manipulation or some sort of very unlikely social movement
| to consciously eschew the manipulative ones). As long as
| this particular set of incentives are in place, the
| algorithm problem is going to be a feature of the universe
| of social networks.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| >inherently be disadvantaged
|
| If the only measure of social platform success is $. I'd
| say the true measure is adoption and the existing players
| are not on such strong fortifications by that measure.
| The existing platforms are begging to be disrupted by
| non-profit or benefit corps. It's not like you would need
| FB's salary budget to build a more healthy social
| platform.
| gremloni wrote:
| Let's not make this about purely a class war. There are
| terrible people online that "speak their mind" and foment
| racial and sexist hate. Banning individual anonymous accounts
| is the best way forward. I don't want to be deanonymized and I
| don't want speaking your mind online to lead to a rolling stone
| that gathers hate as it goes.
| mrtksn wrote:
| But retribution is an important social construct. Sometimes,
| you speak your mind and get retribution. Sometimes you deserve
| it however if you are not getting a fair one people side with
| you.
|
| I know that this is very unpopular opinion but there are very
| few cases where anonymity is useful. The rest is mostly useful
| for the abusive ones.
|
| Instead of banning people and removing content, I would prefer
| losing anonymity.
|
| I actually think that we can have the best of both worlds. What
| if we remain anonymous to the discussion parties but guaranteed
| linked identity to the systems that host us? If someone does
| something very bad, the identity could be revealed, i.e.
| doxxed. This way, many can self watch their behavior and remain
| anonymous.
|
| So when the time comes and you post something objectionable or
| the mods flag you, the system can present you the option to
| remove your last post and lock your account OR override the
| mods, keep the content and reveal your identity.
|
| It's a shame that the current norm of dealing with people on
| the internet is to remove their content and lock them out. In
| my opinion, everyone should be guaranteed right to speak. If
| the the thing they do is illegal, punish them through the legal
| system but don't silence them.
| [deleted]
| tomjen3 wrote:
| >But retribution is an important social construct
|
| Within friend groups, yes. On the internet I don't think it
| makes sense, simply because what is acceptable within
| different groups is so different.
| fouric wrote:
| > retribution is an important social construct
|
| I would like to see evidence to back up your claim - evidence
| that _supports the extension of this idea from the real world
| to the internet_ , because you don't get that for free.
|
| Moreover, I can think of far more examples of retribution
| causing _harm_ in the real world than doing good. Bullying in
| school, being fired for whistleblowing, being jailed or
| executed for wrongthink in China, getting slammed with jail
| time for uncovering criminally bad security on some website,
| losing your job because a mob on Twitter saw a doctored video
| of you doing something they didn 't like...
|
| Are all of these "very few cases where anonymity is useful"?
|
| > What if we remain anonymous to the discussion parties but
| guaranteed linked identity to the systems that host us?
|
| That still enables every most of the above abuses - which
| also happen to be the worse ones.
|
| If you don't have even the potential for anonymity on the
| internet, then you get suppression of speech by tyrannical
| governments.
|
| > If someone does something very bad, the identity could be
| revealed, i.e. doxxed
|
| This reads as an ad for mob justice - and even if it weren't,
| this mechanism would absolutely still be exploited to that
| effect.
| mrtksn wrote:
| The real life interactions are much more civil because of
| the fact that being an a*hole gets retribution from the
| person you are being an a*hole to or from the society.
|
| Perfectly nice people turn into psychos when they interact
| with people online. Observe kids playing games in real
| life, they are very rarely as vulgar or sadistic as on
| online games.
|
| A walk even in the most crowded places is much nicer
| experience that an anonymous online place.
|
| Oh and yes, the very few cases where anonymity is useful
| are exactly that kind of cases(whistleblowing, journalism
| targeting powerful figures etc.). These are rarities and
| are valuable but %99 of the discussion on the internet are
| not about these and I suggested a mechanism for anonymity
| anyway.
| naravara wrote:
| > Observe kids playing games in real life, they are very
| rarely as vulgar or sadistic as on online games.
|
| Kids are actually rarely vulgar or sadistic when playing
| online as well. The toxicity of online gaming communities
| is a self-reinforcing feedback loop. The toxic kids find
| a home and either drive all the nice kids out with their
| toxicity or prompt the nice kids to adapt and internalize
| toxic ways of engaging. It's not an inherent feature of
| kids themselves and plenty of online games that were
| explicitly targeted at children have been perfectly fine
| without epidemics of griefing or abuse as long as they
| constrain kids to playing within their own friend-groups
| rather than against strangers.
|
| Most of the foulest people are actually adults with jobs
| or surly teenagers. The kids are fine.
| mrtksn wrote:
| >Most of the foulest people are actually adults with jobs
| or surly teenagers. The kids are fine.
|
| Removal of anonymity will help to settle this one.
|
| Please notice how I don't simply propose removal of
| anonymity as using real name in your online image. I am
| proposing a way to lose anonymity in exchange of
| overriding the management when you have a collusion.
| tomjen3 wrote:
| Being vulgar is a function of there being women present.
| Get a group of exclusively young men together and the
| tone and talk will become very, very though, very, very
| quickly.
|
| But if we want to avoid dealing with assholes, lets have
| excellent block tools. There might be issues with trolls
| on Signal, but I have never meet any because I only
| interact with my family.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Maybe it would be interesting to have different platforms
| that have different levels of anonymity so that we can see
| what sort of conversations would form differently.
|
| We also have to remember that internationally, the standards
| for what is acceptable speech is wildly different, so de-
| anonymization can literally cause people to be imprisoned
| and/or killed.
|
| In my opinion, highly moderated forums tend to have their
| conversations reduced to low-value self-reinforcing
| memes/jokes/self-congratulations/hate-for-the-other-party.
|
| But more importantly, there are certain truths that would go
| unspoken in a completely de-anonymous internet. ...and as
| forum providers consolidate ever-closer to governments, that
| class of illegal words gets larger.
| mrtksn wrote:
| > We also have to remember that internationally, the
| standards for what is acceptable speech is wildly
| different, so de-anonymization can literally cause people
| to be imprisoned and/or killed.
|
| That's the one of the few rare cases where anonymity is
| important. Add whistlelowers etc. to the mix but these are
| edge cases that can have specialized mechanisms.
|
| For many cases the default approach could be good enough
| though. Your identity will be encrypted in the system and
| when the moderators of a specific platform think that you
| are a trouble, they lock you and remove your content but
| they don't know your identity. It's up to you to unlock
| your account by revealing your identity.
|
| So, you can simply post to places that are not hostile to
| you and you stay anonymous. Russians journalists can post
| to American forums for example.
| tomp wrote:
| _> Instead of banning people and removing content, I would
| prefer losing anonymity._
|
| It's not either/or. It's none/both.
| colordrops wrote:
| > I know that this is very unpopular opinion but there are
| very few cases where anonymity is useful.
|
| This just isn't true. It makes the assumption that what you
| will be shamed or punished for saying is completely in line
| with what is right. No way is that the case, whether you are
| talking about drugs, gender and sexuality issues, unpopular
| political ideas, or a host of other things.
|
| Your argument is no different from those who claim that only
| those who have done something wrong care about privacy. It's
| wrong.
| mrtksn wrote:
| So what if you are ashamed? it's human nature, you face it
| and move on. If you think that it's something that it's not
| to be ashamed, you defend your position.
|
| I also suggested a mechanism to stay anonymous as long as
| you are not causing problems. If you need the anonymity,
| simply go that route.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I also suggested a mechanism to stay anonymous as long
| as you are not causing problems.
|
| And who decides what constitutes "causing problems?"
|
| While the vast majority of us (at least I hope so) would
| agree that violence and murder focused on a particular
| ethnic, religious or other group is a "problem," most
| other things have much less widespread support.
|
| I have some fairly unpopular ideas, as well as some that
| are more readily accepted.
|
| Should I be doxxed for expressing the thought that all
| drugs should be legal? For complaining vociferously about
| the business models of big social media companies?
|
| In fact, it doesn't really matter what position I take on
| pretty much anything (vi vs. emacs, vanilla vs. chocolate
| ice cream, pandemic policies, etc., etc., etc.), there
| are those who will disagree -- sometimes with respectful
| argument/discussion, sometimes with hyperbole and
| personal attacks, and depending on the topic, even with
| violence.
|
| There are some places in the US where criticizing Trump
| could get me ostracized, beaten or killed. And yet other
| places where taking the opposite position could have a
| similar effect.
|
| The hundred or so Hong Kong journalists and activists
| that are sitting in jails for advocating that the
| government adhere to its own constitution are there
| because they were "causing problems."
|
| And so I'll pose my question again: Who decides whether
| or not you, I or anyone else is "causing problems?"
| mrtksn wrote:
| Causing problems constitutes whatever the management of
| the platform thinks so.
|
| I am proposing a right to overide management in exchange
| of giving up your anonymity when you have problem with
| the management of the platform if you think that you
| still want to participate in that platform.
|
| I'm proposing a system where platforms lose their ability
| to censor people if the people in question are ready to
| bear the personal responsibility of their actions.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I'm proposing a system where platforms lose their
| ability to censor people if the people in question are
| ready to bear the personal responsibility of their
| actions.
|
| It is an interesting idea. However, there are some
| serious issues with that approach:
|
| 1. The old adage, "If it's connected to the Internet,
| eventually it _will_ be hacked /compromised," applies,
| potentially exposing the links between accounts and the
| identities of those who operate them en masse;
|
| 2. The business models of most of the big platforms rely
| upon knowing who you are, so they can pretend that they
| can "target" advertising effectively. As such, those
| platforms would _never_ go for such a solution;
|
| 3. I go back to the question I initially asked you -- Who
| decides when someone is 'causing problems' that would
| trigger the requirement that one give up their anonymity?
| If the management of a platform is controlled or
| influenced by governments or powerful special interests,
| important conversations would likely be stifled by such
| policies.
|
| I'm all for cryptographic mechanisms (providing data
| integrity/non-repudiation) to identify individual actors
| (cf. stuff like this: https://pgp.key-server.io/ ) and
| validate that they are who they _say_ they are.
|
| However, forcing folks to use their "legal" identities to
| do so is a big mistake, given the propensity of others to
| harass and verbally/physically attack those with whom
| they disagree.
|
| Giving centralized platforms the ability to force doxxing
| if they don't like the content of a particular post is
| problematic at best, and life-threatening at worst.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I haven't worked out the cryptographic mechanisms but my
| ballpark assessment is that it should be possible to work
| out a mechanism that protects your identity up until you
| accept to exchange exposure for ability. The business
| model is probably more of an issue, as you pointed out.
|
| Oh BTW, it doesn't have to be a legal identity, I think.
| It could be some kind of identity that you build, it
| costs something and can be identical across platforms.
| The "costs something" doesn't have to be money, something
| that forces you to have just one practically. The NFT
| folks advocate for something like that. It could be a
| Instagram account with substantial number of
| followers(this one is problematic). Basically, something
| hard spawn without effort and consequences, something
| that you built on over time and you don't want to risk it
| by being a dick to someone.
|
| The government ID is a good one as the govt. acts as
| reliable identity provider with significant
| identification infrastructure but I don't like that much
| because a government can abuse it as they can generate
| ID's without significant effort.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >I haven't worked out the cryptographic mechanisms but my
| ballpark assessment is that it should be possible to work
| out a mechanism that protects your identity up until you
| accept to exchange exposure for ability. The business
| model is probably more of an issue, as you pointed out.
|
| Another piece to this that you haven't addressed is that
| in the environment you propose, once you've chosen to
| expose your identity, every single thing you've _ever_
| posted and will ever post is now de-anonymized.
|
| >Oh BTW, it doesn't have to be a legal identity, I think.
| It could be some kind of identity that you build, it
| costs something and can be identical across platforms.
|
| I'd note that's already the case. If you're pseudonymous
| and offend the powers that be on a particular platform,
| they can _already_ ban /censor/block you.
|
| Please understand that I am not attacking _you_ , nor am
| I dismissing your thoughts. There absolutely is merit in
| exploring ways to combat abuse/trolling/sundry nastiness
| online.
|
| Rather, I find your proposal unconvincing and likely
| unworkable. It would be way too easy to game such a
| system and it would impose serious consequences on anyone
| who might espouse an unpopular opinion -- even if that
| opinion isn't abusive.
|
| I sincerely hope that we can find ways to limit
| abusive/destructive behaviors online, but given that
| we've been unable to do so IRL when one's identity is
| already known, that seems incredibly unlikely.
| mrtksn wrote:
| It all comes from my observation that the social
| platforms enabled interactions at huge scale without
| implementing the natural safeguards of real life
| interactions. We meet with unpleasant people too, we had
| unpopular opinions prior the internet but we managed to
| work things out. It wasn't the end of the world to have
| an argument or say something horrible and all came down
| to accumulate it on a single identity. To end up alone,
| you would have had to say something extremely bad,
| something inexcusable but other than that you had the
| incentive to work on your ideas and relationships if you
| had controversial opinions. You can say something bad and
| be dismissed and you can also keep pushing for it until
| you get accepted.
|
| On the social interactions on the internet, you miss much
| of it. If someone says something controversial, they will
| be often censored through voting mechanisms, shadow bans
| and account removals.
|
| I'm extremely annoyed from our lack of ability to express
| controversial opinions online. Contrary to the narrative,
| anonymous accounts don't actually say anything
| controversial if they are going to get any traction. They
| usually say something populist and rally people.
|
| It also enables people who think alike to gather and re-
| enforce their opinions. There are no controversial
| opinions in online conversations, there are controversial
| clans that talk to each other and sometimes engage in
| flamewars when they encounter each other. Trump never
| said anything unpopular, name a person who you think is
| horrible but popular and that person never says unpopular
| things, that's how they are popular. The web has become
| popularity contests and the anonymity only serves for
| saying the popular opinions of one group when you are in
| another.
|
| On every platform that I know, the most popular opinions
| are those who are promoted and the unpopular ones are
| hidden or buried, even here on HN is the same thing. You
| can observe how my truly unpopular opinion will get
| greyed out and sent to the botton of the thread, possibly
| collapsed and out of reach to the most so that the
| populist opinions on this platform can reign.
|
| I want a mechanism where expressing controversial
| opinions doesn't punish your reach but because I know
| that this can lead to some horrible stuff(like the things
| in 4chan etc), I propose a way to put your reputation on
| the line to do it.
|
| 4Chan is an exception where controversial ideas are not
| buried but they have an issue with some people who are
| truly horrible.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > there are very few cases where anonymity is useful. The
| rest is mostly useful for the abusive ones.
|
| As long as you don't talk about anything not following the
| official lines and/or the mainstream ideology, sure... there
| are many topics which are effectively banned and will get you
| punished one way or another for just mentioning them
| mrtksn wrote:
| Currently, if you say something unpopular you will be
| downvoted and your speech will be hidden from the rest on
| most platforms. You can also be silenced completely by
| getting banned. I am proposing a mechanism to overcome this
| kind of censorship in exchange of your anonymity in case
| you had a problem with the management. If you get banned,
| if your posts are removed and you believe in what you say,
| you put your reputation on the line by revealing your
| identity and override account locks and content removal.
| lm28469 wrote:
| What if your employer find your messages and decide he
| doesn't want to associate with you ? Same for landlords
| &c.
|
| Having everything you say attached to your name forever
| seems extremely icky (we both know that "banned" and
| "deleted" don't mean anything on the internet). In an
| hypothetical perfect world with hypothetical perfectly
| rational people why not, in the mess we live in it would
| be a nightmare.
| mrtksn wrote:
| With the mechanism I'm proposing, you get to keep your
| identity hidden as long as you are a good citizen of the
| platform you participate. If you can't stand for the
| things you say, and they are problematic for the platform
| you simply don't say them then. In the current system
| it's exactly the same situation, if your stuff are not
| O.K. they get removed which is effectively the same as
| you not saying it.
|
| I don't know why people feel entitled to say something
| without facing the consequences of it. If you don't
| believe in it enough to defend your position and put
| forward your reputation, you don't need to say it.
|
| Why do you need to deceive people? Let's say, you are a
| racist and feel very strongly to say something about your
| opinions. Say it and win the argument and improve your
| life or say it and lose the argument and people can
| choose not to be associated with you.
|
| That's a fair situation, what's not fair is to annoy
| people or maybe even harm them from another persona and
| then pretend that you are something else.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| You think the push to deanonymize is to censor people? It's to
| extract more value from them. It's for more ads, more dynamic
| pricing, etc.
|
| Meanwhile, the enlightenment was specifically when a wide
| variety of viewpoints started getting published.
| seoulmetro wrote:
| It's all of the above. Censorship, control, easier to target
| (for ads, etc.).
|
| Basically it's just tagging everyone like the sheep that we
| are. Terribly scary for anyone who isn't already brainwashed.
| Zpalmtree wrote:
| It's probably both
| throw63738 wrote:
| Is deanonymization going to drive more engagement?
| treeman79 wrote:
| https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jesse-kline-china-and-
| india...
|
| Censorship is here and a big deal.
| [deleted]
| _0ffh wrote:
| >It's to extract more value from them. It's for more ads,
| more dynamic pricing, etc.
|
| Yes, this is a good point. But in my mind this is more of an
| incidental convenience, not the primary reason.
|
| >Meanwhile, the enlightenment was specifically when a wide
| variety of viewpoints started getting published.
|
| Exactly! And when was it easier than now, or even possible,
| to get access to practically the whole variety of viewpoints?
| Everyone can now play an active part in the conversation with
| barely any barriers at all.
| naravara wrote:
| > Everyone can now play an active part in the conversation
| with barely any barriers at all.
|
| There are barriers. What people will actually see are
| mediated by algorithms that favor certain styles of
| presentation and types of content. It takes a fair amount
| of knowledge to not just make a point, but make it in a way
| that will gain traction rather than being shouted into a
| void. That knowledge comes from refinement and practice.
| It's why everyone on Twitter starts to sound the same once
| they get a big follower count. The likes and shares are
| actually training them to talk about certain things and
| certain ways through a reinforcement loop.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Entirely true, but it is also not the reason for the push to
| de-anonymise (and de-pseudonymise) the internet. It is merely
| the pretext. The true reason is to make it impossible to speak
| your mind without fear of retribution. The democratisation of
| the public discourse haunts and frightens the ruling classes to
| their bones. The broad dissemination of information and
| opinions was firmly in the hands of a feudalistic elite until
| just a few decades ago._
|
| Social media companies are fiefdoms whose real customers are
| other companies and individuals with large piles of money that
| want to use it to sway public opinion for profit or power.
|
| YouTube et al. had no problem taking plenty of Mercer money to
| promote things like Brexit and other content that shifts focus
| away from those in power to other working class individuals.
| All someone with enough money has to do is pay to run promoted
| content on the platforms and it will be disseminated instantly
| to billions of eyeballs.
|
| Social media platform owners and operators regularly remove
| content that might rock the boat. They already know that
| governments will pull the kill switch on them should real
| unrest happen, because it's happened countless times before.
| That's bad for revenue, so they play ball with people in power.
| throwawayapples wrote:
| For those of us who believe banning anonymity is an answer to
| _anything_ , please ask yourself how you would feel if _this_
| site did that -- or even, in fact, if HN didn 't actually make
| anon accounts (without even requiring an email confirmation) so
| easy that it's an incredibly common occurrence.
|
| For a moment, leave aside the deft and light-touch moderation
| that HN moderators such as dang performs, and how hard that may
| or may not be to enable at "scale"; just consider: do you really
| want anonymity to be gone forever, or do you engage in some very
| deep discussions with other anonymous people on a daily basis,
| right here on HN?
|
| Because that seems to prove the point; maybe it's the exception
| that proves the point, and perhaps older people who remember what
| Eternal September was might remember that sometimes anonymity
| without any moderation at all means a breakout of trolldom, but
| it's simply balancing the power of anonymity and rights to
| privacy against the inevitable things (like spam) that go along
| with anytime you grant someone freedom.
|
| And that's really what this is about. In the United States,
| freedom is granted by the Constitution, even though those very
| freedoms is often abused (or taken for granted.) Innocent until
| _proven_ guilty? How many times do the guilty get away scot-free
| because of that precept? And, yet, this "grand experiment",
| again and again, proves its value, even in the face of repeated
| attempts to reign in (usually other people's!) freedoms.
|
| The Interwebs can be the same, or they can be different, but
| yanking anonymity will certainly tilt the playing field in a
| particular direction... so what direction should it really be
| tilted in?
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| the most abuse I am seeing happening on Twitter originates from
| blue checks journalists and activists targeting political
| opponents. Targeting by randoms usually matches IRL statistics -
| Jews get most abuse, followed by women of all races. No other
| groups get even close. Also, politicians complaining about online
| abuse should not have become politicians in the first place.
| tlholaday wrote:
| moot (Chris Poole) Conjecture: bind anonymity to ephemerality for
| best results.
|
| Consider ten seconds persistence limit. Like short-term memory
| for the spoken word.
| crawsome wrote:
| Yeah, Moot's legacy sure has been doing the world a lot of
| favors. You sure we should be referencing his logic?
| polartx wrote:
| I'd choose a world with his legacy over Zuck's ten times out
| of ten.
| HamburgerEmoji wrote:
| 4chan and the MSM are both despicable slime pits in their own
| ways, but 4chan is much more honest. If the corporate media
| decides some subject is taboo, or that some line of inquiry
| is banned in order to protect advertisers' profit, you'll
| still be able to find extremely strong signal about those
| topics on 4chan.
| md8z wrote:
| Anonymous sites like Blind and 4chan (and other semi-
| anonymous sites like Twitter and its clones) seem to have
| the same problem but in reverse, where _everything_ is
| overloaded with negativity and creates that strong signal,
| even if it 's unwarranted. There is a reason conspiracy
| theories, misinformation, racism, and other cynical
| rhetoric tend to spread so well on those sites. I think
| Twitter and Blind have improved their moderation
| recently... but 4chan seems to always be the same cesspool.
| tlholaday wrote:
| Yes, I am sure we should be referencing the logic of his
| proposal, and that we should consider that moot's
| implementation of ephemerality on 4chan allowed too much
| persistence.
| lexapro wrote:
| If anything, he has proven that it brings out the absolutely
| worst.
| swayvil wrote:
| The freedom to do the worst is also the freedom to do the
| best. That is an unavoidable universal law.
|
| Look at instances where the conversation is forced to respect
| conventional values.
|
| It's death. Conformity and moronic mob-politics becomes the
| norm. So norm that you forget that there was anything better.
| (Reddit and Facebook are 2 notorious cases of this.)
|
| 4chan is sharp and smart. And infantile and vile. And
| sometimes it's hard to tell the difference. Which is only
| proper.
| [deleted]
| lexapro wrote:
| >4chan is sharp and smart.
|
| Well, it can be. But the main boards usually aren't. A lot
| of smart people have left the platform. What's left is
| mostly "bad" people who have nowhere else to go: nazis,
| child molesters, edgy teenagers and so on.
| swayvil wrote:
| Sounds like you got offended there. It's a short hop with
| eyes-closed from "offended" to "moral condemnation".
|
| Our greatest artists and thinkers have been condemned
| throughout history. Censored too. Consider that.
| vangelis wrote:
| yeah, our greatest artists and thinkers aren't coming
| from /pol/. containment was a mistake. rest of the site
| is fine, if boorish.
| ipaddr wrote:
| It allows for taboo topics which could be the worst if you
| subscribe society norms.
|
| Remember if everyone was anonymous so would personal traits
| which forces judging on material and people not taking things
| personally because their real id isn't attach to this idea
| lexapro wrote:
| You mean like sharing child sexual abuse material and
| discussing how to start a race war? Yes, I subscribe to the
| norm that this is bad.
| vangelis wrote:
| that doesn't require an end to anonymity, just decent
| moderation.
| mcguire wrote:
| Weirdly, I just submitted
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946349 earlier today:
| Evaluating the Effectiveness of Deplatforming as a Moderation
| Strategy on Twitter.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I think society _needs_ an avenue for anonymous self expression.
| Otherwise people will feel stifled and oppressed by having no
| outlet to go against cultural norms.
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