[HN Gopher] Banning anonymous social media accounts would only s...
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Banning anonymous social media accounts would only stifle free
speech, democracy
Author : pseudolus
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-10-25 14:52 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| bruiseralmighty wrote:
| Such a cowardly defense of the pro-privacy position coming from
| the Guardian, I wonder if they had trouble sourcing anyone at
| their offices who were authentic advocates for this position.
|
| The author rightly points out that there was no connection
| between the killing of Amess and 'social media anonymity'. So I
| suppose at least they are doing their part to combat that false
| narrative set up by Parliament.
|
| However, we then launch into one-armed counter attacks about how
| MPs who cut benefits (ahem Tory ahem) have more of a
| responsibility to endure vitriole from 'the poors' whose benefits
| they cut. Yet simultaneously, we should still stomp out 'right-
| wing-extremists'. Whom I suppose have no legitimate grievances
| with the government despite the fact that Islamic State can
| operate within London and kill their political representatives.
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| Well said. The Guardian has become such a rag, the very last
| time I took them slightly serious was before that Batley
| Grammar School story with the teacher who's now in hiding and
| fearing for his life, where they described those issuing the
| death threats as peaceful and well-liked members of the
| community whose beliefs should be respected.
| beebmam wrote:
| I miss people being decent to each other. I'd be good with
| experimenting with removing anonymity in certain contexts to see
| how different online spaces can be. I genuinely think it would
| lead to some interesting (and unexpected) results.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I agree we seem to have lost empathy. I think the thing the
| pseudonymous internet provides is lack of consequences for
| incivility. People will say far more hateful things in a FB
| post than they would to another human two feet away who can
| yell back. Same things happens in a car, yelling and screaming
| that we wouldn't do in person. We would just walk away and talk
| about the infringer behind their backs. However, that time and
| space is also a release valve; we move on and get back to life.
| In an online forum, it is non-stop and ever escalating. Truly
| anonymous or not doesn't seem to be the key. Most people in our
| social circle would probably agree with any bad take we had
| anyway. We've given everyone a microphone and everyone just
| screams over each other. And worse, we've made it infinitely
| profitable for companies to run the sound system on high. There
| is no easy path out of it as long as dissent prints cash.
| onychomys wrote:
| One of the lessons of facebook comment sections is that people
| are totally willing to say absolutely vile things to one
| another under their own names and photos.
| Pyramus wrote:
| That's a logical fallacy - just because people exist that are
| non-anonymous and vile doesn't invalidate parent's point. The
| question is whether non-anonymity might lead to less vileness
| and I agree it's certainly worth trying.
| 0des wrote:
| I don't think they were trying to invalidate anything the
| parent commenter said.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think the story of a lost decency is frankly, a complete
| myth.
|
| Was decency the norm during the 1950s when black people were
| excluded from political involvement and/or lynched? What about
| in the 1970s with the fights over Vietnam? Was it decency when
| gay bars were raided and beat up by cops on a regular basis?
| Was the Gingrich revolution decent? What about in 2012 when
| people put up signs about not "re-<slur deleted>" because of
| Obama?
|
| The past was only civil/decent if you're either viewing it with
| rose tinted glasses, or if you're (purposefully or
| accidentally) very tightly constraining your analysis to very
| specific in groups. In fact, if you read historical narratives
| you'll discover that for any given lost "decent" time, you'll
| find people of that era hand wringing over the loss of decency
| and civility, and pining for their own lost decent time!
| Coincidentally everyone seems to put this lost "decent" time to
| be right before they began paying attention to the way people
| treated each other in public[0].
|
| This of course doesn't mean that violence and sectarian strife
| don't vary; they obviously do. But the idea that people were
| once decent to each other in a way that doesn't exist anymore
| is not really supported by the evidence, and frankly seems more
| like a "kids these days" type of statement; common but without
| merit.
|
| 0 - To paraphrase a boss of mine "they just happened to make
| the best music right when I was the most emotionally
| vulnerable. What a coincidence!"
| merpnderp wrote:
| It will never work. While your online words aren't ephemeral,
| the context is. So 10 years from now your rational, heart felt,
| and good intentioned argument will be used to show what a
| horrible person you are, simply because the context is gone.
|
| It would be perfectly fine to get rid of anonymity (in some
| situations) if those words weren't there forever to haunt you.
| beebeepka wrote:
| You don't even need to wait 10 days, let one years.
|
| He who controls the media, controls the narrative.
|
| Also
|
| "Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will
| find something in them which will hang him."
|
| And so on. I'd bet some animals do this kind of shit to each
| to each other. We humans are not the only assholes.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| > I miss people being decent to each other.
|
| Do you mean, before the internet? Because keyboard warriors
| have been a thing since day 1.
|
| That said, I support the idea of anonymous and non-anonymous
| social media, as long as it's the company's choice, and not the
| government's. But I also support personal responsibility and
| accountability, such as the personal choice to participate in a
| community or not.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| Yes, that's why governments want to do it.
| sysadm1n wrote:
| https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dickwad_theory
| hirundo wrote:
| Social media makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against
| speakers who say unpopular things. Anonymity protects from
| exactly that. If you think such retaliation tends to be a
| positive/negative force in the long run, you probably
| dislike/like anonymity.
|
| As someone with a wide portfolio of unpopular views who prefers a
| loosely coupled, bottom up social architecture, I value anonymity
| as a key value and technology for promoting adaptation. A society
| with strong anonymity norms can test the fitness of more, and
| more diverse life algorithms than otherwise. That tends to make
| it less fragile and more likely to find a variety of local
| maxima.
| moron4hire wrote:
| >> test the fitness of more, and more diverse life algorithms
|
| WTF is that even supposed to mean? 4chan commentors aren't some
| cabal of underground philosophy bad-boys, trying to carve out a
| New Enlightenment. The only "life algorithm" they seem
| interested in testing is anti-semetism. They're just assholes.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Using 4chan to argue against what OP stated seems like the
| weakest form of strawman you could find. Could you choose
| something else, like Twitter?
| bmarquez wrote:
| > The anonymous Twitter account of a citizen holed below
| the poverty line
|
| The article itself uses Twitter as an example, and doesn't
| even mention 4chan at all.
| bm3719 wrote:
| I suspect the commenter is borrowing from AI terminology to
| describe a real life ecology of ideas and solutions to
| problems.
|
| Also this is an incorrect generalization of 4chan. While rare
| enough that I don't bother going there, thoughtful exchange
| can and does occur on it. Besides, this is about anonymity in
| general, not on one specific site.
|
| Do we really want an internet where everything you do and
| interact with is forever attached to your real person?
| [deleted]
| mcguire wrote:
| Anonymity also makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against
| speakers who say unpopular things---those who would retaliate
| face no consequences for such retaliation, and the ease of
| creating anonymous accounts amplifies the their volume.
|
| In practice, anonymity seems to produce a race to the bottom
| rather than a search for local maxima.
| [deleted]
| LatteLazy wrote:
| This is the same government that have been about to ban
| pornography for 5+ years. They're going to do nothing. They just
| want a different subject to discuss since right now the UK has
| shortages of everything from natural gas and electricity to
| doctors to computer chips to kids toys.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28943782 4 days ago
| mcguire wrote:
| As well as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946349.
| olivermarks wrote:
| It's not hard to get a fake id. It's not hard to spoof being
| someone else. It's not hard for criminals to get hold of weapons.
| Given that your every move and utterance is tracked and logged
| online and geo by countless entities your @penpal name is a
| pretty trivial detail anyway...
| Spivak wrote:
| Ugh I really dislike articles like this. There's zero nuance and
| just pandering to people who already agree with the headline. If
| you can't argue for and defend in good faith the perspective of
| the people you disagree with then you don't really grok the issue
| and won't be persuasive.
|
| Good gods, I whole heartedly agree with the author that this bill
| is a bad idea but the argument is so weak that if I came in in
| support of the bill, after reading this I would walk away with
| more resolve that I was right.
|
| The author paints the opposing view as a misguided emotional
| reaction to a tragedy, and even if the author's characterization
| is correct, that's not at all how the people in support of this
| bill see the issue. And rabble rabbling about the free speech and
| democracy to people who aren't even thinking about that will just
| make it another us vs them where both sides talk past one another
| and believe the other is missing the point.
|
| We have to stop this stupid game of framing complex issues in
| such a way that paints anyone who has different goals priorities
| than you like "oh so you hate democracy?" If you villianize
| everyone it loses its weight for the times when someone is truly
| purposely out to hurt people.
| aww_dang wrote:
| The purely democratic view might be to let the majority choose
| whatever regulations they see fit for online discourse, our
| diets or our clothes. Tyranny of the majority, etc.
|
| Democracy isn't a value unto itself in my view. I would
| describe it as a method. Those who object to the premises of
| democracy in favor of individual agency would also object to
| bans of online anonymity. But as you say, if you already
| disagree with the ban, you're more likely to to let it slide.
| 1cvmask wrote:
| Politicians and the elites and their media mouthpieces can give
| speeches and write articles to advocate "humanitarian" jingoism,
| the white savior complex (the NGO/woke/CIA complex) and beat the
| drums of war (the military industrial complex) that lead to
| massacres and genocides.
|
| But they should be protected from scrutiny in the digital world?
|
| It is amusing how the elites like to use any ruse to stifle
| debate and discourse. They advocate these censorious policies
| while they decry it in Russia and China.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Facebook clearly demonstrated that people will say terrible
| things under their own name.
| [deleted]
| ashtonkem wrote:
| It's _extremely_ suspect that they're moving to ban anonymity and
| "legal but harmful"[0] speech as part of the response to an
| attack that doesn't appear to have anything to do with online
| activity. It's interesting how the tabloids that regularly call
| people incredibly vile things don't get singled out...
|
| Frankly, I think this is politicians getting tired of being
| heckled by the citizenry, and this is a convenient crisis to take
| advantage of. Must not be a lot of fun to go from giving speeches
| in parliament to being called a wanker or ratio'd online, but
| that seems like something they should get over rather than
| curtailing our rights.
|
| 0 - Part of the Online Harms bill, being debated now.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| They say it is to protect us, but I suspect it is actually to
| protect themselves.
| Veen wrote:
| As many UK media organisations have pointed out, linking David
| Amess' murder to online speech and incivility allows
| politicians to be seen to do something without having to
| address the politically awkward problem of Islamic extremism in
| the UK.
|
| Naturally, Owen Jones chooses not to mention that too.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Frankly, I still smell a rat. Islamic terrorism is a problem,
| therefore everyone in the UK must use their real name when
| calling their MP a wanker on Twitter? Even if you acknowledge
| that the problem is real, the proposed solution does not
| follow.
|
| No, it seems far better targeted at getting people to stop
| saying mean things about them on Twitter more than anything
| else.
| throwaway472927 wrote:
| It doesn't need to work for politicians to successfully "be
| seen to do something".
|
| But I see your point.
| musicale wrote:
| It's high time to unmask and punish Banksy for vandalism and
| anti-government speech.
| gorwell wrote:
| There's a book about this called `Revolt of the Public`. That's
| more or less the thesis in a nutshell.
|
| "All over the world, elite institutions from governments to
| media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly
| control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader
| public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle)
| form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to
| anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from
| hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet." --Marc
| Andreessen
| wolverine876 wrote:
| SV 'titans' seem to think their authority and power should
| only increase.
| RobRivera wrote:
| doesnt make their observations less credible
| wolverine876 wrote:
| I think it does: First, their response doesn't vary with
| the facts, suggesting it doesn't depend on the facts.
| Second, it does strongly match plain old megalomania and
| lust for power.
|
| Look at the language: "samizdat", very clever, as if they
| are revolutionaries. They aren't revolutionaries, they
| are the vested powers, the most powerful business-people
| in the world.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| Vary with what facts? You haven't specified what facts
| they aren't responding to, which makes this conversation
| very hard to have.
|
| Secondly, the vast majority of people I've seen
| commenting on this phenomenon have been extremely minor
| social commentators, who have very little to gain in
| terms of personal power one way or the other. Myself
| included; I won't be any more or less important if the
| traditional sources of cultural power and influence
| succeed or fall.
|
| You don't have to trust or like VCs, I certainly don't,
| but I wouldn't declare a commentator to be invalid or
| untrustworthy because a VC really likes their book.
| That's straight up guilt by association, and not terribly
| persuasive.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Pseudonymity is where its at if it can be done well...where its
| verified that this is an actual person and not a sovereign or
| political party troll farm. But at the same time protecting ones
| true identity. Platforms right now are in charge of that vetting
| process and try their best but its really just not working well.
| phillipseamore wrote:
| Agree. I also feel there is a big difference between being
| anonymous and someone using multiple anonymous accounts to
| amplify their expression.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Why? Identity does not make an argument. Numbers of posts don't
| prove me wrong. A preponderance of quacks doesn't inform me of
| my baking skills when I toss bread to ducks.
|
| The impulse to identity, by law or platform-specific reputation
| system, is useful for other ends, but the end of judging books
| by covers should not be one to strive toward.
| renewiltord wrote:
| That's because going from premises to conclusions is the
| rarest and trivially followable argument and the complexity
| of discussion arises from concluding on facts.
|
| For instance, is it true that you couldn't get a COVID test
| in SF around Jul 4?
|
| With provenance of information, people start trusting trusted
| sources for facts. With fixed identity, people can evaluate
| what the preponderant view is.
|
| If you're in a room with ten of your friends and you could
| get toilet paper in Jan and all of them couldn't, you would
| judge yourself lucky and that there _was_ an availability
| problem.
|
| If I go online and I see one thousand posts saying the
| opposite of what I'm seeing, I'm going to ignore them.
| Primarily because of the identity problem.
| readflaggedcomm wrote:
| Attesting to facts requires more than identity. There are
| billions of nobodies with identities whom I don't trust to
| attest to anything.
|
| Verifiable events can be attested to (like the availability
| of testing) with trustworthy data, like from a reliable
| reporter or the test providers or some reliable
| surveillance mechanisms. Using a identity _as a proxy for
| accountability_ , in furtherance of reputation management
| -- as the social media web largely treats all this -- is an
| error.
|
| People aren't reliable just because we know they're people,
| as Facebook-provided comments on third-party sites
| demonstrate.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I think this is an overly restrictive way to acquire
| information but I'm content with your taking your
| approach and my taking my approach and us ending where we
| will.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Banning anonymous social media accounts and trying to strike down
| Section 230 are both obvious attempts at returning the power of
| disseminating information to the powerful.
|
| Rush Limbaugh spent most of his adult life being a racist
| misogynist and getting paid handsomely for it. He found his niche
| and his audience. Bob Limbaugh, just a dude at Acme, would find
| it hard to retain a job making similar statements, even if they
| were less incendiary. Yet Bob would almost certainly be silenced
| if his online presence were tied to his actual identity, out of
| fear for his livelihood. And because Bob doesn't have a team of
| people to filter out confrontations, you're more likely to get an
| honest debate on the merits of ideas from Bob than you would have
| ever gotten from Rush even if it won't reach as many people.
|
| Most people just want to live their lives, even if some of the
| things they believe are stupid or ridiculous.
| saurik wrote:
| > ...trying to strike down Section 230 are both obvious
| attempts at returning the power of disseminating information to
| the powerful.
|
| (We agree on anonymity, so I've elided that part; but as for
| Section 230...) I think this depends on whether you believe
| that removing Section 230 will cause social networks to filter
| more stuff or less stuff. It is worth remembering that the
| people who drafted Section 230 absolutely believed it would
| cause more content to be filtered by smaller numbers of more
| controllable companies: the reason it exists in the first place
| was not to defend the right to publish content, but to allow
| companies to filter content--as part of the Communications
| Decency Act, where the government wasn't sure it would have the
| power to regulate speech and so was examining the problem of
| how to draft the large media organizations into their cause--
| without becoming responsible for the other content... to create
| a carve-out safe haven for anyone who helps filter the world
| from "indecent" communication.
|
| As it stands, disseminating information is only at the grace of
| the powerful: Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.; as they change
| their policies of what is "acceptable content", people gain and
| lose their ability to disseminate information. If you disagree
| with the authors of Section 230 and instead believe that
| removing it will cause social media companies to filter even
| more content and take back even more control over
| communication, then sure: that's bad; but, if you agree with
| the people who drafted it... that, without protection from
| prosecution over their editorial decisions, they will fall back
| to "I'm just a dumb platform" (like a telephone company, which
| does not need Section 230 to operate without content filters,
| and which is absolutely enough to build a social network such
| as the original Instagram on top of), then this would be a big
| boon to deconstructing currently-centralized control over
| information.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| Section 230 clarified what networks were allowed to do
| without needing to overtly moderate the content. Without it,
| networks are going to figure out different business models
| because it's not possible to fully moderate a billion people.
| I keep seeing people compare social media networks to
| telephone operators, but they're nothing alike, even if you
| tie yourself into a logical pretzel in an attempt to do so.
| They're much closer to radio operators.
| saurik wrote:
| But... the "business model" you are defending is something
| we all know is bullshit: maximizing engagement to collect
| data on users and sell advertisements :(. Why should we go
| out of our way to help this exist? I am not "tying myself
| into a logical pretzel" to do the comparison: I'm carefully
| considering the tradeoffs with the goal of penalizing
| things I don't like to get the things I do.
|
| The original model of Instagram--and Facebook! and (mostly,
| but not entirely) Twitter--is that you have an account, and
| people who follow you can see what you post, in time order.
| There is absolutely no reason why they need centralized
| moderation for this: the moderation comes from people
| deciding to unfollow you if they don't like your content
| for absolutely any personal reason.
|
| If the result of this is that you can't have a massive
| behemoth social network that only scales because it is
| using biased AIs to filter content while attempting to
| maximize "engagement" by pushing people to extreme
| positions while washing their hands of the whole mess by
| claiming "wasn't us: this is on the users!" even though the
| editorial decisions are their own... THAT'S GREAT!
| a_t48 wrote:
| > The original model of Instagram--and Facebook! and
| (mostly, but not entirely) Twitter--is that you have an
| account, and people who follow you can see what you post,
| in time order. There is absolutely no reason why they
| need centralized moderation for this: the moderation
| comes from people deciding to unfollow you if they don't
| like your content for absolutely any personal reason.
|
| Not quite - what about _actual_ calls to violence and
| such? (Very hyperbolically) should a platform allow the
| local KKK chapter to use it plan lynches?
| lvl100 wrote:
| Anonymity doesn't mean lack of accountability. There are ways to
| have both. Not hard.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| disagree with this take. It might stifle free speech but in my
| book it does not stifle democracy, and reducing the latter to the
| former is a mistake. I think the basic unit of democracy is the
| citizen, and the citizen is _not_ a private person. Being a
| citizen means participating in _public_ life, and public life
| brings with it, trust, accountability and reputation. I do not
| belief at all that such a thing as an anonymous democracy can
| exist.
|
| Anonymity might be a useful tool against certain forms of
| authority, that is to say it can guard certain negative rights,
| but i think it is an absolutely wrong tool to build a community
| in any active sense, because to be part of a community means to
| have an identity and be accountable.
|
| I think anonymity is appropriate for whistleblowers or
| transparency activists, but not for ordinary people who wish to
| participate in public and political life or discourse. I also
| don't buy the argument of the article that power imbalance
| justifies anonymity. People in power are not wrong just because
| they are in power. They should have the same recourse against
| say, vile attacks or defamation that anyone else has. This 'stick
| it to the man' impulse that allows viciousness in discourse just
| because there are imbalances in power is i think a form of
| misguided egalitarianism.
|
| HN is I think a good example. Quite a lot of people here have
| their real names attached to their accounts, those that don't at
| least comment under a consistent pseudonym, the site is quite
| harsh when it comes to avoiding bans. This elevates the
| discussions here compared to completely anonymous websites which
| are effectively a toxic swamp. If I had to pick between the HN
| democracy and the 4chan democracy, I knew what I would pick.
| [deleted]
| chmod775 wrote:
| > I think anonymity is appropriate for whistleblowers or
| transparency activists,
|
| I guess the state should get to decide who qualifies?
|
| That'll work out swimmingly.
| notriddle wrote:
| No, it obviously should not be the state that decides
| something like this. This is journalists' work.
|
| The most difficult part of whistleblowing is _proving that
| any of this stuff is happening_. If I started posting on HN
| about a black market for human baby meat, you probably wouldn
| 't even see it: pg would ban me almost immediately as a
| troll, and he'd be right to do so. But what if there actually
| is one?
|
| (and I'm not even really anonymous; if you want to, you can
| find my real name)
|
| A journalist who knows the real identity of an anonymous
| informant has the ability to prove that they are who they say
| they are, and that the stuff they're trying to blow the cover
| of is actually happening. You don't know the identity of the
| informant, but there is still a real-world identity and
| reputation tied to the information, which is at least
| _supposed_ to mean that if they 're full of crap, you don't
| listen to them next time. There is, simply put, a chain of
| custody for reliable information.
| int_19h wrote:
| 100 million people is not a "community".
|
| Even 100 thousand is not a "community".
|
| You're right that anonymity is not how you build proper
| communities. But proper communities can only operate on a scale
| much smaller than any social media.
|
| Now, a Facebook _group_ might be a community - but then surely
| it should be up to its members to decide how to deal with
| anonymity?
| ghoward wrote:
| > It might stifle free speech but in my book it does not stifle
| democracy, and reducing the latter to the former is a mistake.
|
| Curious: how do you have democracy without free speech?
|
| To me, it seems that free speech is a prerequisite for
| democracy. If it does not exist, then how can ordinary citizens
| enact change?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think such takes have to contend with the fact that the
| biggest social media cesspool is the one with the least
| anonymity: Facebook.
| actusual wrote:
| This is a really interesting point. While some "social media"
| hubs are much more toxic (think 8 chan), their reach is
| largely neutered because the upside just isn't there for the
| average citizen.
| ashtonkem wrote:
| I think anonymity, non-anonymity, and pseudonyms are all
| pretty nuanced, and don't have as linear an impact on the
| discourse as is commonly represented. We all know of
| anonymous forums that are utter cesspools, such as 4chan.
| We've also probably been part of forums and social media
| sites where pseudonyms were the norm, yet everyone
| jealously protected their good name and comported themself
| according to the norms and expectations of that community.
| Scale, social cohesion, moderation quality, and other site
| decisions have a huge impact on how people behave, possibly
| bigger than whether or not people use their real names.
| actusual wrote:
| > I think the basic unit of democracy is the citizen, and the
| citizen is not a private person. Being a citizen means
| participating in public life, and public life brings with it,
| trust, accountability and reputation.
|
| I disagree with this, mostly for the reason that the
| requirement for trust, accountability and reputation to exist
| in a society is different person to person when conditioned on
| wealth. If I have massive wealth, I can participate in society
| and democracy entirely anonymously. I vote, which is anonymous,
| and that's it. I have no requirement for trust, accountability
| and reputation.
|
| Not only that but trust, accountability and reputation are all
| subjective measures based on who is measuring them. Mark
| Zuckerberg is trustworthy, accountable, and has high reputation
| for some folks at FB, while a large number of other people
| would disagree with that. Who's opinion matters? Has his
| measures of trust, accountability and reputation changed over
| time? Additionally, trust, accountability and reputation don't
| matter to him if he's still one of the richest people on earth.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| I agree with you about voting.
|
| But if I'm speaking, reputation usually matters. People want
| to know whether to assign credibility to what I say, and
| knowing who I am plays a large part in that.
|
| Now, HN is an interesting example of that. Anyone can read my
| comment history (unless I create a throwaway for one post),
| but nobody knows who I am (unless I make my name and/or email
| address public). Still, I can build up a reputation here,
| either good or bad. And I do the same for others. "Oh, user X
| usually has interesting things to say. I was maybe going to
| skip this comment, but because of who wrote it, I'll read
| it." Some users get that extra benefit of the doubt, because
| with me they have built up credibility over time.
|
| This happens in politics, too. Consider the Federalist
| Papers. At the time, the writers were not known, but they
| built up a consistent, solid argument. We respect them now,
| not because of who the writers were, but because of the
| quality of the material. (If anything, we respect the writers
| more because of what they wrote, not the other way around.)
| So this can work in politics - people with a reputation, and
| still anonymous.
|
| But then there's Q. Q has built up a reputation (both good
| and bad) while remaining anonymous. But my personal
| conspiracy theory is that Q was a Russian disinformation
| campaign. ("Was" is perhaps too optimistic - I would expect Q
| to re-emerge as we get to the 2022 or 2024 elections.) I
| would _really_ like to know who Q was, in order that people
| would have a better basis for judging what Q says.
| tweedledee wrote:
| Q seemed to be an 'Operation Trust' / operatsiia Trest
| campaign. The idea is to undermine resistance by pretending
| there is already one in place and that the secret
| resistance with a plan that will be eminently successful.
| It undermines actual resistance. The parallel being Trump
| supporters being the resistance that didn't do anything
| (other than make fools of themselves) with the belief that
| there was a secret plan to keep Trump in power. In this
| scenario Q would have been created to undermine Trump and
| his supporters. A large part of propaganda is to make your
| enemies look foolish. I'm reminded of a Voltaire quote: "I
| have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O
| Lord make my enemies ridiculous. ' And God granted it."
| actusual wrote:
| Hackernews is an interesting example, as it is HEAVILY
| moderated, and some would say that this leads to a much
| higher level of commenting quality.
| asavagasdgasd wrote:
| for most topics, I'd say the quality of conversation is
| high, but for some topics HN is pretty much an echo
| chamber. Some unpopular opinions for some topics are down
| voted pretty heavily, and very quickly.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Sharing an unpopular opinion on certain topics often
| leads to immediate downvoting of completely unrelated
| posts made earlier.
|
| "You said something I don't like. Let me just click on
| your profile and downvote everything I can". Happens
| surprisingly often
| evgen wrote:
| > Consider the Federalist Papers. At the time, the writers
| were not known
|
| Everyone knew who wrote the Federalist papers. It was an
| open secret. People may not have known the specific author
| of a particular passage or argument, but among the elite
| debating the constitution (who were the target audience)
| there was no disguise or mystery regarding the people who
| were 'Publius.' This gets trotted frequently out as one of
| the few examples of anonymous political speech having a
| potential benefit, but given the fact that it was
| pseudonymous at best I welcome additional examples of
| actual anonymous political speech that was of any
| consequence.
| [deleted]
| philjohn wrote:
| It's worth bearing in mind that just over the last few days we've
| seen Conservative MP's respond to genuine questions and being
| held to account over a recent vote (against preventing the
| dumping of untreated sewage) respond that this is anonymous
| abuse, would lead to another murder like that very sad death of
| David Amess, to try and shut down any scrutiny.
|
| Banning anonymous accounts is not to prevent harm, but it's being
| sold that way.
| mcguire wrote:
| " _...we 've seen Conservative MP's respond to genuine
| questions and being held to account over a recent vote._"
|
| The United States Congress uses anonymous voting to explicitly
| avoid that sort of thing.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| US Congress voting is not anonymous. You can lookup each
| members vote on every bill (though maybe there is a rare
| exception I'm unaware of).
| mcguire wrote:
| " _All voting in Congress is a matter of public record.
| However, not all floor votes are roll call votes. There are
| voice votes ("aye" or "no") and division or standing votes
| (where the presiding officer counts Members), and these
| types of votes do not indicate by name how a member voted._
| "
| (https://www.senate.gov/legislative/HowTo/how_to_votes.htm)
|
| I am having a difficult time finding data on the number of
| roll-call votes vs. others; general descriptions go between
| "very often" and "the majority".
|
| " _Very often, when a vote is called for passage of a
| particular bill, a voice vote is the usual procedure.
| Equally often, a bill is often declared "passed" even when
| the voices of a measure's supporters are not obviously
| louder. Also, a voice vote does not allow a member's
| constituents to know how he or she voted on a particular
| bill. If a clear-cut winner of a voice vote is not
| recognized, then a request for a recorded vote is made._" (
| https://www.legion.org/legislative/thomas/17797/part-11-rol
| l...)
| 0des wrote:
| Time to use a PURDAH
|
| https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nonexistence-seems-prefe...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Banning anonymity by law is bad, but it is a valid choice for
| platforms. Some people like to go to Disney World, some like to
| go to New Orleans.
| PaybackTony wrote:
| This is a very complicated topic that seems to see a lot of
| conflation, as it does in this article. It's really hard for a
| social network to maintain a balance, especially with how many
| try flooding them with very hard to verify, false information
| from misleading sources.
|
| On our network, our plan moving forward is to allow our users to
| verify their identity privately with the platform to earn an "ID
| Verified" badge while still maintaining an anonymous public
| pseudonym if they choose. The idea being that others can trust
| the user is a real person and not some troll (paid or otherwise)
| while also allowing those that wish to have it to maintain
| anonymity publicly.
|
| Just to give some insight into how this anonymity becomes a
| problem. On our platform, I watch in real-time people / actors
| from outside the U.S. posing as seemingly real people in the
| United States and posting propaganda. Not the obviously false
| stuff either. Carefully crafted political BS that is meant to
| simply move the needle ever so slightly on the desired targets --
| arguably a case where anonymity is negatively affecting
| democracy. There is so much to this I could probably write an
| entire blog on it, it's ever irritating as someone running a
| platform but also quite interesting.
| bryan_w wrote:
| I've seen the same on various other forums and have been
| surprised/impressed how far their operations have improved over
| the years.
| ACow_Adonis wrote:
| on the flipside, like with my Facebook account, i hold and use
| it purely so that i can control what other people say about me
| and so i can stop them tagging me in photos, and i can track
| what information the network has on me. but I'm never going to
| engage on the site, and I'm sure as hell never going to speak
| or share my true opinions on there or ever link them to my true
| name. here on hacker news i try to politely limit myself to
| certain topics and positions.
|
| in my country (Australia), there's some irony that i think our
| biggest problem with "foreign influence" isn't Russian or
| Chinese troll accounts, but genuine American accounts, media
| and American social media companies talking absolute crap and
| spreading the general phenomenon and quality of American
| politics worldwide. anonymity and Russian trolls aren't the
| problem when your mainstream spread so much FUD worldwide and
| largely serves the same purpose as those trolls but in a
| "legitimate" form. American media has far more reach, both in
| absolute power, influence and damage, than any subtle espionage
| agent or internet troll, and its personalities and commenters
| are happy to use their real names because their medium of
| influence is "legitimate" and they're commercially/socially
| rewarded for doing so. It seems, given the state of things,
| that the obsession with "Russian trolls and foreign actors" is
| prima facie absurd, and the limited influence they actually
| have compared to the elimination of sane discussion or valid
| analysis and criticism that will similarly be removed if forced
| to link back to real identification is something that should be
| considered in any cost benefit, as well as their relative
| effect compared to the bullshit consumerism/
| partisanship/culture-war/ racist/religious/lobbyists/violent
| material that's seen as somehow "legitimate".
| spicybright wrote:
| No kidding. Should we have been taping our ID's too our foreheads
| when protesting the whole time if that wasn't the case?
| mcguire wrote:
| What is your position on police officers covering their badge
| numbers at protests?
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Are you suggesting that an action by the state is equivalent
| to actions by private citizens?
| mcguire wrote:
| Are you suggesting that anonymity is not an unmitigated
| good?
| ashtonkem wrote:
| They're state employees on the clock, given a gun and legal
| immunity by the state. They can have their anonymity back
| when they're not performing their official duties, not
| during.
| spicybright wrote:
| Disgusting, but I've never any incidents of this. Almost
| every state requires them to state their name, badge number,
| and department if requested.
|
| If I'm paying them with taxes, and allowing them the ability
| to use a massive amount of force taht non-officers are not
| allowed to, you can be sure I'd want their info in case they
| make a big mistake.
|
| I'm not working for anyone but myself when I'm protesting.
| mcguire wrote:
| https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/politics/law-enforcement-
| badg...
|
| https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/06/05/seattle-
| police-c...
|
| https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-cover-
| name-...
|
| https://www.chicagoreporter.com/chicago-police-
| investigating...
|
| https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-nypd-
| cops-...
|
| https://i2.wp.com/www.chicagoreporter.com/wp-
| content/uploads...
| loceng wrote:
| Your ID is your face, etc. If you're protesting in a place that
| you need to worry about being identified and targeted by the
| ruling authority, covering your face alone likely isn't enough
| anyhow.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Imagine a future where humanoid looking drones march in
| protests as a protestors avatar.
| klyrs wrote:
| I'm imagining it. Those drones are remote-controlled. That
| can be traced, so anonymity is foiled.
| spicybright wrote:
| Lol. You think there wouldn't be a way to proxy signals
| to keep it anonymous? They can't even reliably trace robo
| call spam on normal phone networks as is.
|
| But sure it's possible. But the public is almost always
| one step ahead of the tech developed by the police.
|
| If we're at the level of piloting robot humans remotely
| in huge crowds for protests, you can bet there's a few
| small really smart people defending everyone against tech
| attacks.
|
| It's why the police always lobby for regulations or bans
| instead of fighting tech against tech.
| klyrs wrote:
| > It's why the police always lobby for regulations or
| bans instead of fighting tech against tech.
|
| Sure, let's go that route. One issue in suppression of
| human protests is that humans have rights. Robots do not.
| If your drone is blocking traffic, it can be impounded,
| and quite likely destroyed in the process. A few yards of
| netting and a garbage truck would make quick work of a
| few million dollars worth of protest-drones.
| self_buddliea wrote:
| If they pass this legislation, my bottom will lose its precious
| anonymity.
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