Hacker News Reader

Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Cons: Requiring comments via Facebook means loss of anonymity.

Pros: Requiring comments via Facebook means loss of anonymity.

I suppose it depends on what your priorities are. If you'd like the insightful input of someone who might be close to the source of the topic at hand, but maintains anonymity for safety or fear of repercussion, then the requirement to use Facebook could be quite damaging.

On the other hand, if your primary concern is the nameless faces spewing hateful, racist, or otherwise inflammatory garbage on your comments section, the Facebook requirement with its real-name policy could go some ways to curtailing that kind of dialogue.

I imagine your average article discussion consists of 5% of the former and 95% of the latter, and so I can understand why they might choose to go this way, even if I am disappointed by it.

View on HN

> the Facebook requirement with its real-name policy could go some ways to curtailing that kind of dialogue.

This was the theory was for a while, but empirical evidence has refuted it. People are just are bad or worse when posting under their real names, and it's not just an anecdotal feeling anymore: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160729/23305535110/study...

Thank you for the link providing non-anecdotal evidence that a real-name policy does nothing to discourage aggressive trolls. I run a Facebook page with a moderate number of likes (~75K), and the fact that the trolling was, if anything, louder and nastier than in a comparably sized community on reddit, was one of the first things I learned.

It's interesting to see that real name policies can actually make trolls behave more aggressively. On the other side of the spectrum, I anecdotally find that they actually prevent me from posting constructive things. I frequently refrain from leaving reviews for restaurants and stores on Google because I don't want them associated with my real name. It's not that I would otherwise be leaving low quality or bitter reviews, I'm just not particularly interested in anybody who knows my name having access to information about where I shop, what I eat, etc (even though I would be happy to share this information anonymously to help other people make informed decisions). I feel similarly about commenting on news articles, blogs, and apps that I use. It wouldn't surprise me if this was a significant factor in how real name policies affect overall comment quality.

I imagine it's because those trolls still have no consequences to their actions. If people would make more public the comments of those who are the most toxic (death/rape/other violence threats, etc), by, say, sending those comments to the person's mother/grandmother, their boss, etc, and they actually had consequences for those actions, then it might taper off.*

* Of course, this kind of action can have some far reaching consequences, and is quite ripe for abuse. I don't know if there is a way to fix that. And myself, not being the target of such abuse online, I'm not really that invested in trying it.

Facebook Comments (e.g. TechCrunch comments) are a secondary product for them, with even fewer features for publisher control and worse spam detection than Disqus.

Posting with your real identity does surprisingly nothing to stop trolls/flame wars; it arguably makes it worse as now there is a target.

Site using Facebook for comments usually end up full of horrible spam. Facebook isn't a good solution either.

IT's interesting to see how a lot of big websites moved from Discuss to livefyre, I wonder what's wrong with Discuss, livefyre looks like it has fewer features and options.

Possibly price. IIRC, Discus got expensive fast.

I wonder if there's a way to allocate names that are pseudonymous but not disposable.

That is: you can have an alter ego (or 5) that aren't easily linked to your real identity, but new identities are hard enough to come by that getting banned isn't trivially bypassed by a new identity.

This would be a major step for email/messaging spam too.

SomethingAwful handles this by charging for accounts, so if you get banned it costs 5 or 10 dollars to get a new identity.

Urbit handles this in a decentralized way by intentionally limiting the namespace, so that once it runs out you have to buy a name/address from someone who's selling.

Sure. For something global though, it might be a problem when your price per account is five minutes' wages in one country and five days in another.

I wonder if there's a way around this.

Metafilter has a $5 dollar entry fee, but will waive it in cases of hardship. Seems like a decent solution as long as the community is small enough to have responsive management / moderation like Metafilter.

That's what an accrued-over-time reputation is supposed to help with.

Your Imaginary Internet Points on HN, for example.

>On the other hand, if your primary concern is the nameless faces spewing hateful, racist, or otherwise inflammatory garbage on your comments section, the Facebook requirement with its real-name policy could go some ways to curtailing that kind of dialogue.

When was the last time you used Facebook?

Facebook isn't the only social option. Twitter replies are an opportunity for anonymous or semi-anonymous commentary. But, also an opportunity for garbage.

Twitter does not allow for conversations in the same page of the article, which is part of the appeal. (And Twitter's recent changes make it hard to track conversations even on the website)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com