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Comment by vog | Hacker News Reader

The real name discussion is as old as the Usenet, maybe even older. I find it strange to see it re-appearing again and again every few years for almost decades.

Back then, the consensus was roughly:

1. If a community accepts pseudonyms, it is polite to use either your realname or an obvious pseudonym.

2. If a community places high value on realnames, either use your realname or a realname-sounding (i.e. non-obvious) pseudonym.

3. Unmasking someone's nonpublic realname, or other private information, is generally considered impolite if not aggressive, regardless whether the community places high value on realnames or not.

Has anything substantially changed since then?

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The problem was that back then you didn't have service providers with lock-in on a market, like today's Facebook and the Internet was only a thing for techies, whereas nowadays more than half of the world's population has access to the Internet.

Can you just not use Facebook? There are obviously only 3 choices: (1) not use it, but then you won't have an account where all of your friends are; (2) use it with your real name and lose your privacy, with obvious risks, like your employer or relatives being able to find you on Facebook or (3) use Facebook with a fake name and risk being banned for breach of contract, with all of your investments in it lost.

Lets not pretend that today's Internet is the same as the Internet from the eighties and nineties. Your father and grandma weren't on Usenet.

There's a fourth option: use Facebook with your real name, and separately with fake name(s). For the real-name account, carefully manage "friends" to avoid problems with family, friends, coworkers, etc. Make sure that there's no leakage between your real-name account and fake-name accounts, or among fake-name accounts. Practice good compartmentalization OpSec.

But wouldn't your fake profile start showing up in 'People you may know' section? I've heard Facebook uses IP adresses to link accounts.

So suddenly you have to explain to your real friends/family/coworkers why you have a fake account.

If your compartmentalization OpSec is adequate, there will be not more linkage between your real-name and fake-name accounts than there is between them and my accounts.

That is becoming harder and harder to do as Facebook increases their level of knowledge

Just the Facial Recognition alone has caused problems for people attempting to do this.

Further OpSec is not just on you, I know a couple of people that have tried this only to have OTHER people expose thier data or information by posting things on facebook and other sites about them.

Yeah that 'tag your friends' stuff was pure evil. Brilliant, but evil.

One aspect of compartmentalization OpSec is not telling your meatspace friends about your fake-name accounts. And vice versa. And you wouldn't use real photos in fake accounts.

The problem comes in when/if you use your Alternate Identity (I dislike "fake" as it is no less real than your government approved Identity IMO), to attend events, meetups, or other real world activities.

I know many people are a part of Real Worlds clubs, attend conferences, or other events under Identities that do not match their government issued documents. They do this for a verity of reasons.

The problem is, for very good reasons, most public venues don't like masked people visiting.

Since you can't easily change your face there is a very substantial risk that some human you run across will recognize you, or that some computer algorithm will ask a human likely to to confirm it's tagging of you in a picture they have no context on.

Yes, that is the downside. Miririr doesn't attend meatspace meetings :( But perhaps that will become possible as robotics develops. Snowden attends many meetings via robot. Of course, people help and accommodate that because he's famous. But maybe robotic-presence services will develop. Consider attendant reductions in global climate forcing! I like the vision of temporary bodies in Kevin MacArdry's Last Trumpet Project.[0]

[0] https://anarplex.net/hosted/files/last_trumpet/LTP.pdf

Oh for goodness' sake, not everyone wants to have to think like an espionage agent just to enjoy casual conversation on line. The people who suffer worst from harassment aren't opsec geniuses like you that screw up at critical moments, they're relatively clueless types who don't recognize the level of antagonism they might encounter - just as people in a new town are often ignorant of which neighborhoods are more or less safe (and for who, and why), and just as sheltered people may not be able to read subtle clues that a real-life situation is potentially dangerous.

I am so sick of this 'better security' argument - it's a roundabout way of saying you don't have a good answer. The whole 'better security' argument is based on the notion that conflict is inevitable so it should take priority over everything else (which might be why defense is such a large part of the US' discretionary budget). But taking that as your guide results in substantially worse quality of life. If crime goes up in my city, is the best response for everyone to put bars on their windows and dress in body armor etc. etc.? No, that would suggest we've given up on the idea of being able to reduce crime by any other method. Putting bars on my windows is near the bottom of my list of responses to crime, because it would make me feel like I'm living in prison - in which case, what's the point in being law-abiding, I might as well take up crime myself and hope I don't get caught than spend money on turning home into a fortress.

This isn't an argument against self-defense, but against security costs as a negative externality.

Actually I would eventually consider re-opening a Facebook account should they introduce an alias/identity system so that I could manage easily and separately my différents circles.

Of course ads profiling of each identities should also be kept separated. And of course a strong privacy statement backed up by some technical information on the architecture should also be a part of that change (Apple iOS security guide is a good example to follow IMHO).

Unfortunately this look so far away from the current Facebook approach to new users "hey trust us type in your IMAP credentials so we can scrape all your acquaintances by snooping all your mails!"

Google requires phone or text verification on new accounts. I'm not sure about Facebook, but they do require an email address, and that has to come from somewhere. Eventually, you will require verification via phone or text, and that's when it gets harder to prevent these services from linking back to you. I'm not sure what it takes to create a burner phone number not linked to you these days.

None of that really matters if you just want to maintain an anonymous persona aside from your real identity. However, you're still only a subpoena away from the government tracking you down. I haven't even given it that much thought, but it seems really hard to cover your tracks these days.

A few months ago, worrying about such things seemed kind of silly to me. Now, I think I understand the need better.

> A few months ago, worrying about such things seemed kind of silly to me. Now, I think I understand the need better

I am assuming you are now concerned because of the incoming administration. I find this puzzling.

Do you remember this character? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashcroft

GP might not be old enough for John Ashcroft to be relevant to them. I, on the other hand, remember Ed Meese. We all become aware when we are ready to become aware.

I remember the name and face but had forgotten the details. Here is a nice quote courtesy of Ed Meese's wiki page:

    Suspects who are innocent of a crime should [have Miranda rights]. 
    But the thing is, you don't have many suspects who are innocent of 
    a crime. That's contradictory. If a person is innocent of a crime,
    then he is not a suspect.

For those too lazy to parse this claptrap, the quote logically reduces to "all suspects are guilty".

Yes, it's a pain. So it's simplest to just buy fake-name accounts. Just as spammers do ;) But there's no point, unless you have a pressing need.

If your OpSec is adequate, subpoenas aren't an issue.

> I'm not sure what it takes to create a burner phone number not linked to you these days.

Cash transaction for a prepaid phone. Pretty easy, if not a little inconvenient.

Or just have a mostly unused real-name account that you use for contacting your friends, when you can't reach them otherwise.

Why even have a fake facebook account? Facebook will know it's you. The government will too.

If you don't want the whole world to be privy to what you post, then why even use Facebook? Just post your green frogs and political opinions on forums and websites that do not base their revenue around tracking you 24/7.

Yes. Unless you have a reason to need other Facebook accounts. To get anonymous logins on other sites. Or whatever.

I think anonymous logins and Facebook accounts just do not combine very well.

No, they don't. But there are use cases where it's worth it.

You're saying that the network effect benefits of Facebook (making new friends or staying in contact with existing ones) are exactly equal to the costs (loss of privacy). They're not; FB chooses what that cost:benefit ratio is by how they set their terms of service and (naturally) puts its economic advantage first. Competitors can't deliver the same network effects as FB so the benefits they can offer are very limited by comparison.

that, in a nutshell, s why we could really use a good social networking protocol rather than a platform. Platforms are like land, land has landlords, and landlords want rents.

There's even a fifth option: see it for what it is, and apply social pressure. Sure, people are free to use Facebook while accepting it as it is, and I'm free to cut them off for that. It's not like I am not offering arguments, but at this point the burden isn't on me anymore. We're all adults, we all have internet access and history books. It's our choice whether we follow fools or digest the hard lessons of wise men and women, and I for one am not interested in arranging deck chairs or making friends on Titanics. For all things we could feel superior to the old greeks to, I think this is spot on:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot

> An idiot in Athenian democracy was someone who was characterized by self-centeredness and concerned almost exclusively with private—as opposed to public—affairs. Idiocy was the natural state of ignorance into which all persons were born and its opposite, citizenship, was effected through formalized education. In Athenian democracy, idiots were born and citizens were made through education (although citizenship was also largely hereditary). "Idiot" originally referred to "layman, person lacking professional skill", "person so mentally deficient as to be incapable of ordinary reasoning". Declining to take part in public life, such as democratic government of the polis (city state), was considered dishonorable. "Idiots" were seen as having bad judgment in public and political matters.

Step one is to recognize the problem, and that's compared to the seriousness we should have, we're all idiots. And we no longer can afford it, we have invented to many idiocy multipliers. If that hurts anyone's feelings I'm real sorry, but considering all those war profiteers we host I'd rather be able to look wise people and dead people in the eye, than the people who can't look those people in the eye. The world's a dirty, dark, and more than anything a foolish, petty and derpy place; but cleansing one's own "soul" is possible, to a degree.

That's just a special case of (3). Essentially you're saying 'spend a lot of time and effort on security, much of which may be arbitrarily zeroed by your counterparty.' That's a shitty proposition, because it's basically offloading the cost of doing that onto someone who is at a comparative disadvantage, and allowing FB to exploit the resulting economic gap - indeed, this is their business model.

Naturally people want to use FB because it's convenient to be able to communicate with and make new friends through a consistent convenient interface. FB has a comparative advantage in terms of privacy protection, anonymity etc., simply because it has the data centers and the database and the developers - there's little additional technical cost to going with one policy over another (although there may be a substantial business cost). There's a relatively high technical cost for the individual user in doing all this compartmentalization etc. so most people don't bother - partly because they don't want to pay it and partly because they don't know the business value of the information they are giving out about themselves, and can't easily estimate the economic impact of their decisions.

I'm not saying that maintaining fake-name Facebook accounts makes any sense for most people. As you say, it's too much work, and there's too much risk of losing accounts. But if you need fake accounts, for whatever reason, it's doable.

I don't think that it's a special case of (3). It's rather a combination of (2) and (3).

> Lets not pretend that today's Internet is the same as the Internet from the eighties and nineties. Your father and grandma weren't on Usenet.

This is an important point. This entire infrastructure was designed, and initially used, by academics and engineers. I remember thinking about the SPAM problem in '95 and reaching the conclusion that given its provenance, little if any thought was given to addressing anti-social behavior by users by its designers.

Yes.

People using real names on Usenet did not usually face a serious risk of being harassed and endangered in real life by an army of trolls: E.g. having their address, phone number and other private details stolen and publicly disseminated. Having armed police raid their house because someone has made a bogus 911 call. Having their utilities and back accounts cancelled because someone rang up using their details. Having the same harassment happen to their friends, relatives and colleagues. Etc.

And this is without considering people living in countries with oppressive governments, where using their real name could see them arrested, beaten and imprisoned.

Basically, the stakes are a lot higher for a lot of people. For many, preserving anonymity isn't a matter of "politeness" — it's a matter of personal security. It can literally be a matter of life and death.

> Yes.

I see the issues you are stating, but not so much a qualitative change.

> serious risk of being harassed and endangered in real life by an army of trolls

This type of trolls (aka "stalkers") have already existed decades ago. Back then I had no trouble finding such cases documented in the Usenet archives. Of course, these happened to fewer people, but then, the net was a lot smaller, too.

> For many, preserving anonymity isn't a matter of "politeness" — it's a matter of personal security

How does this differ from what I wrote? "... is considered impolite, if not aggressive ..."

> And this is without considering people living in countries with oppressive governments, where using their real name could see them arrested, beaten and imprisoned.

This may really have changed, considering that those countries joined the internet relatively lately. Yet, it still seems that this is covered by point 3) "... is considered impolite, if not aggressive ..."

You asked whether something had substantially changed, not qualitatively. A change in degree can still be a substantial change.

It's the difference between living in a city with one murder a year, and one hundred murders a day. To the individual killed, the distinction is irrelevant, but in terms of the effect on others, and on the measures taken by the society as a whole, it's everything.

But I would also argue there has been a qualitative change, from harassment conducted by isolated individuals, to large scale, organised harassment, as well as an escalation in the tactics used. A malicious Usenet user could not call on an army of globally distributed 4chan trolls to endlessly pursue a particular vendetta. And the much greater integration of technology into institutions means the available methods to harass someone and remotely disrupt their life is far greater.

If the second city has ~36500 times the population, then it's not a change in degree at all. City A is no more or less safe than City B, nor is the police force any more or less effective, etc.

There are billions of people on the internet now. How many were using it in the days of Usenet?

By a frequentist analysis, which omits complicating factors and may lead to inaccurate conclusions. One obvious thing that a frequentist analysis misses is that the larger the population, the bigger the size of the gang you can summon to harass someone. Getting trolled by 3 or 4 people on Usenet was annoying, but today someone can find their Twitter feed flooded by hundreds of people. The frequency of the harassing activity in the population as a whole may be the same, but the potential impact on a single individual is very different (and don't go trying to tell me it's better because the number of trolls is rising slower than the general population in this made-up example).

What you're saying is right (in general, but not in reference to the specific analogy), but I'm not sure what it has to do with a frequentist analysis. Rather, it's a simplistic linear analysis of a higher-order system. Instead of multiplying the number of murders (which is an output, not an input), just multiply the number of potential murderers, with some percentage chance of being triggered to desire to murder a particular individual if encountered. If that chance averages 1%, in a town of 101 people you would have a 50% chance of having at least one person who would want to murder you. In a town of 10,001, you would have a 99.5% chance of having at least one person who would want to murder you. [edit: and in a town of 101, there would be no chance of having more than 100 people who wanted to murder you. In a town of 10,001, you'd be as likely as not to have 100 people would would murder you.]

If everyone is exposed to everyone at all times, then everyone is endangered in large groups (seems obvious) even if no one is consistently looking for trouble more than anyone else. If that the qualities that inspire that 1% reaction have a clumpy distribution (either in perpetrator or victim), the experiences that individuals have will be vastly different in an average forum, and when holding the tolerance for danger constant, the least targeted will feel comfortable in far larger towns than the most targeted.

Of course, in real life, the larger the town, the higher the level of anonymity. In the case of internet forums, however, 1) smaller groups are being eliminated in favor of larger groups due to finance and economies of scale and 2) there is a profit motive in de-anonymizing users. There's absolutely no degree of moderation that can make it work. Anonymity simply makes the problem disappear. What you said can be targeted, you yourself cannot be.

Yeah, all of this I agree with. I don't think quality of social interaction depends on identifiability, although FB certainly leveraged its real-name policy as a quality signal from the outset - it made the platform seem more official/professional to the initial target demo.

With the qualifier that I am someone who never participated in Usenet, I'd imagine the scale of the problem is a substantial change. As you point out, certain types of trolls almost always existed, but now instead of a single person performing the harassment it can often be thousands. The larger userbase also seems to have created a more diverse set of believes, which in turn creates more opportunities for conflicts, and more likely that someone will escalate these conflicts into harassment.

> Back then I had no trouble finding such cases documented in the Usenet archives.

Curious to see a specimen or two if you can dig it up. Not challenging the statement, just mostly interested in which specific era of usenet you are referencing. I couldn't dig up anything earlier than 1999 for "usenet stalking".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valery_Fabrikant

Besides the point about oppressive governments, everything else seems to be old news - it's not that this generation invented stalking and swatting along with bloated JS frameworks. Nor is it new that anonymity on-line can be a matter of "personal security" for someone; this is pretty much as old as public Internet, with obvious parallels to any older medium of communication.

It's not that pseudonyms are a new thing either.

If you could die using your real name on an internet service, you are much better off not using that service at all, especially if they require that you use your real name.

Use of a particular service or website is not a human right. If your particular situation is such that it's unsafe or you need to violate TOS/regulations/laws by using a service... don't.

Sure, that's one answer. But it may not be the best. Another possibility is to not allow TOS terms that require real names be used.

It's our government. We should write the best rules. If the company doesn't like it they can go to a different country.

> Another possibility is to not allow TOS terms that require real names be used.

The problem with rules is that they are "one-size fits all". Very binary. Instead of telling people what they can and can not do, why don't we simply require full disclosure?

> We should write the best rules. If the company doesn't like it they can go to a different country.

That's easier for companies than citizens. But the determination of "best rules" in a (representative) democracy depends on which mob is in charge this week...

Today, not using the Internet at all is not really an option. Not using a particular service may not help, harassers on one service/site/social network often organize to attack someone outside.

> If you could die using your real name on an internet service, you are much better off not using that service at all

Classic. "I'm not at risk, so we need not change anything. Your behavior is therefore at fault."

> Use of a particular service or website is not a human right.

Of course not. Would you say that being able to freely live your life without threat of death (as you most likely already do) should be?

Allow me to extend your conclusion:

- People harass me at the laundromat because of my appearance, to the point where I fear for my life. "Don't go to that laundromat ever again." OK, I'll now have to go 30 minutes out of my way every time I need to do laundry. And suppose that this other laundromat is no different?

- People shout threats at me at the grocery store. "Don't go to that grocery store." Or, better yet, maybe I should just perfectly change the color of my skin and facial features to match theirs, so that the problem is solved!

I know you guys are going to hate this, but this attitude is precisely what is meant by "white privilege." Please let me know if I am misunderstanding your attitude, or what you think about this.

> Classic. "I'm not at risk, so we need not change anything. Your behavior is therefore at fault."

I'm sure you meant to say "Classic strawman:" because that's not at all what I said, or meant. Please actually respond to what I said and not whatever argument you heard other people make.

I think it's demonstrably true that if using Facebook is an acute risk to your life, you are better off not using. That doesn't mean you're at fault if you use it and someone kills you. But it doesn't mean that Facebook needs to change its real name policy. It means you need to weight the pros and cons of why you want to use Facebook and why using it could get you killed, and whether you're willing to risk that.

> Would you say that being able to freely live your life without threat of death (as you most likely already do) should be?

Yes.

But that doesn't mean that it's a right to do things that could engender threats to your life. A Tutsi has an inalienable right to live in Rwanda without fear of persecution or death. A Tutsi does not have an inalienable right to use Facebook (nor does anyone). If you're a Rwandan Tutsi, and you use Facebook, you should understand the risks. You should be able to use Facebook without fear or persecution or death but it's not a right any more than it's a right to have an email address or drive a particular type of car or eat a certain food on a certain day.

They're separate issues and it's Facebook's decision whether or not they want to require real names. To make that the issue ignores the fact that people are being killed because of their beliefs, or because they're transgender, or whatever the actual problem is.

> People harass me at the laundromat because of my appearance, to the point where I fear for my life. "Don't go to that laundromat ever again."

Well no, my response would be "Call the police." There are a lot of things that could happen from there. If it's actually harassment and the police address it, potentially problem solved. If it's actually harassment and police do nothing, that's a related but separate issue, and yes I would say that not going there again is the smart move. You have a right not to be killed and you have a right to wash your clothes but you don't have a right to wash your clothes in that specific laundromat at that specific time.

If it's not actually harassment then it depends what's actually happening. A group of teenagers pointing at laughing at you is uncomfortable and wrong but probably not harassment. A group of rough looking guys in a bad part of town staring at you will make most people feel uncomfortable but is also not harassment.

> People shout threats at me at the grocery store. "Don't go to that grocery store."

Call the police.

> this attitude is precisely what is meant by "white privilege."

I know you are going to hate this, but why is it the first person to bring up race is usually someone saying that something is offensive or privilege? I tend to agree that a certain level of privilege exists in the world and some of it has to do with race but Facebook's real name policy is a piss poor example of it.

Actually I think Facebook's real name policy is a good example of a kind of subtle privilege. Specifically, if you don't have a western or "white" naming scheme than you are literally not considered to have a "real name" according to Facebook's algorithm. This has stirred up controversy before with Native American groups, LGBTQ people(the person who helped implement the Facebook genders had their own account suspended for "fake name"!), and and other groups. Facebook still hasn't put in place a policy for these people and for access to a significant social media to be denied due to assuming you have a "fake name" for not fitting in with a very narrow, very western white ideal(wasp?) of a name, is a pretty good example of a phenomenon that almost exclusively excludes minority demographics from a majority service or culture. Sure, it isn't something that will kill someone, but it kind of sucks and kind of leaves a demographic of people out in the cold and unable to participate in a big social media medium without faking or modifying their presented identity to fit in the conventions of a majority culture.

Does FB allow Arabic text in names? I have several middle eastern friends (people born there and some who still live there, not middle eastern Americans) so see it in comments a fairly often but it comes to mind that I've never seen an Arabic name.

How does one's LGBTQ status affect their legal name?

I assume that the parent was referring to the odds of someone LGBTQ being "in the closet", and hiding their status to avoid social penalties (in repressive areas / with family / etc), while still wanting to have a pseudonym-account which in a fairly valid way represents the "real them".

LGBTQ people can legally change their name to match their new identity or adopt a pseudonym to avoid harassment from people who know them offline. LGBTQ people who legally change their name(s) to something less conventional are often pinged by facebook as not having a real name. For example, Zoe Cat, a transwoman who worked at Facebook with that name and helped develop the gender options on Facebook had their account suspended for having a "fake name". [1]

According to another anonymous source, Facebook refused their name despite presenting government-issued documents.[2]

[1]https://medium.com/@zip/my-name-is-only-real-enough-to-work-... [2]http://www.dailydot.com/via/facebook-real-names-cracking-dow...

Nitpick: "trans" (short for "transgender") is an adjective which modifies the noun "woman" (or another noun, of course!); hence, "trans woman" (or "trans man", or "trans person") should be written as two words.

Call the police.

Call the police? You don't have enough proof, and shouting death threats at people isn't "harassment" anyway, it's just "free speech", so just grow a thicker skin already, and stop encouraging the death threats to be sent to you by being out in public like that!

You have a right not to be killed and you have a right to wash your clothes but you don't have a right to wash your clothes in that specific laundromat at that specific time.

Nice how you seem to have started to realize your logical conclusion was "but you don't have a right to wash your clothes without the threat of being killed", but tried to avoid it.

I know you are going to hate this, but why is it the first person to bring up race is usually someone saying that something is offensive or privilege?

A while back I criticized the "politics" "detox" on HN by saying that there are a lot of people who don't have the luxury of just saying "I'm tired of all this, I'll take a week off from it". They don't have that luxury because they're going to be bombarded with hate, and probably harassment and threats, no matter what they do.

Meanwhile there are a lot of other people who can simply take a week off: they don't face that constant bombardment, nobody will try to follow them around and keep forcibly exposing them to it, etc. This is what's meant by "privilege"; the people who can treat this as just something tiresome which can be safely ignored for a week are fundamentally living in a different world than the people who will be followed and threatened by it no matter what (because, let's face it, there are dedicated ragemobs out there which don't care if somebody stops reading one site, or going to one laundromat -- they'll track down phone numbers and home addresses and keep coming).

Getting the people who "take a week off" to understand that this is something unique to them as a class, something that others can't just do whenever they want, something that really is a luxury compared to the way others are forced by our society to live, is often very difficult, because when you live in that protected bubble you often are completely unaware of its existence. You don't face that kind of treatment, after all, and you think of yourself as average, so on average that kind of thing must be very rare or perhaps greatly exaggerated. Dragging people out of that bubble and making them confront the fact that no, it's not rare and no, it's not exaggerated (if anything, it's often understated), and yes, there are very clear patterns, based heavily in race and gender, which consistently appear to determine who gets the luxury of the bubble and who doesn't, is very hard, but necessary.

I'd say that everybody has a natural right to not fear malicious harm while engaging in any form of everyday commerce or public discourse.

In situations like the hypotheticals described, I would also say that the local authorities have lost their mandate to govern, and that those subject to the adverse conditions are ethically justified in securing their own safety by any means at their disposal, including against those (former) local authorities, if necessary, while still engaging in everyday commerce and public discourse. Making everyone stay home to stay safe is not an acceptable option. Living your life is more than just avoiding an untimely death.

You do have the right to do business at a laundromat without the threat of being killed, but it is not the owner of the laundromat that has the ultimate duty to provide the illusion of physical security there. If a state exists, it is the state's duty to make you feel safe anywhere in public, provided that you do not yourself act unlawfully.

No government upholds that duty perfectly, however, so a certain measure of responsibility for one's personal safety will always fall upon the individual. And in order to safeguard the benefits of trade, a certain measure will always fall upon the business owner who wishes to keep their customers (and unpurchased property).

Facebook has chosen, perhaps wrongly, to implement its policies such that it is easier (and cheaper) to hold misbehaving individuals accountable after the fact than to protect innocents from misbehavior before it happens. This is a business decision, and it reveals by its failures that state authorities are not effectively investigating and prosecuting criminal harassment to the extent necessary to make people feel safe, and in the worst cases, it is the state authorities themselves that are harassing identifiable individuals.

In fact, in the United States of America, the Supreme Court has ruled several times that police do not have a duty to protect citizens from crimes. For instance: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/28/politics/justices-rule-pol...

Quoting from a cousin post that I wrote:

> The police aren't there to protect you, specifically. They are paid to enforce the law, as directed by their superiors.

Those people who say "Just call the police." have likely never actually called the police (in the US).

Yup. Agreed. Wasn't specifically replying to you, but to the "call the police" people.

I like the way you frame privilege. I've heard it expressed in almost the same terms before, but maybe it's a combination of you expressing it less emotionally and me being more receptive to the message in the first place.

And this segues into my response to you: as you said, it is very hard for some people to just "up and ignore politics for a while".

What I feel you are missing however is that there is a very perverse mirror effect: as a white guy (which I assume from your comment you are not), drinking from the social justice firehose is like basking in anti-white male hate (remember that just like not every white male is a racist and a sexist, not every advocate for social justice is immune from similar hateful beliefs targeted at the former group).

One difference is that you're supposed to like it. Or at least a white male who's a "good person" is.

Now, I don't know to what extent both situations are similar or different, I've only ever experienced one side of it (and all the minority friends I ever asked couldn't relay experiences that approach the level of severity people imply on the Internet. But maybe that's because Québec/Ontario is a very different place than wherever you live, or maybe I just don't know the right people).

> something that others can't just do whenever they want, something that really is a luxury compared to the way others are forced by our society to live

I don't really know how to frame this, but I think it's worth noting that in fact, no matter what you've experienced, you still live a luxurious life yourself by today's world standards.

Indeed, if you make just 18k $/year, you're part of the world's richest 10%.

If you have Internet, then you're part of the 40% of people lucky enough to do so.

In many countries today, female foeticides (that is, killing babies because they are not males) is a reality. In other places, young boys are used as sex toys. In a few Islamic countries in Africa (Sudan and Chad are the 2 I remember offhand), actual chattel slavery is still a thing today.

I guess the point I am trying to make is that probably all of us who can comment on HN live in a bubble (certainly some bubbles are inside others however).

And I think it's easy for all of us to look at bubbles inside our own and "take a week off" from problems which do not affect us directly. Heck, I've seen videos of crazy stuff and I'm writing about it here and I still don't really grasp that people actually get stoned to death for adultery.

In perspective, it feels to me like the plight of marginalized people in western countries is akin to a rich lawyer complaining to Bill Gates about how unfair it is that he can't afford a small island himself while ordering a burger from a minimum wage cashier.

Sure, there are awful things happening around the world. But your response is classic "whataboutism"[1]. At some point you have to start prioritizing problems to solve, and problems which are closer to home will, psychologically, impact people in ways different from problems that are distant. Plus, bringing up conditions in developed countries probably creates the opportunity to marshal more resources to do things about other places (since newly-empowered people will have greater capital and technological resources to bring to bear on eradicating trouble around the world).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

I don't know if it is whataboutism. If the rich lawyer complains, is it whataboutism to point out worse suffering? It seems to me that Warren Buffett could refuse to do philanthropy on the grounds that he has much less money than Gates and any argument against his position could be said to be whataboutism if you are right on this.

My understanding of whataboutism is that it must be an attempt to deflect from some problem that the user doesn't want to address. Like if one is a racist and say 'oh but what about children in country X'. And even then, there are ways to interpret what I just wrote unfavorably due to the plethora of possible definitions of the * isms (is it subtle bias or is it fear/hate of, or etc.).

Anyway, the point I would make is that I think your argument about what to prioritize is shaped around the conclusion you want to reach. Consider this: why should I prioritize my fellow countrymen/westerners of another race over my fellow human beings from another country?

Because they are closer or more akin to me? If so, why not care about people even closer to me: my family and my 'tribe'?

What I'm describing is what is generally seen as conservatism and I expect that it is even seen as either actual bigotry/racism/etc or at least related to it, yet your argument for the 'opposite side' is very similar. Or, if you prefer, what might be said to be racist about an argument against caring for other races could be said to be xenophobic about yours, in a way (I'm not trying to insult you, but rather trying to point out a case of repugnant conclusion).

But anyway, the whole topic is vast and I realize that I've contradicted my own recommendation of emphasizing solutions, so here is my attempt at that: it could be that there are ways to improve race relations that are either the most effective ways to improve the world or that also happen to benefit everyone's ingroup and if those exist then I encourage people to focus on sharing those.

As for more contentious solutions, I have no idea yet. I have seen too many life skill assessment surveys and such to believe that pure 'system 2' solutions (to use Kanehman's nomenclature) will ever work: most people are what Kahneman would call 'lazy thinkers' and I'm fairly convinced that the *isms are merely consequences of such cognitive biases. Short of genetic engineering or separating groups into nations based on their group identity, I don't know what could work.

You've dug into the meaning of "rights" and I'm with you. No one has the "right" to use Facebook. But, you lose me when you don't draw the connection to "privilege." While I don't have the "right" to use Facebook I have the "privilege" of using it, and at no point feeling unwelcome or un-catered to. That feeling comes not because of my merit or choices, but because I'm a "check all the boxes" white dude.

> Call the police.

The quality of this advice is very dependent on the quality of the police you are calling.

For instance, someone in Kern County (incl. Bakersfield), California, should probably not call upon the police for anything less severe than "someone is already dead".

If you truly fear for your life at the laundromat, save your quarters for a few weeks and buy a washtub, scrub board, wringer, and clothesline. Or use a drop-off service. You do not need a laundromat or your own washing machine to do laundry. It is counterproductive to feel like you're going to soil your pants when trying to get another pair clean.

But the grocery store... food is a necessity. You can't really decide not to eat, or to grow everything you will eat at home. There, you're going to need to carry the most effective weapon for self-defense that the state will allow you to keep, keep your shoelaces tied properly, and be hyper-vigilant of your surroundings, potential threats, and escape routes.

The police aren't there to protect you, specifically. They are paid to enforce the law, as directed by their superiors. If you wind up dead, it is likely that no cop will ever be held even partially responsible for it, regardless of the circumstances. If you take appropriate and ethical measures to protect your own safety, police may treat you as just another part of the problem when they arrive (if they decide to show up at all).

In any case, the danger is not Facebook, or the laundromat, or the grocery store: the danger is the person who wants to harm you. The danger is that you cannot effectively defend yourself from such people in your everyday life, regardless of whether some business or other is passively enabling their threatening behavior. If someone is using Facebook to make you fear, complaining to Facebook is the wrong thing to do first. Depending on your means, build a wall, hire a bodyguard, buy a weapon, get security monitoring, join the neighborhood watch, or install surveillance cameras--whatever it takes to make you feel safe from unknown assailants. Then you can complain to Facebook.

It is a human right to be able to go about your business without having your safety threatened. If that business requires use of some internet services as a matter of basic economic survival, then you do have a right to use them safely and people who interfere with that are infringing upon your rights.

I have a human right not to have my life threatened when going about my business, but if my business requires me to fly a plane or be on Facebook that doesn't mean it's a human right for me to fly a plane or be on Facebook.

Using the word right for something should be reserved only for those specific, first-order activities which are so inalienable as to suggest the inability to do them is reprehensible to and an affront to basic humanity.

Being safe is a right. Speaking your mind (with certain reasonable limitations) is a right, even if your opinions are garbage to 99% of the world. Using the laundromat at Whittaker and 8th is not a right, nor is using Facebook or even the internet.

You should read this article about Internet use in Saudi Arabia: http://theconcourse.deadspin.com/your-app-isnt-helping-the-p...

I can attest that there was a disturbed individual who lived not nearly far enough away for my comfort who came to the conclusion that I was evil and should die based on online interactions (MUDs) in ~1991.

As concerning as that was, it in no way compares to what women in particular face today online.

> "that I was evil and should die based on online interactions (MUDs) in ~1991"

Trade Wars players can be aggressive at times.

> Having armed police raid their house because someone has made a bogus 911 call.

This seems to be mostly an american problem, not an online problem. Which means maybe it's not something that should be fixed by online communities but by the nation.

+ with child safety and whatnot, maybe it should be illegal to use your real id publicly online?

Same rules apply as always: don't share your real name and address online outside very very small and personable communities.

People often ask me why i still haven't changed my name to Swizec legally. This is why.

You never know who out of the thousands of people you interact with online could get crazy ideas. With a pseudonym they can still identify you and know who you are, but they can't call your bank and do something silly.

I've shared by real name on Usenet for decades, nobody got crazy ideas (though I've encountered quite a few crazy people). "Calling my bank and doing something silly" doesn't work in the country in live in. There's not a lot people can do with just my name.

I wonder about treating home address as such a secret. If someone wants to kill/kidnap me, they could always find me at my workplace or on a conference or sth. So what else are people going to do with my home address? Send me a postcard?

In the good ol' days, we had this thing called "a phonebook", which was basically a big printed book of alphabetically sorted mappings of surname to phone number and home address...

And as the internet and the possibilities grew, many people started to feel uneasy about it and requested their deletion (or did not register again after changing address and/or ISP). Nowadays, nobody uses the phonebook anymore, the demand vanished and so the supply.

> So what else are people going to do with my home address?

Send the police to save your (non-existent) hostages: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for...

Or to arrest you for the drugs you ordered (or were sent to you): http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/07/mail-from-the-velvet-cybe...

> I wonder about treating home address as such a secret.

One of the searches for my name results in my parents' current address. If I'm a sufficiently flagrant asshole online, there could be reprecussions, anything from a glitterbomb[1] to being swatted[2]. (And what worries me that I don't even have to be a sufficiently flagrant asshole, I just have to run into one.)

[1] https://www.ruindays.com/collections/all/products/glitter-ev...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatting_(hoaxing)

> So what else are people going to do with my home address? Send me a postcard?

I had a friend who got brigaded by 4chan in high school (I think she posted nudes and got doxxed, don't entirely remember, and I didn't ask for too many details).

Long story short: hundreds of letters over about a year addressed to her house, her parents' workplaces, our school, all with really fucked up messages. Telling her to kill herself and other terrible things about her or her family. Letters listing everyone in her family or including pictures of her family from myspace (this was just before everyone was on Facebook) with names, phone numbers, and other details. Phone calls to her parents insulting their daughter.

No "real harm" ever came from it aside from the threats, and her parents handled it very well, but still...

It's not so much one person knowing "your" address. It's an unknown number of people knowing you and your family's address.

I also never had such problems, but others did have these problems, and that's what counts. (Everything else would be victim blaming.)

It also matters if it's likely. I mean, it wasn't João Maria de Souza's fault that a cow fell on top of him, but I'm not going to live my life in fear of falling cows.

One thing that has really changed is the ability to search for someone by their real name in public records online. There were public before but they were WAY more difficult to search, as anyone who's scoured a city hall or county records archive 20 years ago can attest.

That was before Usenet, wasn't it? In the time of Usenet it was already possible to either search within your local Usenet archive, or, slightly later, to type in someone's name into a search engine.

> In the time of Usenet it was already possible to either search within your local Usenet archive

The reactions to Kibo suggest that was unusual at first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Parry

I'm forgetting something that /has/ changed since then.

How apt to use critical thinking the average / many users of the Internet are.

"Real names" on Facebook profiles are also problematic since they are not actually authenticated in any meaningful way.

If users had to use a credit card to buy some type of service and the name on that card became their public identity name then at least in that respect it would be ///a/// Firstname Lastname that was an owner of the account. There would still be namespace collision issues (there are billions on this planet).

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