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Comment by jeena | Hacker News Reader

"Results show that in the context of online firestorms, non-anonymous individuals are more aggressive compared to anonymous individuals"

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

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This legislation is not about "aggressive behaviour", it's about criminal conduct. While I can't comment professionally on the validity / reproducibility of this research (looks bogus to me, they only examined comments on an online petition platform, not FB and news sites where all the crazy people are[1]), anyone who'd claim that criminals don't prefer to be anonymous or that perceived anonymity has a negative effect on criminal behaviour, would surely be laughed out of academia.

Besides, the anonymity vs. other users will not be changed, we're not talking about a "visible real names" policy here. You can still use nicknames, just the forum operator has to store your real name.

[1] The final dataset includes 532,197 comments on 1,612 online petitions. There were a total of 3,858,131 signatures over the 1,612 petitions between 2010 and 2013, with detailed information about the wording of the comment, the commenters, the signers and the petition.

Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse than 1 guilty person being able to be anonymous. Look at what the TSA has done. They’ve wasted so much time and created a massive invasion of physical privacy (i.e. someone touching your private parts in public) and not only did they never catch anything, they fail 90% of penetration tests. There is some positive intent here but in the real world this is obvious to cause more harm than good. I don’t know if it is hubris or ignorance to not see how easily this will be manipulated and have negative externalities. You don’t jail your whole population because of 1 bad apple.

I see two options going forward:

- Filters, Article 13 style. Youtube, Facebook and Co have to ensure you can only post legal content

- Accountability. A justice system is able to drag you into a court when you've done something illegal.

We tried safe harbor and it was a nice compromise, but youtube added ContentId for a reason and it also certainly doesn't seem to help against hate speech. I prefer we keep judges assessing what is allowed and what isn't, instead of shifting this burden onto companies. If that requires Know Your Customer laws, then this seems like an acceptable trade off to me.

What about doing nothing? Is the status quo intolerable? Will it become intolerable if things continue on their current course? If you believe this, why do you believe it?

The problems of upload filters have been discussed here in depth and the consensus seems to be that they would have massive collateral damage. Removing anonymity creates severe problems for freedom of expression. Consider, for example the buffer anonymity provides from strategic lawsuits against public participation.

What current problem is so bad that solving it is worth the costs of either of those solutions?

I'd rather that we learn to acknowledge that laws and their enforcement isn't free, either economically, or in terms of its effect on personal freedoms, and that there is a line past which it's a net negative even if it targets some activity that is illegal for a good reason, and has some meaningful effect on that.

> Putting 2 innocent people through systems designed to assume they are guilty is worse...

This is not about being guilty, it's about being accountable for your actions, just like you are everywhere else.

In Austria and Germany, people riding bicycles are considered the rudest on the streets. Everybody is anonymous to other participants until an accident happens, but only bicycles have no number plates, so they usually run every red light because they won't be held accountable unless the police see it and give chase. I don't think it's fair, though some people clearly consider this an important part of their personal freedom, at the expense of everyone else.

It's a lot harder to kill a pedestrian with a bike than with a car, though. Cars are a lot more lethal than bikes, and most countries have road designs that are bike-hostile. You have to be a very assertive and alert cyclist there to not get hurt.

That is to say, consideration and respect goes both ways.

> It's a lot harder to kill a pedestrian with a bike than with a car, though.

That's completely irrelevant. It's about the "rules do not apply to me because you can't catch me" attitude, same as with people who harass others online without remorse by using various anonymity tools. Removing this possibility would fix it the accountability problems to a great extent and make them behave more responsibly, in line with others.

Where I live road law is about safety, not about "attitude correction". Culture is the thing that fosters positive attitudes and respect. You really think cyclists are trying to bully you when they run a light?

What's the limit, skateboards with license plates? Why not subdermal RFID implants to catch people jaywalking? I mean, in the end a human body is just another vehicle for consciousness.

We have people that jump in front of your car without paying any attention to their safety, almost begging to be hit. Informally we call them "jaywalk terrorists". Their ignorance is a harsh punishment by itself, to them.

I ride a bicycle as my primary means of transport. I strictly obey traffic laws, and on almost every[0] journey I see motorists breaking traffic laws. Where I live, it's illegal to cross a solid white line that borders your lane to overtake somebody unless they are traveling at less than 10mph. I never travel that slowly, but motorists routinely cross solid white lines to overtake me. I estimate only about 1% of motorists obey the law.

To be fair, only a minority of those illegal overtakes are actually dangerous, but the same is true of most traffic law violations by cyclists.

[0] Extremely short journeys, or journeys very late at night, might encounter no motor traffic in a position to break the law.

So what?

Maybe I am wrong. I've observed usually the most aggressive to be kind of "knight of the status quo." They are opportunists seeking status and notoriety, whether consciously or not. They do this by being opportunists and attacking those who offered controversial opinions which garnered feelings of negativity. The knights latch onto that negativity as their opportunity for an assault. And you'll find they have put little genuine interest into the actual issue at hand, they're more interested in being a sort of "knight of the groupthink." So I think it is not really surprising to find users with their real names associated with conformity and status-seeking.

Typically trolls don’t have to sound aggressive. They can wander in, throw a grenade into a discussion, and then act innocent of the carnage.

That behaviour is not desirable in any space online. That’s what makes it so good here the moderation is pretty good. But is this a problem to be solved at the state level?

It is not a problem. I do like moderation if I want to stay on topic. I also like the bad stuff. As long as there is room for both, I am happy. Enforcing identification isn't a realistic option.

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