Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by derekp7 | Hacker News Reader

For dealing with "bad actors", the problem is anonymity. Systems such as moderation, adding people to an ignore list, etc are all defeated because bad actors can get unlimited anonymous identities. Ways of combating that (such as a signup form checking IP address, or other patterns) remove some anonymity which isn't really that great either.

What I'd like to see is the ability to get a personal identity SSL cert with tooling (browser plugins, for example) to make it easy to use on signup pages. This personal cert could have several fields, depending on how much information the user revealed to the certificate authority.

The primary field would be how much they paid for the certificate. That way people can be as anonymous as they want, and can get new IDs if they need, but they have to pay for each one. Then forums could require new users to have a certificate that cost at least a minimum amount, whatever is required to keep trolls away (that is, trolls who constantly sign up with new IDs). I'm thinking that $5.00 should be enough for most purposes. (There would be a minimal cost to cover the CA's expenses, however anything above that can be specified by the user depending on if they want a bronze level or platinum level certificate)

There could be additional fields that the CA verified, such as name, address, etc. These could also be marked as "Supplied to / verified by CA", but not included in the cert (so only the CA knows that info, and can have a policy of destroying their records shortly after verification). Or if needed (such as for financial transactions), name and address could be part of the cert.

The whole idea here is that forums could better control when troll users register multiple accounts -- yes, with the "completely anonymous" version of the cert the troll could keep buying new ones, but that is still a higher bar they have to cross than they do now.

>For dealing with "bad actors", the problem is anonymity

I wish it was this simple :^)

Consider Facebook, where people post mostly under their own name and photo. Even a casual visit to Facebook quickly reveals your hypothesis is wrong; it's nearly the exact opposite of reality.

Contrast that with HN, where users range from pseudonymous to fully anonymous, and where discussion is kept to a much higher standard.

It bears repeating - the discourse on HN is kept to a much higher standard. Active moderation and community guiding, performed by intelligent agents, is the real answer to the woes. Anything automatic, anything with a guaranteed outcomes will be 'gamed' and put to bad ends.

--edit--

There's also the separate but equally important matter of privacy. As internet spaces became both the town square and also gentlemens' clubs and also private homes to multitude of discourses, we need privacy from various actors' prying eyes.

The only way this works on HN is through active efforts to remove some of the anonymity -- I'm not talking about actually finding a contributor's real-world identity, but making sure that the same person doesn't create 5000 accounts and just switch to the next one when one gets banned.

This requires at the minimum logging IP address that someone signed up from, and treating with suspicion IP addresses that are pooled (such as from a VPN or TOR, etc). There are also other heuristics to prevent sock puppets and voting rings, each of these removing some amount of anonymity.

Whereas what i proposed, people can still maintain full anonymity, and if they really need a separate ID so that they can log in to the same forum under a different ID than they normally use (for things like whistle blowing, etc) then they have that option -- just buy another $5 (or cheaper, or more expensive) certificate.

It would be up to the forum (or the auto moderation system, for assigning points), to decide how much to trust a user with a new cert, based on how much they paid for it (as an example), or how much PII they provided to the cert provider.

Another thing this can do is allow someone to be anonymous, but with a chosen pseudonym, and allow their reputation from one site to benefit them on another site (by proving that a given reputation score belongs to them). Of course, this is almost sounding too much like a "social credit score", so it may not be acceptable on those grounds.

>The only way

Way to start with a false premise. The main way on HN is efforts, both by mods and by users, to buoy up good content, and push down bad content.

>[is to] remove some of the anonymity

Not even close. Preventing cheap creation of new identities isn't inherently tied to identification of users; there already deployed alternatives.

One example, TeamSpeak uses proof of work - a computational process that's expensive to perform and cheap to verify - to protect identity creation. Works wonders, and allows anonymity just fine.

At any rate, the thrust of my argument is different, and cuts deeper into your idea:

any automated process, any guaranteed outcome, will be subverted and put to bad ends. To grow & maintain a good community you need active management by intelligent agents (ordinarily, people). And not just by selected mods - it helps when typical user is well aware what is up and able to fend for himself.

Discussion here may be kept to a higher standard, but that also means that a lot of things I'd be interested in are censored.

Not sure what the solution is, but it would be nice to have some sort of ML-based approach that would tune the content I see to my wishes, rather than the wishes of the average denizen or the moderators.

>a lot of things I'd be interested in are censored

Same for me.

Frankly I accept HN is a space to discuss a limited range of subjects, and keep other subjects to elsewhere. It's annoying to a degree, but it the longer run it works.

You're posting this to an HN thread on an article that cites as one of its principle sources someone who's only engaged anonymously or pseudonymously with the Internet for the past decade.

You're now reading a comment by that same person.

The fact of bad-faith actors under real names across multiple platforms is ample evidence that requiring real names is not itself sufficient. The examples of Homer, Voltaire, the Federalist Papers, Mark Twain, Willy Brandt, and numerous others shows that anonymity or pseudonymity can give rise to great works and thoughts. It's often the only way certain thoughts, or communities, can find voice.

Impunity seems far more likely a core problem, and one which, when identified as such, should be able to be addressed without necessarily piercing the veil of identity.

Technology is not the only realm of solutions -- social and civil conventions should also be explored thoroughly.

>For dealing with "bad actors", the problem is anonymity.

I hear this a lot, and I always feel that it's misguided. I believe the greater problem is proximity. The problem is proximity, not anonymity. ie, People will treat total strangers like trash if there isn't much proximity. For example, verified twitter accounts make comments that people would never make in a face-to-face interaction. (without an audience) And, you don't even need computers to witness this: road rage does not have a "walking rage" analogue. Normal, calm people who don't get into fights will treat another driver like trash. But the vast majority of them would never escalate this sort of confrontation if they were both pedestrians.

I'm not suggesting that anonymity can't contribute, but I don't believe it's actually the root cause. eg, HN is largely anonymous, and for the most part it's a very nice community. There are a few reasons for this:

- Heavy moderation of what articles are available for comment. (so, less moral outrage, and more informed discussion)

- Heavy moderation of inappropriate comments by the moderators.

- More importantly, heavy moderation of community values by community members: comments which disagree are completely acceptable as long as they're constructive and devoid of personal attacks, slander, etc.

- Most importantly (and most controversially) all of the above points, as well as the focus of HN create a gatekeeping effect. HN is generally full of thoughtful and intelligent people

"something awful" took this exact approach, charging I think $10 one time fee for an account. It's a token, but enough to stop banned people from creating lots of accounts as it starts to add up.

Making people pay for the privilege of posting online isn't a good idea - getting people to use a forum for free is hard enough, just try getting Internet people to fork over "the price of a cup of coffee" as well.

If you want decentralized spam resistance at scale, Web of Trust is the only solution that works. To register, I contact a node that adds you for free by filling out a captcha, talking to them on IRC, etc. They add me at a trust level just above zero. If I start off by posting spam, my account instantly dies.

So I have to first post a bunch of productive comments that people respond to, and then I can start spamming.

I'm a fan of this idea.

Reddit is a corporate cesspool where marketing teams do "reputation management".

Today, You might think someone is sharing a deal on groceries, but in reality Aldi has carefully planned a post, buying accounts and upvotes.

When caught, marketing teams learn what people use to identify fake accounts, and make future accounts more legitimate.

Heck we still see this on Twitter with Trump. Identification should be optional but preferred.

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