Hacker News Reader

Comment by ralston3 | Hacker News Reader

> and anonymous use will be illegal.

Super interesting that you mention this. I was just thinking the other day about what an absolute dumpster fire "the internet" is due to anonymity (obviously that's not the _only_ reason, but it's a non-trivial reason). This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight. Anonymity seems to just bring the worst out of people (that's not a tech problem, that's a human/culture problem). I would personally love to see a "web" where you have to comment...as your public self. Post messages...as your public self (not just on an individual platform level). So on and so forth.

I 1000% agree that eventually people will need some type of unique identifier to operate on the internet. And I'll take it a little further and say that in the future, anonymity will be reserved for the wealthy primarily.

View on HN

You don't know my name in the street and I don't know yours. We manage to be perfectly civil to each other.

And my reputation does not follow between groups either. I can even have completely distinct friend groups for different activities. Nobody at boxing class knows anybody I work with and the people that hang out with me at a bar can be a completely new set all over. I could even use different names in all these groups! :O

Yet we're all perfectly civil.

The same works online. I choose to use `swizec` everywhere, but is `ralston3` the same as `@r_ralston3` on twitter? Who knows. Does it matter? Not in the least. Look at us being perfectly fine fellows to each other.

On the other hand, you have to show government ID to walk into a bar and yet people are kicked out for bad behavior all the time.

> We manage to be perfectly civil to each other.

Huh? People get "censored" all the time on this site due to incivility.

Edit: I misread the parent comment, sorry :)

The comment was talking about irl.

Yep, they get censored. We manage a totally reasonable level of moderation in an anonymous environment. RealIDs wouldn't improve on that.

> Yet we're all perfectly civil.

There are no real-world consequences for being an anonymous jerk online, so you are comparing apples and oranges.

> On the other hand, you have to show government ID to walk into a bar and yet people are kicked out for bad behavior all the time.

That's because under the influence of alcohol, one stops caring as much about real world consequences.

Being anon online is (somewhat) like being a drunk in a bar (for some people).

Your examples here have proven the opposite of what you were trying to say.

As the saying goes: "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog".

Maybe it’s because you can’t get your ass kicked by being uncivil on the internet anonymously?

People are kicked out of bars for being assholes and it’s because they have been drinking their inhibitions are lowered and judgement of consequences is disrupted. Similarity to anonymous assholes on the Internet - their inhibitions are lowered because there’s no consequence.

I don’t think we should require names use or prohibit anonymous contributions. But the culture of the internet is pretty bad in this regard today when millions of anonymous people spend millions of hours getting riled up at shit posts from anonymous people.

Pseudonymity and anonymity are not the same thing.

Pseudonyms that are not trivially created and discarded can build reputation and will generally behave themselves (see Urbit’s approach to this problem).

Anonymous accounts incentivize awful behavior (see 4chan).

Real life is different because you’re not truly anonymous in person - you’re recognizable most of the time and identifiable. There are also more in person norms and social constraints.

The exception to this in real life might be mobs, where the chaos and confusion can provide some anonymity and well - people in mobs don’t behave that well either.

Fair, pseudonymity works very well.

I think a lot of it comes down to social norms. From what I remember, 4chan was almost boringly pleasant outside /b/. Because the norm and moderation were towards thoughtful posting.

On the other hand pseudonymous reddits with the norm of knee jerk responses and political twitter are awful. Because that’s the encouraged norm.

This very site is a good counterpoint to your distinction. HN allows for easy creation of anonymous accounts, and doesn't do much to help you track who says what. And yet some people, by choosing to stick to their handle over time, build a reputation. And yet, even the anonymous people mostly behave, and we end up with a civil community.

Personally, I think the important factors for maintaining a civil community is a focus on civility, some overt selection of topics (vs. having a group that's about everything), and a lot of moderation work in the background that prevents the decay of standards. Social norms, unfortunately, don't maintain themselves.

Most HN accounts are pseudonymous with the occasional anonymous throw away for something specific.

HN also has great moderation (thanks DanG) and a strict set of rules which helps.

If HN was truly anonymous (everyone posted under anon accounts) I think it would decay and I’m not sure DanG would be able to save it.

I do think Urbit’s approach to this (low cost to creating an ID) is a really good one for handling this problem and the general problem of spam decentralized, and at scale.

https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/urbit-id/

> Anonymity seems to just bring the worst out of people (that's not a tech problem, that's a human/culture problem).

I used to believe that for a while, up until I started using Facebook. Then I experienced that people under their real names are just the same as the anonymous crowd. All it takes is to view the comments under any news article, or visit a group for regular people dealing with regular things.

That's why I stick to niche, focused communities - like HN. There you can find some semblance of civilization. The "general" Internet takes away whatever faith in humanity I have left.

There's something about commenting on-line in general, that seems to bring the worst out of people. My hypothesis is that you have to have a certain set of values around civility and rationality to be able to interact with other people on-line in a sane way. Without it - and I think most people haven't developed these values - it's just a mess. Why it doesn't happen so much in meatspace? I think it's a combination of social customs, taboos, and having more control over participating in conversations with random strangers.

> Why it doesn't happen so much in meatspace?

I agree with everything you've said, but I'd also offer "evolutionary adaptation" as a reason not to be a dick to people who are close enough to physically attack.

And yet you typed this on a pseudoanonymous message board. And yet you still see incredible vitriol on facebook, which requires your real ID.

The culture of a site is largely determined by engineering and moderation decisions made by its owners. Nothing more.

Anonymity is what gives LGBTQ+ groups the space to be themselves with fundamentalist Christian parents.

Anonymity is what gives foreign journalists the freedom to leak content their governments would execute them for.

Anonymity protects marginalised groups and it is essential to protecting democracy and freedom.

> I would personally love to see a "web" where you have to comment...as your public self.

Isn't this Facebook? Granted I'm sure not every single profile is "verified" with an actual ID, but lack of anonymity doesn't seem to stop as many people as you'd think.

Suppose that you had to have a RealID, or the equivalent for your country, to post on Facebook? Or at least be visible beyond a few close friends. Comments?

Most of the people being toxic on Facebook are using their real names. Requiring them to prove their names are real wouldn't change anything.

There are also a bunch of people using other peoples names, this has real world consequences, as impersonated John Doe might not get a next job because the employer will scan FB and find awful posts written in their name. Hell, pictures of inactivated accounts are regularly snatched to make impersonations better, nothing new here.

Yep, Twitter and Facebook defeat the hypothesis that discourse is improved when people are forced to post under their real identity.

It only discourages the most sane people from participating thus it boosts the signal of the remaining crazies. Anyone who doesn't yet realize this just needs to join some local Facebook groups.

There are real advantages to being anonymous though, especially given the well-known tendencies of societies to end up in manias of intolerance.

I think you can have platforms that encourage civilized discussion w/o needing to link that to a real name. (HN is a great example of that, in fact!)

And conversely, even a platform with real names attached can still end up being extremely uncivil (e.g. Facebook).

There's also a long (pre-internet) history of people publishing good stuff anonymously, for one reason or another.

>I would personally love to see a "web" where you have to comment...as your public self. Post messages...as your public self (not just on an individual platform level). So on and so forth.

That's Facebook though. And in my anecdotal experience the only reason most of my friends group has ever used Facebook is to post in private groups and events and use messenger. Scarcely any wall posts, very few posts in public groups. No opinions or politics whatsoever. Maybe the odd activist sharing some "wear a mask" message.

Those who engage in public discourse under their own names on the platform are by and large kind of ... strange.

Using your actual name for everything would be an amazing tool for building up a profile on you. Either you lay out your hobbies, interests and political standings for the whole world to see or you stop participating in those communities and discussions. And the profile won't be about only you, but your employer as well. If a load of engineers at X start posting more about tech Y or methodology Z you can deduce internal workings from that.

Anonymous accounts let people who differ from the norm say thing safely and to meet one another

>This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight.

I get irritated by this logic. I don't think many people are arguing that anonymous access makes us more likely to get along. There are lots of areas where we have the freedom to do something, that access objectively makes things worse in terms of social cost, but we keep it because it's what is right. Installing a breathalyzer lockout device on every new car sold would decrease drunk driving. There's a few religious sects that could be eliminated that would overnight reduce the amount of vile rhetoric in the world. We all make choices as to how much regulation we deem acceptable in daily life. Many of us see no valid reason to permanently tie online access to personal identification.

Maybe modern societies need to stop pretending we want anything to do with each other. This idea of unity or tolerance only exists because we continue to act like we somehow are supposed to like each other or sacrifice for each other. But why?

Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free? Minimize the politics of it all and stop pretending we care a single bit about each other.

Yes we live in a society but maybe our shared goal is to be left alone to live our lives with the ones we care about. We just seem to be pushing each other to the limits of what’s considered broadly acceptable and it’s creating more and more hate.

> Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free?

What is that, if not tolerance?

Its not anonymity that fuels the problem, its proximity.

When someone has to drive 1,000 miles to try to beat someone up for using fighting words, people are far more brazen in their rhetoric.

This is why, as I've posted before here on HN, I always use my real name in my communications. Because I expect to be held accountable for what I say, and how I say it, and I'm willing to accept the consequences.

Again:

https://geekfeminism.wikia.org/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22Re...

This sounds like a great way to take away what may be the only outlet to feel some sense of belonging for a gay teen in a fundamentalist religious family in a deeply conservative part of the world.

But I’m sure it’s fine. /s

You and your op are both idiots, pardon my wording.

People don't care: real names, real faces on Facebook, yet they still act as raging lunatics.

The old, actually anonymous internet 20+ years ago was much better.

EDIT: clarification: anonymity is not what's causing the dumpster fire, it's the people, and the companies driving them into vicious circles to get more attention - and thus, advertisement time and money - out of them.

>Anonymity seems to just bring the worst out of people (that's not a tech problem, that's a human/culture problem). I would personally love to see a "web" where you have to comment...as your public self. Post messages...as your public self (not just on an individual platform level). So on and so forth.

I'm going to guess you're liberal and think the 'storming' of the capital was the political event of the decade on par with 9/11.

Yet it was all organized in the open on facebook using real names.

Curious how using real names did not stop anyone.

People are willing to do things they believe in that are detrimental to themselves. That is after all why the US exists.

Anonymity is a way for people to say that they want to blow up parliament and get feedback on why it's a good or bad idea before doing it.

It is very confusing to me why the US, a country that hasn't had a real genocide since the 1860s, is taking advice on speech regulation from countries whose last genocide was in the 1940s.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com