Not that I agree with this but we have a massive problem with trolls, shills, agitators, and foreign intelligence running hog wild because they are anonymous online.
Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized and used against the west.
Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized and used against the west.
I think the trolls, shills and agitators are a symptom of dysfunction rather than the cause. And I think the idea that more authoritarian states are stronger/more stable/better because they don't suffer this is deeply misguided.
In the United States, our political class is deeply and fundamentally unserious. Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-election, and not the work they were elected to do.
Going to attempt a fix
Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-education, and not the work they were elected to do.
To quote chief Nazi propagandist Goebbels from 1928:
We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem… We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.
The modern-day far right is following exactly the same almost-100-years-old playbook, and there are still people who don't recognize that we are letting history repeat itself. What would your (great-)grandparents have thought if you told them that there would be open marches of swastika flag-bearing people in the US?
That happened to a far greater degree in the 1930s. There is nothing comparable today. Formal, large, organized groups representing literal fascism and communism were present in the US back then. Those great-grandparents were certainly aware of it. The US is a large and diverse nation - formed of the world's peoples in many regards - and you're allowed to follow almost any ideology you choose. That means extreme, violent statist-type elements - socialist, fascist, communist, theocratic, et al. - will never cease to be present.
"When Nazis Took Manhattan"
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2019/02/20/695941323...
"American Nazis in the 1930s—The German American Bund"
https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/06/american-nazis-in-...
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if 'the west' has a coherent set of moral principles at all they are probably inextricable with the idea that more authoritarian states are more brittle/more stagnant/worse. Even if it's true that free speech is being used against 'the West', turning our back on it in response would mean there's nothing there to defend.
Indeed, "Let them eat cake." is the most famous thing Marie Antoinette never said, judging by the various anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets and other printings that popularised during her time that and many other slanderous or otherwise hurtful remarks.
(( And no, I'm not saying a police state or anarchy would be an appropriate outcome. ))
> A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives- including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against president Biden- to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
> Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything.
?
Government resource allocation is seldom based on a rational cost / benefit analysis.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
The confidence undermining was all a local issue; Russia had nothing to do with it.
Isn't this just the ol' "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" problem? Hundreds of years of ago we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
And because we couldn’t see them we misattributed their effects and treated people with bloodletting. Confidently declaring your understanding of an unseen enemy and applying seemingly-appropriate countermeasures is likely to be harmful.
Their goal is to make our system dysfunctional by destroying people's trust in the information presented them.
It is what the Rand institute calls the "firehose of falsehood" https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
And they have been very successful at it.
"Better Amazon reviews" and "fewer Reddit shills" aren't worth much.
> I'm not suggesting stripping anonymity or free speech, I'm just pointing out the problem with anonymity online.
In the context of an article about removing anonymity, I don't think it's possible to set "removing anonymity" aside.
If you were buying a microwave oven via Amazon, you could take a gamble and trust Amazon product reviews by people you don't know or have any real reason to trust. Or you could pay an independent party to review it on your behalf[2][3]. Or you could look for a random reviewer on YouTube that receives free samples from manufacturers and compares multiple models side by side, careful to only highlight positives of each product. In any of these cases, the real identity of the reviewers is largely irrelevant. The YouTube reviewer could be wearing a clown suit and go by the name 'SillyClown123' and the review could be far more trustworthy and helpful than other types of review. What you actually want to know, and may not be able to determine, is the motivations for conducting the review, whether the reviewer has manipulated and narrowed (possibly inadvertently) the field of products compared and whether their criteria and weightings for review align with your own expectations.
[1] https://www.modernretail.co/platforms/how-amazon-sellers-are...
[2] https://www.choice.com.au/home-and-living/kitchen/microwaves...
[3] https://www.consumerreports.org/products/microwave-ovens-289...
Privacy, however, is something that needs to be strongly enforced, and that means you have complete control of what personal and private information and communication is available to third parties. Anonymity and Privacy are necessary in places (journalists, dissidents, etc), but many people tend to think of anonymity and privacy as one in the same.
Social media with anonymity allows bad actors to masquerade as whomever they want, say anything without recourse or accountability, and social engineer people at large scales. The issue is that we tend to trust people, and if those people are foreign disinformation agents then we end up with the division we have today. Social media should be private - complete ownership of your data and audience - but it should not be anonymous.
People that call for accountability are modern witch hunters in my opinion. The try to put blame on people that are probably not responsible for perceived ills.
I am pretty aware of the difference between anonymity and privacy and there is a strong correlation in many cases.
Do say, 2OEH8eoCRo0!
The net certainly increased possibilities for foreign actors to reach domestic audiences, but claims of such cases are vastly exaggerated in my opinion.
That said, troll, shills, agitators and propagandists might have a good understanding of peoples fears and desires and will use that against you. More effective the more you know about the target. This is why surveillance is dangerous.
THAT is one of the most authoritarian things I've ever read. You're full on down the fascist road once you start believing things like that.
Do you have a good source explaining concretely how a handful of people, even sponsored by enemy states, can cause such harm? It's hard to imagine that they would have such influence without the general population being more than receptive to it.