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Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

This is getting off topic. Foreign intelligence is just one party. I was also thinking of every fake review on Amazon or products endorsed by shills on reddit. These problems all stem from anonymity.

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Amazon already knows, more or less, the real identity of someone leaving the review. They have information such as a postal address, credit card number and IP address. Whether that person goes by the name Bob or Sally or Anonymous really doesn't matter to anyone. Perhaps it really is Bob leaving the review, but he's accepted a "promotional offer" from the seller to be refunded or provided additional product(s) in return for a wink nudge honest review?[1] Or perhaps it really is Sally and she works for a competitor and has given it a 1 star review because she weights the colour choice of the product packaging extremely highly, and she hates the colour chosen.

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...

Why do you think that stems from anonymity? People are happy to promote pyramid schemes on Facebook under their real name; why do you think any other product endorsement is different?

But you then ignore the problems created by stripping the anonymity away, especially in the political sphere. Just like multitudes of writers/actors/directors had to either hide their political beliefs or just not get hired due to their political beliefs in Hollywood (though, ironically, that is happening now, along different axes.)

I'm not suggesting stripping anonymity or free speech, I'm just pointing out the problem with anonymity online.

The problems you've described are very minor relative to how much more difficult dissent and whistle-blowing become if your statements can be connected to your true identity basically everywhere.

"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.

Fake product reviews aren’t solved by making sure they are written by real people.

I agree; and it's necessary to distinguish anonymity from privacy. Anonymity removes any accountability, and if you add privacy to that then you tend to get the worst of people.

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.

I like anonymity and wouldn't trust a platform to identify me. I take the disadvantages that come with that. With a lot of effort you could identify me in person, but I like this effort to stay. Even intelligence service members spied on their girlfriends. A human flaw. Better to keep anonymity to the largest degree possible.

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.

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