Banning anonymous social media accounts would only stifle free speech, democracy | Hacker News Reader

Banning anonymous social media accounts would only stifle free speech, democracy

theguardian.com

202 pointspseudolus108 comments

It’s extremely suspect that they’re moving to ban anonymity and “legal but harmful”[0] speech as part of the response to an attack that doesn’t appear to have anything to do with online activity. It’s interesting how the tabloids that regularly call people incredibly vile things don’t get singled out…

Frankly, I think this is politicians getting tired of being heckled by the citizenry, and this is a convenient crisis to take advantage of. Must not be a lot of fun to go from giving speeches in parliament to being called a wanker or ratio’d online, but that seems like something they should get over rather than curtailing our rights.

0 - Part of the Online Harms bill, being debated now.

They say it is to protect us, but I suspect it is actually to protect themselves.

As many UK media organisations have pointed out, linking David Amess’ murder to online speech and incivility allows politicians to be seen to do something without having to address the politically awkward problem of Islamic extremism in the UK.

Naturally, Owen Jones chooses not to mention that too.

Frankly, I still smell a rat. Islamic terrorism is a problem, therefore everyone in the UK must use their real name when calling their MP a wanker on Twitter? Even if you acknowledge that the problem is real, the proposed solution does not follow.

No, it seems far better targeted at getting people to stop saying mean things about them on Twitter more than anything else.

It doesn't need to work for politicians to successfully "be seen to do something".

But I see your point.

There's a book about this called `Revolt of the Public`. That's more or less the thesis in a nutshell.

“All over the world, elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public. This book, until now only in samizdat (and Kindle) form, has been my #1 handout for the last several years to anyone seeking to understand this unfolding shift in power from hierarchies to networks in the age of the Internet.” --Marc Andreessen

SV 'titans' seem to think their authority and power should only increase.

doesnt make their observations less credible

I think it does: First, their response doesn't vary with the facts, suggesting it doesn't depend on the facts. Second, it does strongly match plain old megalomania and lust for power.

Look at the language: "samizdat", very clever, as if they are revolutionaries. They aren't revolutionaries, they are the vested powers, the most powerful business-people in the world.

Vary with what facts? You haven’t specified what facts they aren’t responding to, which makes this conversation very hard to have.

Secondly, the vast majority of people I’ve seen commenting on this phenomenon have been extremely minor social commentators, who have very little to gain in terms of personal power one way or the other. Myself included; I won’t be any more or less important if the traditional sources of cultural power and influence succeed or fall.

You don’t have to trust or like VCs, I certainly don’t, but I wouldn’t declare a commentator to be invalid or untrustworthy because a VC really likes their book. That’s straight up guilt by association, and not terribly persuasive.

That seems like a response to my comment, but as if it was pasted into a different conversation that I'm unaware of, and I'm not sure what most of the parent refers to. Somehow, there is a misunderstanding here.

>elite institutions from governments to media to academia are losing their authority and monopoly control of information to dynamic amateurs and the broader public

No, they're not. The internet has allowed everyone to be effectively isolated and siloed, and fed pre-approved messages, all while fooling everyone into thinking they are more "connected".

It's high time to unmask and punish Banksy for vandalism and anti-government speech.

I don't think politicians are bothered about being "heckled" online. I suspect they are fully aware that, as long as they stay out of it, it's us mugs who spend our time "communicating" online, while they set the real-life rules that we all follow.

I used to strongly support the principles of free, uncensored, and anonymous online speech, but it never seems to actually provide any benefits. I now strongly believe that in-person social skills and networks are much more useful, when it comes to getting things done.

Social media makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things. Anonymity protects from exactly that. If you think such retaliation tends to be a positive/negative force in the long run, you probably dislike/like anonymity.

As someone with a wide portfolio of unpopular views who prefers a loosely coupled, bottom up social architecture, I value anonymity as a key value and technology for promoting adaptation. A society with strong anonymity norms can test the fitness of more, and more diverse life algorithms than otherwise. That tends to make it less fragile and more likely to find a variety of local maxima.

Anonymity also makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things---those who would retaliate face no consequences for such retaliation, and the ease of creating anonymous accounts amplifies the their volume.

In practice, anonymity seems to produce a race to the bottom rather than a search for local maxima.

The bottom is where unpopular opinions need to start, and that's a good thing.

I feel like the most appropriate response to your comment would be a long stream of profanity, but deng gets mad when I let my irony loose.

He gets mad at everything that is not agreed upon by the masses, don't feel so bad. He is also trying to race to the bottom rather than starting there. Don't like something but dang does? Do not don't like what Donny dang does.

At the same time it provides power to the previously powerless. Whether it is true power remains to be seen.

This is a very complicated topic that seems to see a lot of conflation, as it does in this article. It's really hard for a social network to maintain a balance, especially with how many try flooding them with very hard to verify, false information from misleading sources.

On our network, our plan moving forward is to allow our users to verify their identity privately with the platform to earn an "ID Verified" badge while still maintaining an anonymous public pseudonym if they choose. The idea being that others can trust the user is a real person and not some troll (paid or otherwise) while also allowing those that wish to have it to maintain anonymity publicly.

Just to give some insight into how this anonymity becomes a problem. On our platform, I watch in real-time people / actors from outside the U.S. posing as seemingly real people in the United States and posting propaganda. Not the obviously false stuff either. Carefully crafted political BS that is meant to simply move the needle ever so slightly on the desired targets -- arguably a case where anonymity is negatively affecting democracy. There is so much to this I could probably write an entire blog on it, it's ever irritating as someone running a platform but also quite interesting.

I've seen the same on various other forums and have been surprised/impressed how far their operations have improved over the years.

on the flipside, like with my Facebook account, i hold and use it purely so that i can control what other people say about me and so i can stop them tagging me in photos, and i can track what information the network has on me. but I'm never going to engage on the site, and I'm sure as hell never going to speak or share my true opinions on there or ever link them to my true name. here on hacker news i try to politely limit myself to certain topics and positions.

in my country (Australia), there's some irony that i think our biggest problem with "foreign influence" isn't Russian or Chinese troll accounts, but genuine American accounts, media and American social media companies talking absolute crap and spreading the general phenomenon and quality of American politics worldwide. anonymity and Russian trolls aren't the problem when your mainstream spread so much FUD worldwide and largely serves the same purpose as those trolls but in a "legitimate" form. American media has far more reach, both in absolute power, influence and damage, than any subtle espionage agent or internet troll, and its personalities and commenters are happy to use their real names because their medium of influence is "legitimate" and they're commercially/socially rewarded for doing so. It seems, given the state of things, that the obsession with "Russian trolls and foreign actors" is prima facie absurd, and the limited influence they actually have compared to the elimination of sane discussion or valid analysis and criticism that will similarly be removed if forced to link back to real identification is something that should be considered in any cost benefit, as well as their relative effect compared to the bullshit consumerism/ partisanship/culture-war/ racist/religious/lobbyists/violent material that's seen as somehow "legitimate".

It's worth bearing in mind that just over the last few days we've seen Conservative MP's respond to genuine questions and being held to account over a recent vote (against preventing the dumping of untreated sewage) respond that this is anonymous abuse, would lead to another murder like that very sad death of David Amess, to try and shut down any scrutiny.

Banning anonymous accounts is not to prevent harm, but it's being sold that way.

"...we've seen Conservative MP's respond to genuine questions and being held to account over a recent vote."

The United States Congress uses anonymous voting to explicitly avoid that sort of thing.

US Congress voting is not anonymous. You can lookup each members vote on every bill (though maybe there is a rare exception I'm unaware of).

"All voting in Congress is a matter of public record. However, not all floor votes are roll call votes. There are voice votes (“aye” or “no”) and division or standing votes (where the presiding officer counts Members), and these types of votes do not indicate by name how a member voted." (https://www.senate.gov/legislative/HowTo/how_to_votes.htm)

I am having a difficult time finding data on the number of roll-call votes vs. others; general descriptions go between "very often" and "the majority".

"Very often, when a vote is called for passage of a particular bill, a voice vote is the usual procedure. Equally often, a bill is often declared "passed" even when the voices of a measure's supporters are not obviously louder. Also, a voice vote does not allow a member's constituents to know how he or she voted on a particular bill. If a clear-cut winner of a voice vote is not recognized, then a request for a recorded vote is made." (https://www.legion.org/legislative/thomas/17797/part-11-roll...)

> Equally often, a bill is often declared "passed" even when the voices of a measure's supporters are not obviously louder.

What actually determines whether stuck a vote passes then? Is there "real" voting behind the scenes that gives the real count, or is it just game of chicken where anyone can object to the determination if they're willing to be on the record as the naysayer?

From what I remember, any of them can call for a "stand up and be counted" vote rather than the "by acclaim" vote, and some proportion of them can demand a roll-call vote, which is on the record (more than 1 but much less than 50%).

Anonymous voting of your representatives should never be a thing - you need to know their record to see if their values align with yours when going to the ballot box.

Censorship is always sold as milk and eggs. That is to say, censorship is never sold as censorship.

Ugh I really dislike articles like this. There’s zero nuance and just pandering to people who already agree with the headline. If you can’t argue for and defend in good faith the perspective of the people you disagree with then you don’t really grok the issue and won’t be persuasive.

Good gods, I whole heartedly agree with the author that this bill is a bad idea but the argument is so weak that if I came in in support of the bill, after reading this I would walk away with more resolve that I was right.

The author paints the opposing view as a misguided emotional reaction to a tragedy, and even if the author’s characterization is correct, that’s not at all how the people in support of this bill see the issue. And rabble rabbling about the free speech and democracy to people who aren’t even thinking about that will just make it another us vs them where both sides talk past one another and believe the other is missing the point.

We have to stop this stupid game of framing complex issues in such a way that paints anyone who has different goals priorities than you like “oh so you hate democracy?” If you villianize everyone it loses its weight for the times when someone is truly purposely out to hurt people.

The purely democratic view might be to let the majority choose whatever regulations they see fit for online discourse, our diets or our clothes. Tyranny of the majority, etc.

Democracy isn't a value unto itself in my view. I would describe it as a method. Those who object to the premises of democracy in favor of individual agency would also object to bans of online anonymity. But as you say, if you already disagree with the ban, you're more likely to to let it slide.

disagree with this take. It might stifle free speech but in my book it does not stifle democracy, and reducing the latter to the former is a mistake. I think the basic unit of democracy is the citizen, and the citizen is not a private person. Being a citizen means participating in public life, and public life brings with it, trust, accountability and reputation. I do not belief at all that such a thing as an anonymous democracy can exist.

Anonymity might be a useful tool against certain forms of authority, that is to say it can guard certain negative rights, but i think it is an absolutely wrong tool to build a community in any active sense, because to be part of a community means to have an identity and be accountable.

I think anonymity is appropriate for whistleblowers or transparency activists, but not for ordinary people who wish to participate in public and political life or discourse. I also don't buy the argument of the article that power imbalance justifies anonymity. People in power are not wrong just because they are in power. They should have the same recourse against say, vile attacks or defamation that anyone else has. This 'stick it to the man' impulse that allows viciousness in discourse just because there are imbalances in power is i think a form of misguided egalitarianism.

HN is I think a good example. Quite a lot of people here have their real names attached to their accounts, those that don't at least comment under a consistent pseudonym, the site is quite harsh when it comes to avoiding bans. This elevates the discussions here compared to completely anonymous websites which are effectively a toxic swamp. If I had to pick between the HN democracy and the 4chan democracy, I knew what I would pick.

> I think the basic unit of democracy is the citizen, and the citizen is not a private person. Being a citizen means participating in public life, and public life brings with it, trust, accountability and reputation.

I disagree with this, mostly for the reason that the requirement for trust, accountability and reputation to exist in a society is different person to person when conditioned on wealth. If I have massive wealth, I can participate in society and democracy entirely anonymously. I vote, which is anonymous, and that's it. I have no requirement for trust, accountability and reputation.

Not only that but trust, accountability and reputation are all subjective measures based on who is measuring them. Mark Zuckerberg is trustworthy, accountable, and has high reputation for some folks at FB, while a large number of other people would disagree with that. Who's opinion matters? Has his measures of trust, accountability and reputation changed over time? Additionally, trust, accountability and reputation don't matter to him if he's still one of the richest people on earth.

I agree with you about voting.

But if I'm speaking, reputation usually matters. People want to know whether to assign credibility to what I say, and knowing who I am plays a large part in that.

Now, HN is an interesting example of that. Anyone can read my comment history (unless I create a throwaway for one post), but nobody knows who I am (unless I make my name and/or email address public). Still, I can build up a reputation here, either good or bad. And I do the same for others. "Oh, user X usually has interesting things to say. I was maybe going to skip this comment, but because of who wrote it, I'll read it." Some users get that extra benefit of the doubt, because with me they have built up credibility over time.

This happens in politics, too. Consider the Federalist Papers. At the time, the writers were not known, but they built up a consistent, solid argument. We respect them now, not because of who the writers were, but because of the quality of the material. (If anything, we respect the writers more because of what they wrote, not the other way around.) So this can work in politics - people with a reputation, and still anonymous.

But then there's Q. Q has built up a reputation (both good and bad) while remaining anonymous. But my personal conspiracy theory is that Q was a Russian disinformation campaign. ("Was" is perhaps too optimistic - I would expect Q to re-emerge as we get to the 2022 or 2024 elections.) I would really like to know who Q was, in order that people would have a better basis for judging what Q says.

Hackernews is an interesting example, as it is HEAVILY moderated, and some would say that this leads to a much higher level of commenting quality.

for most topics, I'd say the quality of conversation is high, but for some topics HN is pretty much an echo chamber. Some unpopular opinions for some topics are down voted pretty heavily, and very quickly.

Sharing an unpopular opinion on certain topics often leads to immediate downvoting of completely unrelated posts made earlier.

"You said something I don't like. Let me just click on your profile and downvote everything I can". Happens surprisingly often

> Consider the Federalist Papers. At the time, the writers were not known

Everyone knew who wrote the Federalist papers. It was an open secret. People may not have known the specific author of a particular passage or argument, but among the elite debating the constitution (who were the target audience) there was no disguise or mystery regarding the people who were 'Publius.' This gets trotted frequently out as one of the few examples of anonymous political speech having a potential benefit, but given the fact that it was pseudonymous at best I welcome additional examples of actual anonymous political speech that was of any consequence.

Q seemed to be an 'Operation Trust' / операция Трест campaign. The idea is to undermine resistance by pretending there is already one in place and that the secret resistance with a plan that will be eminently successful. It undermines actual resistance. The parallel being Trump supporters being the resistance that didn't do anything (other than make fools of themselves) with the belief that there was a secret plan to keep Trump in power. In this scenario Q would have been created to undermine Trump and his supporters. A large part of propaganda is to make your enemies look foolish. I'm reminded of a Voltaire quote: "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous. ' And God granted it."

I think such takes have to contend with the fact that the biggest social media cesspool is the one with the least anonymity: Facebook.

This is a really interesting point. While some "social media" hubs are much more toxic (think 8 chan), their reach is largely neutered because the upside just isn't there for the average citizen.

I think anonymity, non-anonymity, and pseudonyms are all pretty nuanced, and don’t have as linear an impact on the discourse as is commonly represented. We all know of anonymous forums that are utter cesspools, such as 4chan. We’ve also probably been part of forums and social media sites where pseudonyms were the norm, yet everyone jealously protected their good name and comported themself according to the norms and expectations of that community. Scale, social cohesion, moderation quality, and other site decisions have a huge impact on how people behave, possibly bigger than whether or not people use their real names.

> I think anonymity is appropriate for whistleblowers or transparency activists,

I guess the state should get to decide who qualifies?

That'll work out swimmingly.

No, it obviously should not be the state that decides something like this. This is journalists' work.

The most difficult part of whistleblowing is proving that any of this stuff is happening. If I started posting on HN about a black market for human baby meat, you probably wouldn't even see it: pg would ban me almost immediately as a troll, and he'd be right to do so. But what if there actually is one?

(and I'm not even really anonymous; if you want to, you can find my real name)

A journalist who knows the real identity of an anonymous informant has the ability to prove that they are who they say they are, and that the stuff they're trying to blow the cover of is actually happening. You don't know the identity of the informant, but there is still a real-world identity and reputation tied to the information, which is at least supposed to mean that if they're full of crap, you don't listen to them next time. There is, simply put, a chain of custody for reliable information.

100 million people is not a "community".

Even 100 thousand is not a "community".

You're right that anonymity is not how you build proper communities. But proper communities can only operate on a scale much smaller than any social media.

Now, a Facebook group might be a community - but then surely it should be up to its members to decide how to deal with anonymity?

What if it's members are secretly 70% shills and bots, and the community itself is somewhat of an illusion

Then the remaining 30% should probably just go elsewhere?

But how would you know? What if you're looking for a new community and the one you find is already compromised but from all outsider views seems to be a healthy source of expertise on a topic?

I find it very doubtful that a community that's mostly bots would "seem to be a healthy source of expertise" from the outside. If you're only looking at the materials that the community itself publishes (i.e. group description etc) - then sure, but that's not doing one's due diligence.

But even if you can't see it from the outside, it's not like it's a one-way door.

Regardless, what do you suggest as a remediation? By definition, if it looks good to the outsiders, how could the outsiders meaningfully moderate it?

>I find it very doubtful that a community that's mostly bots would "seem to be a healthy source of expertise" from the outside. If you're only looking at the materials that the community itself publishes (i.e. group description etc) - then sure, but that's not doing one's due diligence.

What about one human and 100 bot slaves that help his content gain the appearance of social agreement and importance? I also think the bar for the appearance of expertise is basically nothing if you're new to the area.

I'm a fan of removing anonymity from sufficiently large platforms personally.

There are many hypothetical scenarios that can be cherry-picked. And many not-so-hypothetical ones - e.g. trans people getting harassed on Facebook, today, due to its "real name" policy.

Besides I don't see how you'd meaningfully implement it in the first place - i.e. how would you distinguish bots from actual people? Require ID? Surely you can see the potential for abuse inherent in that. Especially outside of liberal democracies (although they are by no means immune to that, either).

> It might stifle free speech but in my book it does not stifle democracy, and reducing the latter to the former is a mistake.

Curious: how do you have democracy without free speech?

To me, it seems that free speech is a prerequisite for democracy. If it does not exist, then how can ordinary citizens enact change?

No kidding. Should we have been taping our ID's too our foreheads when protesting the whole time if that wasn't the case?

Your ID is your face, etc. If you're protesting in a place that you need to worry about being identified and targeted by the ruling authority, covering your face alone likely isn't enough anyhow.

Imagine a future where humanoid looking drones march in protests as a protestors avatar.

I'm imagining it. Those drones are remote-controlled. That can be traced, so anonymity is foiled.

Lol. You think there wouldn't be a way to proxy signals to keep it anonymous? They can't even reliably trace robo call spam on normal phone networks as is.

But sure it's possible. But the public is almost always one step ahead of the tech developed by the police.

If we're at the level of piloting robot humans remotely in huge crowds for protests, you can bet there's a few small really smart people defending everyone against tech attacks.

It's why the police always lobby for regulations or bans instead of fighting tech against tech.

> It's why the police always lobby for regulations or bans instead of fighting tech against tech.

Sure, let's go that route. One issue in suppression of human protests is that humans have rights. Robots do not. If your drone is blocking traffic, it can be impounded, and quite likely destroyed in the process. A few yards of netting and a garbage truck would make quick work of a few million dollars worth of protest-drones.

Maybe. Could be autonomous. "Sonny, go to this street and protest. Here is a thumb drive will all my political views, talking points, items to debate, things to chant, what to display on your LED picket sign"

"Oh and pick up my dry cleaning after you are released from jail"

What is your position on police officers covering their badge numbers at protests?

Disgusting, but I've never any incidents of this. Almost every state requires them to state their name, badge number, and department if requested.

If I'm paying them with taxes, and allowing them the ability to use a massive amount of force taht non-officers are not allowed to, you can be sure I'd want their info in case they make a big mistake.

I'm not working for anyone but myself when I'm protesting.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/05/politics/law-enforcement-badg...

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2020/06/05/seattle-police-c...

https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-police-cover-name-...

https://www.chicagoreporter.com/chicago-police-investigating...

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-nypd-cops-...

https://i2.wp.com/www.chicagoreporter.com/wp-content/uploads...

Are you suggesting that an action by the state is equivalent to actions by private citizens?

Are you suggesting that anonymity is not an unmitigated good?

They’re state employees on the clock, given a gun and legal immunity by the state. They can have their anonymity back when they’re not performing their official duties, not during.

I miss people being decent to each other. I'd be good with experimenting with removing anonymity in certain contexts to see how different online spaces can be. I genuinely think it would lead to some interesting (and unexpected) results.

One of the lessons of facebook comment sections is that people are totally willing to say absolutely vile things to one another under their own names and photos.

That's a logical fallacy - just because people exist that are non-anonymous and vile doesn't invalidate parent's point. The question is whether non-anonymity might lead to less vileness and I agree it's certainly worth trying.

I don't think they were trying to invalidate anything the parent commenter said.

It will never work. While your online words aren't ephemeral, the context is. So 10 years from now your rational, heart felt, and good intentioned argument will be used to show what a horrible person you are, simply because the context is gone.

It would be perfectly fine to get rid of anonymity (in some situations) if those words weren't there forever to haunt you.

You don't even need to wait 10 days, let one years.

He who controls the media, controls the narrative.

Also

"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something in them which will hang him."

And so on. I'd bet some animals do this kind of shit to each to each other. We humans are not the only assholes.

> I miss people being decent to each other.

Do you mean, before the internet? Because keyboard warriors have been a thing since day 1.

That said, I support the idea of anonymous and non-anonymous social media, as long as it's the company's choice, and not the government's. But I also support personal responsibility and accountability, such as the personal choice to participate in a community or not.

I agree we seem to have lost empathy. I think the thing the pseudonymous internet provides is lack of consequences for incivility. People will say far more hateful things in a FB post than they would to another human two feet away who can yell back. Same things happens in a car, yelling and screaming that we wouldn't do in person. We would just walk away and talk about the infringer behind their backs. However, that time and space is also a release valve; we move on and get back to life. In an online forum, it is non-stop and ever escalating. Truly anonymous or not doesn't seem to be the key. Most people in our social circle would probably agree with any bad take we had anyway. We've given everyone a microphone and everyone just screams over each other. And worse, we've made it infinitely profitable for companies to run the sound system on high. There is no easy path out of it as long as dissent prints cash.

I think the story of a lost decency is frankly, a complete myth.

Was decency the norm during the 1950s when black people were excluded from political involvement and/or lynched? What about in the 1970s with the fights over Vietnam? Was it decency when gay bars were raided and beat up by cops on a regular basis? Was the Gingrich revolution decent? What about in 2012 when people put up signs about not “re-<slur deleted>“ because of Obama?

The past was only civil/decent if you’re either viewing it with rose tinted glasses, or if you’re (purposefully or accidentally) very tightly constraining your analysis to very specific in groups. In fact, if you read historical narratives you’ll discover that for any given lost “decent” time, you’ll find people of that era hand wringing over the loss of decency and civility, and pining for their own lost decent time! Coincidentally everyone seems to put this lost “decent” time to be right before they began paying attention to the way people treated each other in public[0].

This of course doesn’t mean that violence and sectarian strife don’t vary; they obviously do. But the idea that people were once decent to each other in a way that doesn’t exist anymore is not really supported by the evidence, and frankly seems more like a “kids these days” type of statement; common but without merit.

0 - To paraphrase a boss of mine “they just happened to make the best music right when I was the most emotionally vulnerable. What a coincidence!”

People are already decent to each other. The problem is that your definition of decent is becoming warped.

It would just lead to anyone with an idea they're not sure is agreed upon already not being able to voice that idea.

Scary world.

Pseudonymity is where its at if it can be done well...where its verified that this is an actual person and not a sovereign or political party troll farm. But at the same time protecting ones true identity. Platforms right now are in charge of that vetting process and try their best but its really just not working well.

Agree. I also feel there is a big difference between being anonymous and someone using multiple anonymous accounts to amplify their expression.

Why? Identity does not make an argument. Numbers of posts don't prove me wrong. A preponderance of quacks doesn't inform me of my baking skills when I toss bread to ducks.

The impulse to identity, by law or platform-specific reputation system, is useful for other ends, but the end of judging books by covers should not be one to strive toward.

That’s because going from premises to conclusions is the rarest and trivially followable argument and the complexity of discussion arises from concluding on facts.

For instance, is it true that you couldn’t get a COVID test in SF around Jul 4?

With provenance of information, people start trusting trusted sources for facts. With fixed identity, people can evaluate what the preponderant view is.

If you’re in a room with ten of your friends and you could get toilet paper in Jan and all of them couldn’t, you would judge yourself lucky and that there was an availability problem.

If I go online and I see one thousand posts saying the opposite of what I’m seeing, I’m going to ignore them. Primarily because of the identity problem.

Attesting to facts requires more than identity. There are billions of nobodies with identities whom I don't trust to attest to anything.

Verifiable events can be attested to (like the availability of testing) with trustworthy data, like from a reliable reporter or the test providers or some reliable surveillance mechanisms. Using a identity as a proxy for accountability, in furtherance of reputation management -- as the social media web largely treats all this -- is an error.

People aren't reliable just because we know they're people, as Facebook-provided comments on third-party sites demonstrate.

I think this is an overly restrictive way to acquire information but I’m content with your taking your approach and my taking my approach and us ending where we will.

Really the issue is that astroturfing works. Its a proven and well studied psychological strategy. Troll farms use it, marketing firms use it, and the media has used it for decades.

This is the same government that have been about to ban pornography for 5+ years. They're going to do nothing. They just want a different subject to discuss since right now the UK has shortages of everything from natural gas and electricity to doctors to computer chips to kids toys.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dickwad_theory

Time to use a PURDAH

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/nonexistence-seems-prefe...

Facebook clearly demonstrated that people will say terrible things under their own name.

Banning anonymity by law is bad, but it is a valid choice for platforms. Some people like to go to Disney World, some like to go to New Orleans.

It's not hard to get a fake id. It's not hard to spoof being someone else. It's not hard for criminals to get hold of weapons. Given that your every move and utterance is tracked and logged online and geo by countless entities your @penpal name is a pretty trivial detail anyway...

I see three issues here:

* Are you a real person or a bot / shill

* Are others able to know who you are when you post things

* Are you able to support others' opinions without any personal stake

And I think the answer to all of them is that it depends on scale, although I don't see any particular reason to believe (1) isn't always preferred.

Banning anonymous social media accounts and trying to strike down Section 230 are both obvious attempts at returning the power of disseminating information to the powerful.

Rush Limbaugh spent most of his adult life being a racist misogynist and getting paid handsomely for it. He found his niche and his audience. Bob Limbaugh, just a dude at Acme, would find it hard to retain a job making similar statements, even if they were less incendiary. Yet Bob would almost certainly be silenced if his online presence were tied to his actual identity, out of fear for his livelihood. And because Bob doesn't have a team of people to filter out confrontations, you're more likely to get an honest debate on the merits of ideas from Bob than you would have ever gotten from Rush even if it won't reach as many people.

Most people just want to live their lives, even if some of the things they believe are stupid or ridiculous.

> ...trying to strike down Section 230 are both obvious attempts at returning the power of disseminating information to the powerful.

(We agree on anonymity, so I've elided that part; but as for Section 230...) I think this depends on whether you believe that removing Section 230 will cause social networks to filter more stuff or less stuff. It is worth remembering that the people who drafted Section 230 absolutely believed it would cause more content to be filtered by smaller numbers of more controllable companies: the reason it exists in the first place was not to defend the right to publish content, but to allow companies to filter content--as part of the Communications Decency Act, where the government wasn't sure it would have the power to regulate speech and so was examining the problem of how to draft the large media organizations into their cause--without becoming responsible for the other content... to create a carve-out safe haven for anyone who helps filter the world from "indecent" communication.

As it stands, disseminating information is only at the grace of the powerful: Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc.; as they change their policies of what is "acceptable content", people gain and lose their ability to disseminate information. If you disagree with the authors of Section 230 and instead believe that removing it will cause social media companies to filter even more content and take back even more control over communication, then sure: that's bad; but, if you agree with the people who drafted it... that, without protection from prosecution over their editorial decisions, they will fall back to "I'm just a dumb platform" (like a telephone company, which does not need Section 230 to operate without content filters, and which is absolutely enough to build a social network such as the original Instagram on top of), then this would be a big boon to deconstructing currently-centralized control over information.

Section 230 clarified what networks were allowed to do without needing to overtly moderate the content. Without it, networks are going to figure out different business models because it's not possible to fully moderate a billion people. I keep seeing people compare social media networks to telephone operators, but they're nothing alike, even if you tie yourself into a logical pretzel in an attempt to do so. They're much closer to radio operators.

But... the "business model" you are defending is something we all know is bullshit: maximizing engagement to collect data on users and sell advertisements :(. Why should we go out of our way to help this exist? I am not "tying myself into a logical pretzel" to do the comparison: I'm carefully considering the tradeoffs with the goal of penalizing things I don't like to get the things I do.

The original model of Instagram--and Facebook! and (mostly, but not entirely) Twitter--is that you have an account, and people who follow you can see what you post, in time order. There is absolutely no reason why they need centralized moderation for this: the moderation comes from people deciding to unfollow you if they don't like your content for absolutely any personal reason.

If the result of this is that you can't have a massive behemoth social network that only scales because it is using biased AIs to filter content while attempting to maximize "engagement" by pushing people to extreme positions while washing their hands of the whole mess by claiming "wasn't us: this is on the users!" even though the editorial decisions are their own... THAT'S GREAT!

> The original model of Instagram--and Facebook! and (mostly, but not entirely) Twitter--is that you have an account, and people who follow you can see what you post, in time order. There is absolutely no reason why they need centralized moderation for this: the moderation comes from people deciding to unfollow you if they don't like your content for absolutely any personal reason.

Not quite - what about _actual_ calls to violence and such? (Very hyperbolically) should a platform allow the local KKK chapter to use it plan lynches?

Anonymity doesn’t mean lack of accountability. There are ways to have both. Not hard.

I wonder if we should extend this to real world. Ban anonymity there too maybe make it mandatory to have name and serial number tattooed to forehead and make it illegal to cover it.

See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28943782 4 days ago

As well as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28946349.

Thomas Paine published common sense anonymously. I think there needs to be a way to publish anonymously where the people are.

Yes, that's why governments want to do it.

If they pass this legislation, my bottom will lose its precious anonymity.

Such a cowardly defense of the pro-privacy position coming from the Guardian, I wonder if they had trouble sourcing anyone at their offices who were authentic advocates for this position.

The author rightly points out that there was no connection between the killing of Amess and 'social media anonymity'. So I suppose at least they are doing their part to combat that false narrative set up by Parliament.

However, we then launch into one-armed counter attacks about how MPs who cut benefits (ahem Tory ahem) have more of a responsibility to endure vitriole from 'the poors' whose benefits they cut. Yet simultaneously, we should still stomp out 'right-wing-extremists'. Whom I suppose have no legitimate grievances with the government despite the fact that Islamic State can operate within London and kill their political representatives.

Well said. The Guardian has become such a rag, the very last time I took them slightly serious was before that Batley Grammar School story with the teacher who's now in hiding and fearing for his life, where they described those issuing the death threats as peaceful and well-liked members of the community whose beliefs should be respected.

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