Meta forced to reveal anonymous Facebook user's identity | Hacker News Reader

Meta forced to reveal anonymous Facebook user's identity

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223 pointsskilled230 comments

Court case here: https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDH...

I find court summaries of the Dutch courts to be quite readable. Google translate also seems to work quite well.

It should be noted that this is a "kort geding", which i believe translates to a "preliminary injunction" but I don't have the legal education to say what the differences between the two may be.

Some anonymous user claims that the person who started legal action committed gross sexual misconduct. The judge ruled that there's little evidence to back these claims and that the plaintiff is suffering an impact significant enough to warrant further action.

It should also be noted that Dutch law considers defamation to be a crime (as in, illegal under criminal law), not a civil law issue.

This isn't the first time a company has had to hand over subscriber information because of libel or slander either. I don't really see what the big deal is.

Dunno if this is the case in the Netherlands, but it's worth noting in some legal systems defamation is defined something like spreading harmful accusations as opposed to spreading harmful lies. The intent being that if you have an accusation that is true, you settle it in the courts rather than in the press, with an angry mob, on social media, or the like.

Since the whether or not the accusations are true doesn't factor into such a crime, it can be enforced on the presence of harmful accusations alone, which has fairly big implications for the sort of social media witch hunts that we've seen cropping up in the recent decade.

The Netherlands has both. "Laster" requires the accusation to be untrue. "Smaad" is the broader form that does not require the accusation to be untrue.

Justifications defined in the law are "necessary defense" and "common interest". The second one is specified as "believed in good faith that the charges were true and that the public interest required the charge." IANAL, but I think this can apply to social media witch hunts to at least some extent.

That makes the courts the sole deciders of truth, which is extremely bad in all ways.

The press can for example discover and publish evidence of corrupt dealings of a politician, while there is a minimal chance any prosecutor or court would be interested in the case.

Most Dutch would not agree with this opinion.

Things like political corruption are exempt from this due to "common interest". So, no, that is not an issue.

As a someone from a country with similar law I think it is a good thing. Social media witch hunts are not good for society and they often fall under our defamation laws but people are still allowed to write about corrupt politicians.

Have the Netherlands never had a case where the courts ruled against the interests of the public? Or favored the corrupt system? It seems trivial to imagine a case where a rape victim can accuse someone, but the attacker can beat the case by technicalities and then silence their accuser.

That's where the "make the accusation in the courts, not the press" rule is most important!

If you have a legitimate accusation to make, prosecute. Don't merely complain on social media.

My example was in the case where the prosecution failed unjustly. Or are you allowed to talk about a failed prosecution and still claim that you believe the individual in question did it? Even if so, that also poses a problem in cases where the action was immoral but not illegal, not to mention if the case cannot be prosecuted for financial or other reasons.

It's confusing from a US perspective, where we believe free speech is important since it allows the bringing of injustices to light. Are courts in the Netherlands trusted so much that they leave almost no injustices for others to speak out on?

Fact finding is part of the court's job. The courts are the institution we've established to do that job.

A case has a fact-finding part, then a part where the law and precedences are matched to the facts as found, then a decision.

It would be interesting if those were two different systems: a system where the outcome is a declaration of "what the state believes to be true" being entered into the books; and then another system that — perhaps quite efficiently — can just consume the output of the former system, to evaluate the application of law in the deciding of punishments for crimes. An "is" system, and an "ought" system, per se.

There actually is a very limited "is" system in use in common law in many countries — the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquest (usually: "coroner's inquest.") But they're really only used in practice to find cause-of-death. A "libel inquest" would be quite novel.

So instead of having one long document with chapters about facts in front, you'd have two shorter documents, one about facts and one about the rest, and the org chart of the people writing it would be somewhat different.

The idea would be that the facts of the case wouldn't be subsumed by matters of justice.

Right now, in most legal systems, you can't create legislation based on findings of a court other than the ultimate toplevel finding(s) — and those toplevel findings, at least in a criminal court, can only ever be about innocence/guilt for specific crimes, and can only ever be about the titled parties of the case.

This means that, if the justice system happens to discover an important fact about someone that it would be helpful for legislation to "trigger upon" — but that fact doesn't translate to their guilt in a specific specific crime that they are a titled party to a settled criminal case about — then there's no toplevel assertion for the fact about them to "ride in on" to have effect in law. So the law is effectively helpless to do anything, despite the court having "uncovered" that information.

Consider: a criminal trial for kidnapping of a child, where the child was being dropped off at a daycare center every day; and in the course of establishing motive, testimony from expert witnesses reveals that said daycare center was negligent in their care — perhaps criminally, though not necessarily so — but at least to a degree that would trigger the state licensing board for daycare centers to revoke their license... if the trial had been a civil trial about that.

Because the evaluation of the innocence or guilt of the accused for the crime of kidnapping, does not directly require the establishment of the "truth of the matter" of whether the daycare center was negligent, the testimony given in such a trial cannot be relied upon to establish negligence.

But, if the "truth of the matter" came first — as its own top-level inquest — and if it sought the truth-value of every claim made by both parties, hierarchically — then the result of the inquest could be used directly to decide both the guilt of party X in the crime of kidnapping, and the guilt of business Y re: both civil suits and statutory negligence.

Consider also: in such a system, you could get rid of the concept of a "class-action lawsuit." Class-action suits exist because the alternative is O(N) expensive and lengthy civil suits that each have to independently evaluate the claims of harm to a concrete party. But if instead an inquest is done into the "truth of the matter" of whether party X caused harm to a class Y; and then that fact became valid basis for any individual member of class Y to sue X and receive a summary judgement based upon the already-evaluated "truth of the matter" — then we'd have a much more useful system, where only the people who really do feel that they were harmed would bother to sue, and would each then receive damages sized to the harm actually done to that party. (Yes, I realize that this creates an unlimited liability on the balance sheet of any company who "falls victim to" a class-action inquest, given that there's no point at which they can say they've settled with all parties. Good! They should be perceived as permanently tainted by anyone looking to M&A with them — they're the corporate equivalent of a convicted felon!)

In real life you have corruption and abuse in every country that the respective legal systems simply refuses to investigate or go after. There is little chance to fix a corrupt and inefficient legal system, so at least we have the press to inform the population. In many places not even the established press, instead whistle blowers and citizen journalists. In some places not even that.

Not to speak of that the courts take their merry time, so a corrupt politician can be reelected before anybody knows of his or her dealings - if it wasn't for the free press.

"Kort geding" is more akin to a small claims court. A preliminary injunction afaict is more of a request to the court for the defendant/plaintiff to stop a certain action until full judgement has been made.

A kort geding is a civil court with the specific aim of solving cases that don't require a full blown legal investigation (which can take months).

Usually it's either for urgency reasons (ie. public and obvious defamation on public TV need a correction issued very quickly to prevent tarnishing someone's reputation) or because the matter simply isn't that huge (your neighbor cutting the tree on your property down doesn't and shouldn't take a full year to resolve).

A kort geding can be escalated into a full legal proceeding if either party is unhappy with the outcome however.

> A kort geding is a civil court with the specific aim of solving cases that don't require a full blown legal investigation (which can take months).

FWIW (probably not much; legal terms rarely match 1:1 between jurisdictions), Wikipedia thinks a “kort geding” is a preliminary injunction.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kort_geding disagrees with the “don't require a full blown legal investigation” claim, saying that the primary reason is urgency:

“Interlocutory proceedings (in Belgium often interim relief or référé) is a short-term civil procedure for urgent cases that by their nature must be decided quickly. […]

Matters that by their nature are urgent are, for example, the request to ban a strike or the request to prohibit a publication, because it is incorrect and harms the interests of a directly involved person.”

I think that’s more likely to be true.

(iOS Translation)

Why is it news that Meta has to answer to a subpoena issued by a court in a country they operate in legally?

I was under the impression that this is routine.

Because people don't understand free speech. They confuse the right to anonymity to "do whatever I want as anonymous".

Speaking of "not understanding free speech", in America (where Meta is) free speech exclusively refers to our Bill of Rights and the limitation on government to unfairly suppress your speech, specifically your political speech.

It is completely unrelated to a private citizen interacting with a private business in the eyes of American law, American business and Americans ourselves. The only free speech issue here from our perspective is "Is the government illegally restricting Meta's corporate right to free speech?" And no, making Meta identify a user is not a violation of their 1A free speech rights to us.

If you're speaking of a totally different European legal concept, it might be helpful for you to identify that.

Export the free speech is a red herring. The underlying issue is whether an aggrieved party can compel certain kinds of discovery to respond to libel (which has never been perfected speech). Prime were just able to be libelous with impunity because … the interwebs…

Libel - Another legal concept that varies dramatically by region.

In America, proving libel is extremely difficult and requires you to demonstrate real damages.

So in this case if it were American, unless the aggrieved party can demonstrate monetary damages, under American law there is no libel as we do not consider "hurt feelings" or "damaged reputation" to be libel. So in America we would demand that the offended party demonstrate that they have been financially harmed before we unmask the anonymous individual to fully investigate and adjudicate the claim.

If you're discussing libel under a EU or European nations context, it could be helpful to identify which version of libel law you are referencing, because this case from an American's perspective is no where near our extremely high bar. (And, as a side note, under American law all international libel convictions are automatically unenforceable here, to prevent tourism to areas who do not require sufficiently high bar)

This is a case in European courts between European entities. Why do you think it's helpful to bring in American concepts, and then complain about how the European ones are different?

1. Meta is a multi-national based in America.

2. I am not complaining at all.

3. In fact, I am replying to someone complaining that folks "don't know what <$GENERAL LEGAL TERM WITH REGIONAL DIFFERENCES> means" and I'm explaining: you're on an American website whose readership is majority American, talking about an American business, and you have the audacity to claim "people don't know this <HIGHLY LOCAL LEGAL TERM>?". And so I'm explaining WHY Americans would be confused by the seemingly low-bar for libel or confusion around free speech.

This case may be European courts and entities (and I asked for location specifics as the concepts can often vary country by country in Europe), but this website is not a European website and it's absolutely normal than Americans are here discussing this.

> whose readership is majority American

As far as I know, there are more Americans here than visitors from any other country, but the majority of people is still not American: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568123

I feel like American readers are sometimes guilty of assuming everyone else is also American and understands their references, but the world is a bigger place than that.

> So in this case if it were American, unless the aggrieved party can demonstrate monetary damages, under American law there is no libel as we do not consider "hurt feelings" or "damaged reputation" to be libel.

Based on my poor understanding of US law, I think you are mistaken. Defamation per se recognizes that certain statements are so damaging to one's reputation that proving damages is not required. From [1],

> In an Alaska Supreme Court case, a woman accused a man of assault, battery, and false imprisonment, and he brought a claim against her for defamation. The court explained that because the statements imputed a serious crime, the man was not required to prove the damage to his reputation and emotional distress.

The case discussed in the article includes accusations that the plaintiff films women without their consent, allegedly in a sexual context (although that's redacted so I could be wrong). That could totally fall under category 1 of Defamation Per Se.

[1] https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w...

This is the right take on it.

The era where you could fax ASCII art of a gun to someone without the Feds following up is gone. It was perpetrated not on any kind of justice theory of the power of the anonymous actor, but on a power inequality: governments hadn't caught up with what the technology enabled, so individuals using new technology could out-maneuver enforcement.

That is no longer true for most Internet users. The tools are in place for mass-surveillance and mass-enforcement. Governments can take down a website, governments can black-hole a DNS entry, governments can honeypot someone into trying to trade Bitcoin for criminal activity, governments can jail citizens indefinitely until they cough up passwords, and governments can require a corporation divulge privately-held information on penalty of loss of corporate privileges (including ability to exist).

The "golden era" of the Internet was a latency hiccup, not a new world order.

This position is a slippery slope to a world where true anonymity is made illegal. Your confusion is more subtle and arguably more dangerous: that anonymity can make certain illegal actions easier does not mean that anonymity should not exist.

What is "true anonymity"? The law is fairly clear that you cannot engage in illegal activity whether acting anonymously or otherwise.

The inability to monitor all illegal activity is a trade-off we accept as a society to maintain the right to anonymity. You'd rather we sign that right away for some supposed guarantee of safety? A guarantee made by the synthesis of your government and your corporations?

Nothing of the sort. I think anonymity is a privilege that is granted and can be enjoyed while engaging with society or online however anon chooses, up to the point where anon's actions breaks the law.

edit: In the case described here I am especially unsympathetic for anon as they chose to defame someone's real life identity. In this incident there was no proactive monitoring by gov/law/inc. as you so fear. Instead the wronged had to hire private council and prove the defemation in court a priori. Even after proving the impact to their character the judge's ruling is only tentative, giving anon an opportunity to present facts supporting their claims (and if you read the judge's statement closely, had anon presented evidence, there would have been no basis for the defamation suit and no need for unmasking). And even if there is no facts and anon legit defamed the person, anon may still evade justice given the paltry noncompliance fine Meta would have to pay. So let me ask you, would you like to live in a world where someone could baselessly and maliciously accuse you of rape or other defaming acts without consequence?

It's a classic fear vs freedom dichotomy. We are both being a little intellectually dishonest, and should perhaps frame the question a little differently. To answer your question:

> would you like to live in a world where someone could baselessly and maliciously accuse you of rape or other defaming acts without consequence

Yes, if the alternative is that I can be held criminally liable for hosting a web forum that doesn't require some form of government enforced ID system. How could it be any other way (genuine question)?

> How could it be any other way (genuine question)?

The alternative is how things currently work. Meta is not being held criminally liable here, and people are allowed to use the platform anonymously so long as they do not engage in criminal behavior.

> It's a classic fear vs freedom dichotomy

Thats a false dichotomy. Many kinds of freedom actually result in less freedom. A society where you are free to sell youself into slavery is less free. A society where 10 year olds are free to work in the coal mines is less free. A society where you are free to ignore legitinate court orders is less free because people will turn to vigilante justice instead.

all you say is true but that isn’t a false dichotomy defense. it’s “just” a refutation of his position. to contest a false dichotomy you need to explain that there is a third choice.

i find the fear vs freedom dichotomy to be a legitimate set of choices. you didn’t argue against fear, you argued against individual freedom vs societal freedom. which is not what the gp was going on about.

IMO the tradeoff is freedoms vs. protections. People can agree to exchange certain freedoms for protections, and codify this exchange into law.

For example many countries have mandated seatbelt laws. In this case the freedom to not wear a seatbelt is exchanged for health and safety. Someone could claim this is done out of fear, and that's not completely untrue. And as you allude, fear can be totally rational and backed by data, thus fear vs. freedom is not an unreasonable exchange.

True anonymity is not illegal. To be anonymous don’t reveal your identity to anyone on line. If you do that you are not sharing your identity with anyone to get a subpoena.

Apple is trying to keep your identity secret on your device so that they cant verify anyone only devices.

> True anonymity is not illegal.

I'll use the exact same kind of argument to make the opposite point:

Facebook answering a legal subpoena isn't illegal.

> To be anonymous don’t reveal your identity to anyone on line.

They are not anonymous from Facebook perspective.

There is no "right to anonymity" on Facebook, no more than there is a "right to free speech", the user accepted all the TOS when they signed up. Even the GDPR doesn't grant any right to "anonymity", however the platform cannot use identifiable data however they like, but you bet legal data subpoenas are not covered by the GDPR.

I agree Facebook answering any subpoena is legal for Facebook. Facebook doesn't get to argue the validity of the subpoena. That is the job of the defendant.

Exactly I'm not sure of your point. If an organization gets a subpoena they turn over what they know. If they don't know they can't hand it over.

I don't think you are making the opposite point but I will try to be open minded. From my perspective we agree.

They could/would be anonymous if they hide their identity from facebook as well.

Are we punishing those who wish to remain anonymous but do not have the technical ability to do so. Is there a right to anonymous in the EU?

No-one is saying that anonymity itself is illegal, just that if you commit a crime expect "them" to try to unmask your anonymity using legal process.

My point is simply if nobody has any information worth subpoenaing that is privacy.

Not sure, but you might be confusing anonymity with privacy. I'm all in favor of privacy, but keeping your identity secret while doing stuff in public (or on some internet forum) is not really a matter of privacy. There may be a few cases where anonymity is warranted, but often it just enables bad behavior.

It's the realities of enforcement that concern me. If you say (as it appears you are implying though I may be wrong!) "we don't really need anonymity online, so we should enforce verifiable identity in all online and public interactions" then you open the door to (potentially tyrannical) government involvement of all internet services. For example, the government now dictates how you handle authentication. You can no longer use a simple email + password usage of a public service.

You can't have both.

If anonymity isn't allowed why can't advertisers track you in the EU without your consent.

What privacy are you in favor of? Identities should be private when in public? Until someone requests it and then it goes into the public record?

Who the hell ever pitched Facebook as "truly anonymous" in the first place? And how is it news that Facebook responds to legal subpoenas? This story is 'dog bites man', why does it even exist?

or they don't trust the system and want to stay anon to exercise their free speach

That depends on the country so, e.g. the situation in the Netehrlands is quite different from the one in Russia. As is the "system".

In that case, they should probably not use the system while trying to stay anon. The system will not work in their favor, and Facebook is definitely part of that system.

anybody could be part of the system knowingly or unknowingly. so the best is to always stay anon and trust nobody. all of the system should be designed bullet proof anonymity just like apple does, even if apple wants to can't read messages.

That's a very different thing. End-to-end encryption stops Apple from reading messages on its own initiative, but if you discover that someone with a particular phone number is sending defamatory iMessages, Apple can still tell you who that person is. (Even the idea of a phone number being anonymous sounds kinda silly, even though it's no structurally different than a Facebook user ID.)

There is no right to anonymity. The government requires every citizen to identify themselves in various ways for paying taxes, voting, receiving benefits, registering for the draft, etc.

There sure are, just because some parts of society requires identification doesn't mean all do.

No, almost all parts of society require identification, you could say it's a fundamental principle (Western democratic) societies are built upon. Your freedom is based on me being held accountable to respect it.

Anonymity is protected in special situations such as elections, communications, whistleblowing etc.

> No, almost all parts of society require identification

Do you have a source on that? I can think of FAR more parts of society that don't require identification than parts that do. It feels impossible that "almost all parts of society require identification" in a world of infinite possibilities.

I put some pants on 10 minutes ago without identifying myself. Then I left my house without telling anyone. Then I walked down the street and never had to identify myself. The mall I visited didn't require ID. Finally, the McDonalds I went to accepted cash and I didn't have to prove who I am.

Presuming what you claim in the last paragraph is true, maybe it’s a fun thought experiment to ponder how much anonymity you’ve pierced. How many other people in the world today did as you have done? Now constrain by people who post on hn.

Why would my last paragraph be false?

Which one of these activities do you think I'm lying about and required ID?

No idea what your angle is but if you break the law any expectation of being anonymous goes out the window. But that is an voluntary act.

Just because something doesn’t require it doesn’t mean it’s a right.

There is no (general) right to anonymity, but there is, at least in some Western countries, a right to privacy.

> There is no right to anonymity.

Sometimes a right must necessarily exist for another right to function. Anonymity must exist to allow freedom of political speech, which is the most important kind of free speech. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone ever argue that people have a right to be anonymous all the time, but only in context of other rights, and often this is quite narrow. Some examples: political press, political speech, voting (that I voted in the Us is public, my ballot is anonymous).

Anonymity is not required for free speech to function.

There are points where it is, particularly political speech.

Yes there are some points where it is, e.g. elections, whistleblowing, witness protection etc., which goes to show that in general, in Western democratic societies, anonymity is not a requirement for free speech.

Subpoenas are for criminal cases. It looks like this was a civil matter.

A better comparison would be the Twitter user that was tweeting Elon Musk's jet flights. This was before twitter was purchased, and Elon Musk was not able to get the court to order Twitter to hand over that information.

Subpoenas are not a legal instrument in Europe. Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.

In Europe, police usually have a right to request information from companies and people. This is codifed into law, there's not necessarily any legal procedure for how it needs to happen.

There are some standards on how inter-country information is requested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)

> Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.

Agreed, except that Ireland en England are part of Europe.

Also (and I'm not sure on this part) in The Netherlands we have WvSr aka Sr (Wetboek van Stafrecht, criminal law) and there's privaatrecht (aka burgerlijk recht, civiel recht). Subpoenas would be vordering(srecht). Government issue these as well, but it seems to fall under civil law.

> Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.

Yes, there is a civil/criminal divide, this is not so much related to being civil/common law

(and just because this is HN, see the graph at the bottom of the page for a French example - though they call it civil and penal jurisdiction https://cours.unjf.fr/repository/coursefilearea/file.php/105... )

> Subpoenas are not a legal instrument in Europe. Europe also uses civil law, not common law, so there's no criminal, civil divide like there is in the US.

There absolutely is in many European countries. The divide is just along different lines than in US.

https://www-librededroit-fr.translate.goog/quelle-est-la-dif...

Apples and oranges.

The Twitter user is pseudonymous at best, and was posting objectively true data, publicly available, regarding a notable, public person in these United States.

The FB user in TFA was anonymized by group membership, and posting allegedly defamatory and untrue information about a private person.

No, this is false. Subpoenas are most definitely valid and enforceable in civil actions.

Because generally companies like Facebook, fight these lawsuits tooth and nail.

It is news to me that websites can so easily be coerced to fork over user data by private citizens prosecuting fairly petty civil actions. Is this about par for the course in European jurisprudence, or a high water mark for right to due process in the digital age?

The first order effects seem pretty benign, even salutary - but I’m not sure the court really thought through all the implications here.

Is the Dutch legal system inviting themselves to become a party to every single he said/she said drama on Facebook?

What will Facebook need to do to extricate themselves from such an odious entanglement?

Slander and libel are criminal offences in the Netherlands. If a crime had been committed against someone, they should have the means to seek justice.

Normally, you wouldn't need Facebook to disclose any names because Facebook isn't anonymous 99% of the time. There are plenty of anonymous and pseudonymous forums that would be at risk and yes they too have to follow warrants should the court decide against them.

If Facebook wants to stay out of such cases, they should either leave the jurisdictions where such warrants are possible (so planet earth, probably) or they should enforce non-anonymous posts so plaintiffs can sue each other without involving a court warrant first.

> If Facebook wants to stay out of such cases, they should either leave the jurisdictions where such warrants are possible (so planet earth, probably) or they should enforce non-anonymous posts so plaintiffs can sue each other without involving a court warrant first.

How do you propose they leave?

Why is the responsibility on Meta to make sure users in a jurisdiction don’t sign up for their service? Surely some of this responsibility could fall on the user.

Leaving probably means not having offices there, not selling ads there, not recruiting users there, and not hosting anywhere near dutch jurisdiction,

But they can't play it both ways.

They have an office in Amsterdamm, they control a large part of the ad market in the Netherlands, and probably host there or nearby on EU soil.

They can't seriously expect to not be subject to dutch law.

I don't like the idea of extraterritorial jurisdiction. For example, if Iran wants to prosecute the operator of a website hosted in Amsterdam for featuring images of women without hijabs, no other country should cooperate with them.

That's not what's happening here. Facebook has a Dutch subdivision (Facebook Netherlands B.v.) and an office in Amsterdam. They're absolutely subject to Dutch law. They could leave, but the EU means that they'd be subject to this kind of order from a Dutch court unless they left the EU entirely, which would make it harder for EU companies to pay them for advertising, hurting their profits.

>That's not what's happening here. Facebook has a Dutch subdivision (Facebook Netherlands B.v.) and an office in Amsterdam. They're absolutely subject to Dutch law. They could leave, but the EU means that they'd be subject to this kind of order from a Dutch court unless they left the EU entirely, which would make it harder for EU companies to pay them for advertising, hurting their profits.

I agree that they are subject to the laws of the countries they operate in. I do not agree that a company should own all of the responsibility in making sure no Dutch citizens access their services. The idea that the internet would be different depending on where I access seems anti-internet.

When your business model relies on user data to generate profits, you have to collect it and that makes it discoverable.

> The idea that the internet would be different depending on where I access seems anti-internet.

That's GDPR for you, though.

Extraterritorial jurisdiction is becoming increasingly common. If a person commits a crime in a foreign jurisdiction they are convicted, and then when they return to their homeland they are once again convicted for committing a crime abroad.

I know the UK and USA definitely do these prosecutions regularly, even though both countries would throw a hissy fit if Iran started prosecuting every tourist who visits and was known to not wear a headcovering outside Iran.

The summary actually goes into this, the Dutch branch isn't actually involved in this case but Meta didn't object to the reasoning provided by the plaintiff that Dutch law should apply to them.

I'm pretty sure the Dutch subsidiary exists just to avoid taxes, the Irish branch is the main company most EU citizens interact with.

fairly petty civil actions

If you're the person having their reputation smeared by anonymous cowards it maybe doesn't seem so "petty" as you dismiss.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do; have the person slandering somebody anonymously brought into the light where there is a level playing field in which they can present their case.

I'm not sure it's creditable that enough credence is being given to these anonymous claims in a private group to be impacting this person's life. Seems more akin to a slapp.

How many careers and lives were ruined by the anonymous "Shitty Men in Media" list?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ugly-battle-over-shtty-media-m...

Some cases were probably well desreved, but anonymity allows easy score settling and revenge.

There's no recourse against an anonymous accusation, there's no way to defend yourself, and there's no way to prove you are innocent.

This court ruling seems entirely reasonable. If a trillion dollar corporation is profiting from someone spreading malicious lies about you, it seems logical that the victim has some legal recourse against both entities.

It would be just as reasonable if it was a smaller money-losing corporation.

> so easily be coerced

It's a court order!

> fairly petty civil actions

Just because this would be a civil matter in your jurisdiction does not mean it is a civil matter under Dutch law where this lawsuit is from.

>Is the Dutch legal system inviting themselves to become a party to every single he said/she said drama on Facebook?

Legal action is very expensive. While vexatious litigants exist, the total volume of legal proceedings being commenced is not particularly large.

So, access to the court system is limited to those with the income to defend themselves. Is this a good thing? Or, is there a fund setup for people who need to sue/defend against a suit for defamation?

Why is this surprising? If someone accuses of you a crime anonymously, you need to know their identity to sue them for damages. Otherwise, anonymity becomes a license to libel.

> news to me that websites can so easily be coerced to fork over user data

I like how websites are special. Like no-one ever says "I am shocked that a hotel provided information to the police about a guest wanted for murder"

One, because it's a civil case not criminal, and two, because it's Ireland aka FAANG tax haven. They can't exactly up and leave from Ireland.

Also- if someone is making accusations, you should have a right face your accuser and address them.

I read it differently

> Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with the court's decision

Only 100K to completely ignore the court's ruling... Easy.

This is absolutely routine and not news. Companies are required to abide by the legal system in countries they operate in.

Like other companies, Meta routinely comply with subpoenas for user identity, post history etc in the US too. In fact they give their requirements here[1] so law enforcement know what sort of order to bring and how to serve it on them. This has even been abused by bad actors forging court orders etc to obtain user data[2]

[1] https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelin... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/us-law-en...

I understand the fears people are raising here, the potential for abuse.

But on the other hand, what should someone do if they are truly wronged by something like this? They lost their job, their spouse left them, all because someone decided to slander them under the veil of anonymity. Should they have any recourse?

It goes both ways. If you are not anonymous, then every your action can be taken against you. I remember a post where music companies searched reddit against user comments posted on 2011.

What if you are pro trans people? In 10 years you can be prosecuted by it, if a new party is elected. It can have new 'standards'. You will not be able to contradict mainstream narrative. You will not be able to say anything against corporations and governments.

If you will do anything outside of 'boundaries' set by companies, governments you will lost your job, spouse will leave you, all because you wanted 'a better world'.

On one side of scales is a place of total invigilation, on the other is a place with internet trolls. Companies like meta and twitter are quite good in rooting our trolls. So the current situation is inconvenient, but we can live with it.

If we opt out anonymity then the overall result will be a lot worse than the current situation is.

Sidenote, I love how clean and readible this site is. No popups, just clean and well written text in the middle.

And as a bonus it supports RSS

The huge title banner with the redundant snippet and the Meta logo of the unnecessary margins could use some dieting—the black-on-white body of the article cuts of at "identifying data of an anonymous Facebook user" for me, incongruously even earlier than the dark-gray-on-black snippet above it. Otherwise it's pretty nice, yes. (Is it weird that I think text.npr.org mostly looks better than the main npr.org?)

There's anonymity on Facebook? Don't they have a real name policy still?

To the degree they bother enforcing it. I still see lots of vanity accounts people create for their dogs and cats, for example.

There's a feature where you can post to groups anonymously, still using your real account, rather than creating a new account with fake data to make you appear anonymous.

Just to add to this. If the anonymous post was made on a group, the group administrators could still see it. So it's only anonymous for the rest of the (non-admin) group members.

There's a dead comment sibling to this one talking about how group admins can see through the anominity. I don't understand why it is dead. It wasn't even rudely stated. Is it just flat wrong, or did it cross some unknown social boundary by pointing out a fact? Was it edited posthumously?

Edit: And, when I refresh it's not dead... I don't understand this system apparently.

> Edit: And, when I refresh it's not dead... I don't understand this system apparently.

If enough people vouch for a dead comment it goes back to normal. That's probably what you saw.

I had a similar reaction as well: Isn't that just a little disingenuous - or misplaced surprise? My impression was Facebook shouldn't rank high on privacy or free speech security ("free speech" is not defined by the US constitution, and this is a european case anyway).

On the bright side, the article is full of interesting detail.

Good motivation to build or support platforms where this can't even be a possibility, i.e. without phone number authentication or other identity revealing steps as part of authentication.

I'm having trouble seeing this being a major thing in a decade or two. To me it looks more like we're running towards more control in the name of stopping hate. ID verification to access internet and social media seem more likely. Sell it as a way to stop pedophiles on social media, kids from accessing violent/nude content, and people from posting hate. We don't have anything to hide, right?

Even if a platform wanted, the laws will prohibit it by requiring user knowledge.

i think 'in the name of stopping AI agents' is much more likely to be what sells this. perhaps hate spread by AI?

Left rampant AI agents can drown a platform with a deludge of advertising shit or hate or woke crap.

>> We don't have anything to hide, right?

Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.

Done: https://github.com/prettydiff/share-file-systems/blob/master...

You would need a warrant to extract the messages/identity directly from a person's computer as there is nothing otherwise to obtain.

Well there's plenty of platforms like that, but they're often used by people with shady intents. Anonymity has a tradeoff like that.

"Furthermore, Meta's conditions permit data from users to be shared with third parties."

...I don't know if it has any legal implications, but it sure does undercut Meta's ethical high ground, that they will tell people all about their users for money in order for them to serve up advertisements. The case in question would on the surface appear at least as valid a reason.

> it sure does undercut Meta's ethical high ground, that they will tell people all about their users for money

I'm sorry, where do you infer that? Meta literally refused to do exactly that, and went to court to defend the practice. They're only doing so now because they lost.

Meta does not share individual user identities and other metadata the court is demanding with 3rd party advertisers.

Go on, then. Go buy some emails from Facebook (not public ones like mine that I have listed intentionally public) and show us.

You won't be able to. Facebook doesn't sell emails or identifying data.

I don't think you understand. The complaint isn't that FaceBook sells data; it's that it gives it freely away.

To literally quote from the Privacy Policy [1]

> We share information about you with marketing vendors. For example, we share your device identifier or other identifiers

---

But this is all irrelvant.

Meta's Privacy Policy makes it extremely clear that they will share your data when there is a court order.

> We access, preserve, use and share your information:

> In response to legal requests, like search warrants, court orders, production orders or subpoenas. These requests come from such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other government authorities. about when we respond to legal requests.

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy?subpage=4.subpage.11...

Go get the "username, email address, telephone number, and the IP address used during registration and logins". Then post here. Since it's free, should be easy.

Talk is cheap, show me the money/code/emails.

> However, Meta initially responded stating that it did not find the posts defamatory and hence would not accede to his request

Oh, that’s so very Meta and Twitter and Reddit. I believe they return a delayed response only to maintain appearances of some human being having had a look at the reports.

What I don’t understand is how come a user was anonymous in a Facebook group.

Facebook groups have an option to permit anonymous posts, on the basis the group moderator can handle the tidal wave of bad that will probably happen.

Of course, you're not anonymous on the back end, just publicly.

> Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with the court's decision.

As a purely business move, should Meta just play this as a principled stand, and eat the fine?

If there's any negative reaction chatter, maybe it's on one of their platforms, in which case it's engagement?

No.

First, why in the world do you want Meta to get into a habit of ignoring the law of the land?

Second, fines for non-compliance to court orders are not one off events. The fine is set with the purpose of compelling action. If the action doesn't happen, higher fines will follow.

I don't want them to ignore laws; I'm just asking out of curiosity, and given Meta being who they are.

As a purely business move, can Meta increase brand goodwill by publicly resisting for awhile?

They answered you already.

In general, I don't think "The American company thinks it can flout a European court decision" is actually going to increase brand goodwill in the market they care about increasing brand goodwill in.

I feel there is a lack of "local" apps to emulate the old town sqaure, exactly because nobody wants to moderate and track users when a legal issue happens.

If we could make an exception in the law, then it might help create more small tech companies in small towns.

I could be daydreaming here, but: What if we make it legal to run unmoderated social media apps as long as (1) they are operated by a local company with their own software (instead of saas) (2) they function with the same kinds of limitations as a physical town notice board?

I don't understand. Isn't this already the case in America with Section 230? (The original post is about the Netherlands, so this is now tangenting.) It's just that no one actually acts as a platform.

I'll daydream with you except mine is different. The optimal social media in my view is one tied to your real identity. Moderation would only be applied under court order by the relevant jurisdiction for the view of the content within that jurisdiction. i.e.:

1) American posts content critical of Indian officials. That content is restricted by order of an Indian court and no such order is additionally given by an American court. It would be hidden from view within India but not from within America. The inverse would be true.

2) Indian posts content critical of Indian officials. That content is restricted by order of an Indian court. America (or any other nation) has no duty to protect that speech and thus no claim over it. That content is censored everywhere.

Additionally, everyone would have client-side filters which may be published. Emphasis on "published" because the publisher would be accountable for their words just as much as a newspaper within their jurisdiction. Though they wouldn't need to say much (i.e.: list of people I [dis]like). Unique identity and nationality are the only ones I can think of right now. More complex examples:

1) An American publishes a list of politicians who have made inflammatory public statements. They have evidence of this for each person on the list and make no additional assertions about their behavior. People not interested in such content could subscribe to the filter. (I guess people interested in chaos could view the inverse.) No court is willing to censor this list because their statements are protected speech.

2) An American publishes a list of men who have committed sexual crimes (such as in the original post). They assert it as fact not alleged crimes. They include someone who has not been proven in a court of law to have committed that crime. They can be sued for libel and possibly forced to remove the person from the list or reword the list description.

Anonymity between the user and the social media service wouldn't exist, but it might between users. The service could be mandated by the jurisdiction to unmask or otherwise ensure the accused does not fall within the jurisdiction.

> Isn't this already the case in America with Section 230?

IMO, Section 230 is too relaxed for large scale social media, but not relaxed enough for some other applications. It basically allowed big tech to mod the public square like modding a game, for it to be much larger, to move people around into biased groups, and to keep a record of all conversations, and train autocomplete bots on them..

I do not want more restrictions on existing apps. My point was that I wanted every local community to have their own online forum that's only accessible locally (through a RSA cert that rotates monthly, perhaps). They can even build minigames and cute events for themselves, and that would boost local morals and economy.

I think your thoughts on real online identities are interesting but I do not believe in either Censorship or total free speech. It's like the halting problem: I don't think there is a fixed list of rules that can always tell you the correct answer (To censor or not).

That's also why it's important for local communities to make their own decisions.

Now I know why you should never use your real email and/or phone number when signing up for a service.

True, but not enough:

> The court's ruling mandates Meta to disclose key identifying information, including the username, email address, telephone number, and the IP address used during registration and logins.

No longer doable, at least in Europe, you can't buy per-paid phone card without showing you government ID. And I believe you will not be able to create Twitter (that is, X) or Facebook account without being forced to provide something more than email. I've tried, and account was immediately lock until I provide more credentials (gov id or phone number).

All of this is to fight child porn, as always, although, unlike normal people, those who earn on child porn can make that additional effort to find some homeless person, drug addict, etc. and get sim card activated.

So we are where we are with lack of privacy for regular people. Maybe one day governments will realize that not only them have access to all of this information, foreign intelligence too, which make much easier to recruit/blackmail spies and in the end, shattered privacy costs much more than imaginary child porn fight.

Why do you think this is the case across all of Europe? You can definitely buy SIM cards in vending machines in Denmark still.

There seems to be a trend on HN to assume every country in Europe has the same laws. Confusingly, most of these comments come from people living in European countries.

Can you actually use them without activation? Last time I tried getting one I was required to activate it using NemID/MitID before it would actually work.

If they do work without activation could you please enlighten me on who's selling these, it not one of the major phone companies, nor is it Lebara. Lycamobile maybe?

> No longer doable, at least in Europe, you can't buy per-paid phone card without showing you government ID

I'm in Europe and I can go to any supermarket and buy a cartload (depending on stock) of pre-paid cards without having to show any ID to anyone. They also work in any EU country.

in which country?

I think at least Czechia, Croatia, Denmark, Lithuania & Latvia don't require registration.

Registration happens nowadays when activating the cards, not when buying them. But it depends on the country, and sometimes even the provider.

There are many networks in many European countries that do not require any form of activation to use their SIMs.

You need to be very naive technologically to believe it is trivial to have an “anonymous” Facebook account. This probably it is only possible if you use a burner phone bought cash without a SIM card and use exclusively public WiFi hotspots.

I think the key is “anonymous” from which perspective.

It's likely a safe assumption that you are anonymous from the other users, which was the original intended functionality.

You're talking about being anonymous from any and all people and agencies, and it could be argued that you probably haven't gone far enough in your description of how to be truly anonymous from even the most motivated person/agency.

This precedent definitely won't be abused. Or at least most people here seem to think that?

I wish the article would go into detail what exactly the "transgressive behaviour" is, because now it is unclear to me how far I can take criticism that is either directly or indirectly linked to an individual.

For example, what if I have an extremely poor experience with a seller? Does it matter if this seller is a business or some random individual getting rid of 2nd hand items? What if the user being criticized is also anonymous?

In any case, I shall be using throwaway accounts more frequently just to be safe.

From the top-voted comment, the link to the case. Point 1.1 ("De zaak in het kort"): https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/#!/details?id=ECLI:NL:RBDH...

> A Facebook user has made anonymous statements in Facebook groups about dating, accusing [the plaintiff], among other things, of having the intention to use and then dump women, of being a pathological liar, and of secretly recording women. Two images of [the claimant] have been placed with these statements. [the claimant] argues that the allegations are untrue and intimidating and that he suffers considerable (reputational) damage. [the claimant] wants Meta to remove what he considers to be unlawful messages. In addition, [the claimant] wants Meta to provide him with information about the identity of the anonymous Facebook user and about any other groups in which this user has made these statements.

I love this outcome. User disrespects another users privacy by posting anonymous, so they get their privacy invoked. All systems nominal.

I feel like some of the discussion about anonimity here is kind of misplaced. Just because illegal activies can be done under anonimity shouldn't mean anonimity should be banned aswell(in order to "prevent illegal activities"). That's one of the worst things that can happen(and it's somewhat happening already), and if I'm not mistaken this could also be interpreted as illegal and unconstitutional in countries/places where there is such thing as a "right to (>and not<) associate"(and it's various forms).

And I'm sorry for the upcoming little rant, but whoever thinks they're anonymous while using a Meta(or any Big Tech platform, really) product is an idiot, tech literate or not. Not even places like 4chan have true anonimity, depending on the place & jurisdiction we're talking about[remember the case of the guy making a call to violence(illegal) that got arrested]. The 'traditional' web is not anonymous at all:not only the underlying protocol(s) is/are inherently not anonymous by design, but you add insane surveillance and you can eventually crack anything. Even things like TOR/others are not truly anonymous, and the US regime proved that if they want to find you, they will, assuming they have jurisdiction.

Coming back: I don't quite get why people talk about free speech in this context. Not only S230 is a broken f&ckfest but we're also talking about a non-US place. What's more hilarious is that even if we would have talked about the US, defamation (w/ calls to violence & other speech not protected by 1A) is still illegal.

As I already discussed in my own thread, there has to be limits to people's anonymity online, because otherwise you are just allowing the bad actors to control the flow of information, and thereby also shift opinions simply by the sheer volume of information they post. This is the classical behaviour of conspiracy theorists. E.g. The "evidence" presented in Pizzagate. It is bassily a flood of non-evidence intended to overwhelm and drown meaningful facts and discussion.

Anonymous accounts should not be disallowed entirely, but they should be observed more actively for misbehaviour, including things such as spreading of miss- and disinformation and manipulative content. Sometimes individual posts does not really spread misinformation, but when you look at the bulk of the content it becomes clear that they are actually engaging in the active spreading of disinformation. This brings me to a very important point: anonymous accounts should be clearly marked as being anonymous. They should therefore not allow a profile picture.

Disinformation can also be in the form of suggestive or questioning material. E.g. Sharing a piece of misinformation and writing "interesting?" or "I really hope this is not real?". If such behaviour is consistent, then it is usually because that account is used to re-share disinformation, and if the account has nothing else of relevance. E.g. Does not have any authentic connections outside of this "conspiracy" network, then obviously it has no authentic purpose on social media.

So while anonymity is important to defend, we also need to identify the bad actors that abuse it. For this there are some behavioral patterns that are easy to identify, and this could, to some extent probably be automated already now.

Yeah, sure. But in my honest opinion even if you were to outlaw anonimity you would still have these problems. I would go as far as to say that things would be actually worse, because those bad actors would actually confuse and mis/disinform people even more.

In the last 15-20 years the internet became less and less anonymous, and yet those problems still exist and they're a central issue. While it's mostly a correlation and definitely not a causal factor (because internet adoption was non-existent back then compared to now, amongst others), it still begs the (rhetorical) question of why the pressure against anonimity.(See past and current abuses in this regard by governments/empires/etc). I'm semi-jokingly talking about a conspiracy here, because i've used both anonymous and 'very verified' platforms, and most of the time the misinformation happens on the latter. This is especially true since the facebook days, because the platform itself gives the vibe of credibility (alongside the user/entity posting it).

Trying to combat misinformation in this way is and will remain a cat&mouse game because there will always be actual bad actors which will try to impersonate/immitate the good ones. Put it like this: you have the same people walking on 2 streets: on the first one they hear Biden/Trump/Macron/etc. saying a fake thing, spreading misinformation; on the next: a random hobo saying the same thing. Which one will have the worse impact? While I'm not sure there have been done such studies/experiments, past "anecdata" tells me the influential person successfully fools a higher percentage of those people. While you could say "but once exposed, he's recognized as a fraud" and that's entirely true: we then return to my point of people trying to impersonate/fake credibility or grift the issue by saying unquantifiable or things that just cannot be entirely fact-checked (without projecting or speculation): those actors do more damage because they appear credible.

I fully agree though that there are certain aspects that need to have a 0 tolerance policy (CP and similar things) even when anonymous. And with regards to flagging anonymous users as such: would be interesting if any social network tries to make the experiment of having semi/fully anonymous modes: because honestly that would be just one of the few actual solutions to combat polariation on social media: by encouraging more free & honest discussion (even if there's 90% chance it becomes less civil).

> Anonymous Facebook User

Anonymous Facebook User is a contradiction in terms. Same for Anonymous Microsoft User, Anonymous Google User, Anonymous Apple User, Anonymous Amazon User.

The word "Forced" here is a bit misleading given Meta faces a penalty of just 1k euros per day, up to 100k, if it decides not to comply with the court's decision.

Do you believe that you can pay $100k to ignore any further punishment?

I believe $100k to Meta is like $3 to me. If there is additional punishment beyond "a maximum fine of $100k", the article does not mention it.

Just logically, do you believe that Meta can pay $100k to ignore a court order?

According to the article, $100k is the maximum penalty for ignoring this specific court order. Do you think the article is lying?

You need a few million and some vacations to ignore the law. $100k is just the initial fee and timeslot for potentially pulling out of said country (or do what Apple is doing with the UK)

The article states the maximum penalty is $100k. Show me where it says otherwise and I'll believe you.

> I believe $100k to Meta is like $3 to me. If there is additional punishment beyond "a maximum fine of $100k", the article does not mention it.

Meta doesn't like judgements against Meta that would open them up to more scrutiny from legal institutions.

This isn't about money.

Meta has absolutely nothing to win in not complying with the legal request in that _specific case_. Meta never claimed to be the champion of anonymity, quite the contrary...

> Meta never claimed to be the champion of anonymity

Except in this _specific case_ the plaintiff asked Meta to remove the anon content and Meta said No.

Then the Judge asked Meta to provide the details of the anonymous user and "Meta argued that Facebook users should be able to express criticism, even if it is severe and anonymous."

> Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with the court's decision.

Well that settles that, then.

It sounds like the court considers facebook a publisher. Which is true in the everyday sense, of course.

If they wanted to be anonymous they shouldn't be using Facebook or any Meta property.

The Hague? Don't they usually stick to serious war crimes?

One of the other courts in Den Hague... Or do you think the only court in D.C. is the Supreme Court?

The Hague is a city in the Netherlands ("Den Haag" in Dutch). Admittedly it's a bit of an unconventional name for a city, so I can understand that it might be interpreted as just a funny name for the International Criminal Court, which is seated in that city as well.

(It's also the seat of the government, so you'll also see sentences like "The Hague says..." in the media that actually refer to the government.)

For reference, this is known as a metonym. It's most common with places, but AFAIU the term also covers things like referring to execs as "the suits" or "upstairs" (if they are based up there)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

Only if you're a non western country :p.

So, your Facebook posts are neither anonymous or private.

If he went on the date with them you’d think he might already know their name. If not it probably wasn’t a good date.

That kinda lends credence to the notion that the post really was just libel. If it was true and more than just a one sentence diatribe then the plaintiff wouldn't have needed to bring Meta into this suit. I don't really see what they would possibly get out of this unless they really had no idea who this was that posted about them.

How would they sue person X for libel if they couldn't prove that the libelous post was created by person X?

Same way you sue anyone. Sue them if you have a reasonable basis for your claims and subpoena the defendant directly instead of trying to approach this like suing a John Doe. If they try to delete it this is no different than any other civil suit, go after the spoliation of evidence.

May be he believes that his date went well and so the person who posted those comments could not have been the same person that went on the date with him.

He might be trying to figure out who else is making those comments.

Sure, but he probably wants to be able to prove to a court that he's accusing the correct person?

"Forced" is a strong word given that the maximum penalty for non-compliance is 100k.

Any publicly traded company will sell you out for way less than that.

I don't get it. what are you suggesting? that meta would break the law on purpose just because its 100k fine?

I'm quite sure Meta would never break the law on purpose. I'm pretty sure that on the multiple fronts where they are breaking the law, it can easily be explained by some sort of misunderstanding. And the fact that they are benefiting a lot in those cases must be just a giant coincidence.

> “Meta argued that Facebook users should be able to express criticism, even if it is severe and anonymous.”

It’s interesting to see Meta taking the opposite stance in this argument when they’ve been so instrumental about suppressing criticism deemed misinformation by the CISA, DOJ, FBI, NIAID, CDC, etc…

>the Court of The Hague has ruled...

In case you were wondering where such a ruling happened.

In a court in the Dutch city of The Hague?

I support the idea of anonymous accounts, but they should not be available easily to everyone. Perhaps they should start out in a sandbox, and of course, monitored more actively for signs of abuse.

Other account types should really have a verified identity imo. It would drastically limit the amount of abuse.

Is there any reason to prefer anonymity to protected aliases? I'd say people should be able to post under their nicknames and only their lawyers/notaries/trustees should be able to disclose their identity in a some lawful procedure. It should not be a responsibility of a platform, but there must be someone who knows the true identity and can certify the relationship between it and the alias.

Then the alias itself has to be protected though, else someone could harm you by impersonating your alias.

> It would drastically limit the amount of

People happily spout abuse under their real name on Facebook. Seems very naive to think preventing anonymity would curb it as much as you think.

I happen have investigated vast amounts of spam accounts and content posted by people engaged in conspiracy theories, and in my experience the main propagators of this type of disinformation are fake accounts and people hiding behind anonymity. Facebook do not even care that they are blatantly breaking the community guidelines, and will typically always ignore reports of "fake accounts".

If you get rid of the main propagators, other users will have very little of this type of content to engage with in the first place, and it WILL limit the amount of inspiration material other users will be exposed to. We only have this problem because of the easy access to social media. It used to be dubious corners on internet forums and newsgroups no one was interested in, but now everyone is exposed to all this grotesque filth.

Many such accounts main purpose is, very conspicuously, to spread misinformation, and as such there is no real reason why they should be on Facebook in the first place.

I support anonymity when necessary, but as history has clearly shown, limitless anonymity will be abused by bad actors. If there are no limits in place, then bad actors will be able to drown us in a flood of disinformation – this will, as is somewhat currently the case, allow conspiracy theorists to control the flow of information more easily. Repeatedly disproven claims can be repeated in all eternity, and we will never move these people's understanding.

Fact checking will not catch everything, unfortunately. Currently the AI systems is not fast enough to tag things that has already been fact checked, lacks context, or is just manipulative. There are consistent ways to post content and behave that does not directly spread misinformation, but when looked at as a whole, is, actually very clearly intended to manipulate people with misinformation.

So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

A vast majority of really useful things are posted anonymously, too. I even remember a time when "don't post personal details" was part of the netiquette, with forums where you could pick any name, except your real name.

> we only have this problem because of the easy access to social media. It used to be dubious corners on internet forums and newsgroups no one was interested in

As in, everything is kinda fine, but some people are just evil for unknown reasons and spread the lie that everything is not fine, and infect others with it?

Here's what I think is a bit more realistic, and notice how stripping people who already have no privilege of the ability to communicate with each other safe from persecution sounds in that context.

> "People are angry, frightened, desperate. This is actually pre-Trump. 40 years of neoliberalism have left the victims of this assault angry, resentful, isolated, contemptuous of government. It's in Europe, it's in the United States, you see it everywhere.

> That's fertile territory for demagogues who can say "I can save you, follow me." It's also fertile territory for conspiracy theories. People want some understanding of what's happening; they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government. So they search around for something that'll explain it. Why is this happening to us? That's the kind of situation in which you do get conspiracy theories. [..] When you're living in an intellectual environment in which there are no answers, no coherent answers available, you're suffering, you don't see why, you turn to, you grasp on to something.

[..]

> It's happening all over, and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effects of neoliberalism. It had a goal, remember: the goal of neoliberalism was the transfer decisions, authority, away from the public to the hands of private power, and to atomize the population. You'll recall Margaret Thatcher, there is no society, just individuals tossed out into the market that somehow survive for themselves.

[..]

> The first acts, first acts, that both Thatcher and Reagan carried out was to demolish labour unions. First move, [in] both cases. Reagan went as far as authorizing scabs, you know, strike-breakers. Illegal in every country except, at times, South Africa. Did it right away. The labour unions had been smashed in both countries. Why? Well, it's one of the very few ways in which people can organize to protect themselves, so we've got to get rid of them. Eliminate public schools, but do it by underfunding, don't give enough funding so they don't work, then support private schools as an alternative. All throughout the society, eliminate the means for people to organize, act collectively, make decisions. Transferred into the hands of private power. And the results are predictable and perfectly plain.

-- Noam Chomsky

Erich Fromm pointed that out as early as the 1950s that when people have no real part in the decision-making, their thinking becomes "kinda empty and stupid". How could it not? A muscle must atrophy if you fixate it. If you use incompetence as an excuse to strip people of even more agency, you get even worse outcomes.

> people engaged in conspiracy theories ... are fake accounts and people hiding behind anonymity

>So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

I actively engage and create conspiracy theories on anonymous accounts for fun and to be silly online

So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

So no posts by whistleblowers or dissidents, no discussion between non-heterosexual or non-believing people in certain countries, and so on.

We really need a separate digital wilderness for single men to blow off steam.

Making the old online hitching posts (like facebook, google, video games, ect) family friendly, or else! then a lot of disaffected young men are going to be venting their lack of financial/dating success somewhere else.

Are we just going to dump these people out onto the streets and hope it all works out politically?

We have the space already we just have to move the and build infrastructure. The nonsense is all commercial based. There is no need to know anything about visitors to a site unless you want to make money.

Where are you pulling this from? The article does not discuss the nature of the messages in any way.

The available summary of the preliminary injunction doesn't mention the messages themselves, but it does state that the plaintiff is being accused of (sexually) transgressive behaviour by the posts they want to see removed.

It's possible that this is just some abusive asshole using the court to clear their name. It's equally possible that the accusations are all made up and that the person who posted them has a grudge against the plaintiff for rejecting them. We have no real indication either way, other than that the judge believed that there is a chance the plaintiff is in the right.

Either way, I think it's fair to assume something went wrong during a date. I'm not sure what the rest of the parent post is referring to.

There does not have to have been a date though. The story could have been made up by someone who just saw his profile on some dating site and did some creative writing based on that.

I don't see any connection to the topic at hand.

I'm sorry but this is a terrible take. This isn't people venting about bad dating success, this is people (who understand the importance of privacy, since they post anonymously) posting personally identifying information and pictures of people they feel have wronged them romantically, like it's some sort of product review and not another human being.

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