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.

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.

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.

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?

> 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.

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.

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?

Anonymity is not required for free speech to function.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)