Comment by sebow | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sebow | Hacker News Reader

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).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com