It would be a privacy nightmare, but if everyone was forced to sign up under there real name with robust identity verification you'd get a much less toxic community.
And sure, there's good there. There's a lot of good. But the amount of bad is surprising to me. I guess part of it, is the Internet is global. And not everyone is like where you grew up, so everyone's different. There are some places that are rougher than others, maybe that's what people there are like, but I kind of don't think so.
I still don't get it, after all these years. And I don't get why we don't have a solution. Like, not even on an individual level. Like individuals don't even know how to deal with this kind of stuff. Like there's not some like (what's the word...?) "custom of a way of responding" that everyone just uses when they encounter that, to deal with the amplified amount of online that are hurtful.
Which is so strange. Like we still haven't figured out how to nullify or reduce that hurt that gets caused between people online. Like nobody seems to have figured it out. Does anyone have any good ways of dealing with it?
But I think a lot of it comes down to the freedom from consequences on the Internet. If people acted in real life like they do on Twitter or Facebook then there would be repercussions - whether social or legal or even physical. A lot of people hold views that are not considered socially acceptable - so they keep those views to themselves in public. But anonymity gives them the confidence to share and act upon.
In terms of how you can fix it, I don't think you really can without making huge sacrifices. It's hard to change people's views, and stripping anonymity from the Internet would have significant downsides (and be technically very difficult).
Although as is often the case, XKCD proposes an interesting suggestion:
I think it's also changing what's "socially acceptable" which in general I think is a good thing, by virtue of the internet making society more permeable to ideas.
I don't want to change people's views...only the way they express them. I think a lot of it is maybe growing pains...hopefully we will all grow out of bad behavior online over time.
Hahaha. I like that XKCD! Funny I use something similar when I'm suffering from a comment and don't know how to reply. It probably sounds ridiculous, but I will record myself reading the other person's comment, and then I will play that back, as if it were a conversation, and record myself speaking my response. Then transcribe that into the text of the internet! Haha
I just find there's such a huge difference between how I express myself naturally in voice and in text, and in situations where I'll get stuck in text, I'm free in voice. It just simplifies things a lot! :)
Meanwhile the average person on Reddit/Twitter/YouTube/whatever is someone you're very unlikely to ever deal with beyond a few passing comments online. So sadly, many people don't care much about being particularly civil towards them, since they're basically a non entity in the asshole's life. Regardless of whether that person has a real name or photo attached to their account.