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Comment by INTPenis | Hacker News Reader

Those forefathers had no idea we'd be using a global digital medium.

In the 18th century your word was everything, and your identity was tied to your word. When you came into town, or a tavern, or wherever, you had to identify yourself. And if you lied about who you were your word was tarnished forever.

Now we're doing the same thing in a digital world. It's time to adapt to that.

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But you could write letters (and later telegrams) anonymously around the world back then.

Online and offline is not the same.

And it would be fraud. And it was a huge problem when people did that.

If you got caught you were done.

In a digital world we can combat such fraud in vastly different ways.

It was fraud to write a letter without signing it?

Now you're splitting hairs.

Obviously I mean any letter of substance where identification is a crucial factor. Not your anonymous love letters to your childhood sweetheart.

They are not splitting hairs.

The GP comment was about the right toward anonymously sending telegrams and letters, then the response was about fraud, which makes no sense given the context of anonymity; you can't be fraudulently anonymous.

Dear Penis,

I must write you this letter to show you my burning eternal love since your 4th grade for legitimate, anonymous and encrypetd communication.

In shivers.

Your uncle.

Signed,

Publius

Sorry liberty and privacy will never go out of fashion, whatever old towns used to do I don't care. I will always fight and send my $$ to companies that continue that fight against the government tracking every little thing I do in my day to day life. The people who need to know who I am do (the bank, my tax prep service, the state comptroller) already know and everyone else can go pound sand lol. These "think of the children" issues are easily solved by involved parents imposing boundaries.

Good for you, but we're talking about identifying users of large social media platforms to ensure children don't use them.

The whole "think of the children" excuse is so overused that it's useless at this point. Let parents think of their children and keep them out of trouble, the whole world doesn't have to give up their anonymity because someone chose to procreate. I keep my kids off social media via nanny software and I lock down their devices. It's not hard. They know the consequences if they go around the social media block. If you let your kid get on social media before 15 or so then it's on you to take responsibilty for that.

> the whole “think of the children” excuse is so overused that it’s useless at this point

Folks seeking to profit from your loss of freedom find it extremely useful.

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