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Comment by big-green-man | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they do, it just takes longer to enact what was coordinated.

There's no fundamental difference between a conversation in a meadow and one online.

Sometimes quantity has a quality all of its own. The difference is in the number of people who can be involved and the distances that can be conquered, but those differences completely change the possibilities of online speech.

But there's nothing fundamental about that distinction that warrants a separate set of societal rules. It's just scale: more people, farther distance, shorter time frames.

Then where is the problem? Let‘s get rid of the online tools and go back to the meadows.

I never said there was a problem with anything.

This is not true. We’ve all observed how differently people behave online. The anonymity aspect creates different social outcomes.

While there are arguments for preserving encryption, acting like online communication is the same as face to face is disingenuous.

We are talking specifically with regard to private communication between people, not speaker's corner online, that's a separate discussion, although I'd have similar views on that topic as well.

It's not the same. But it's not fundamentally different, it's just the technology makes it such that meeting up with someone to talk, no matter where they are, is trivial. It's like a pulley.

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