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Comment by jart | Hacker News Reader

No one ever explains why it's so important that everyone always conceal their identity on the web, as though it were some global red light district. The most successful tech platforms all succeeded by getting people to be trusting enough to say who they are, like Twitter, Facebook, etc. It's worth billions of dollars to create any online space that isn't anonymous.

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It's important to conceal your identity because the internet is forever. Your comments, opinions, beliefs, embarrassing moments... all recorded (essentially) for life. This happens through administration changes, different jobs, life changes, belief shifts, different friends and partners, etc. Without anonymity, anybody can comb through your entire history to make any point they want. To justify any accusation about you they want using 'evidence' from years past. To stalk or harass. To fire you for daring have an opinion about something. Depending on your government, to arrest you for what you've said in the past.

A huge issue with the modern web is that everything is seen as a profit motive. I don't care how many billions of dollars tracking everything we do and tying it to our person is worth. I don't want it.

That's a good thing since it means we have the opportunity to be remembered for eternity. Information is permanent. Also don't think that just because the system doesn't reveal who you are to other users today that your identity and life activities won't be decloaked later on should culture or policies ever change. If you're open, trusting, and use your real name today, you'll at least get the benefits and glory of eternal fame while you're alive.

Except the right to be forgotten and not doxxed.

And hostile regimes can surveil, harvest, and buy up data to murder their opponents. "It can't happen here" is always naive "logic".

OK.

Here's an easy explanation.

Someone you don't like somehow gets voted into power and begins trying to enact changes towards a social group you belong to.

Building anonymous systems is one way to avoid Bad Actor X from having Big List Y, leading to Atrocity Z.

Having a really successful social network isn't a goal post, it's just a result.

Great -- it made a zillion dollars, meanwhile we've built the biggest leakiest information trove on individuals, for individuals to be exploited, ever imagined.

Already happened with USG. You know who doesn't discriminate against my group? Big tech companies. If they can step up and take on more responsibility for identity verification in our society, then my social group will be less oppressed. The California Republic must lead the way.

They may not themselves, but they'll happily sell your info or give it up to avoid losing money to someone who would.

> You know who doesn't discriminate against my group? Big tech companies.

Yes, they just give megaphones to, and make bank on, the propagandists that are responsible for the current moral panic that's resulted in the US government discriminating against LGBT people.

These are the same companies that facilitated propaganda that led to hate and violence like this[1]. A deeper look with plentiful citations is here[2] from the Harvard Systemic Justice Project.

To give you an example that happened here in the US, a friend recently moved back to the city because his neighbors felt emboldened to constantly call him slurs on Facebook when they disagreed with him. He couldn't use local Facebook groups without bigots following him around and calling him slurs. They felt emboldened after this[3], knowing Facebook would do nothing about it. Discriminatory harassment over Facebook after their policy shift drove him from his own home. Facebook's policies allowed a community to successfully rid itself of a minority it didn't want to see or hear.

[1] https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/amnesty-report-finds-face...

[2] https://systemicjustice.org/article/facebook-and-genocide-ho...

[3] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/meta-new-hate-spee...

The first amendment protects free speech. The people must have their say.

We both know that the First Amendment binds the government and doesn't bind private entities.

What do you want tech to do? Use agents to deploy an apparatchik to every man woman and child? Wouldn't that leave people like you out of a job? What would you do all day? Tech platforms should take no part in the social disagreements of the people. They should be neutral unbiased providers of digital space.

Yes and yes, why shouldn't they?

I'll be just fine, I don't suck at the teat of tech companies like some do.

The real question is what will you do when they come for you? Note that writing code and posting on the internet will get you nowhere.

What's stopping you from doing that? They tried to come for my passport but missed. Our heroes in the civil service saw to that. Just got a new one in the mail today and I'm so happy.

You may be combining or missing a few factors.

Tech platforms are valued at billions of dollars because they found ways of convincing their users to give up anonymity. That has nothing to do with whether the anonymity was important.

> No one ever explains why it's so important that everyone always conceal their identity on the web.

I live next to idiots with gigabit and guns, that’s why.

Reddit stands out against this wave. I reckon that Reddit is worth at least a billion

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