They want to ID everyone, and have all user generated content attributed to a known, identified individual.
Given the pros/cons in context, I think I'm in favor of it for social media, at least. I'd actually argue you would want to go further and you should have your full address, employer, and more available online. LinkedIn is a cesspool of awful salespeople, but you know what it's not? A massive Russian/Chinese/Maga disinformation site. Maybe you should think twice before saying something online you wouldn't say while standing in front of your house or at work.
Anonymity on social media has brought a lot of problems and I'm not sure what the benefits are. Some point to a small percentage of folks who would be "outed" but, given that the alternative seems to be an emerging dystopia of bots, malicious actors, propaganda, and more, maybe actual transparency is better even taking into account potential harmful effects.
I'm open-minded on this and see pros/cons either way. Though I think if you find yourself worried about this stuff you can just delete your accounts and move on with your life. Trust me you aren't missing out on anything.
Without anonymity, you lose whistleblowers, effective criticism of the powerful from the weak, and “public interest” leaks like the Snowden revelations. You lose outlets where the abused can ask for help and advice in escaping bad situations. You lose any/all criticism of employers current and past; who wants to hire a complainer? You silence people who are afraid to give their opinion because of their employer or parent.
So no thanks.
Neither does yours? This is a nonsense claim.
> Anonymous (or at least pseudonymous) speech has been a feature of American discourse since before the Revolution.
You're just cherry-picking which ideas you like from the founders or early America. Slavery was also a feature of the United States. Whether we had something in the past or not isn't necessarily a good enough argument to keep doing it.
> Without anonymity, you lose whistleblowers,
We can figure out other ways to have whistleblowers without social media.
> effective criticism of the powerful from the weak, and “public interest” leaks like the Snowden revelations.
Snowden, who is living in Russia.
> You lose outlets where the abused can ask for help and advice in escaping bad situations.
The only way to do this is on social media, anonymously? If so, we have a much bigger problem. An emergency, even.
> You lose any/all criticism of employers current and past; who wants to hire a complainer?
I complain about past employers all the time. I don't think you lose this.
> You silence people who are afraid to give their opinion because of their employer or parent.
I don't think so. And both left and right political blocks have gotten plenty of people fired, even those who post anonymously.
Yes, and it required a Constitutional amendment to remove it. You’re welcome to try and push through an amendment to limit free speech rights, but it won’t pass!
> We can figure out other ways to have whistleblowers without social media.
I doubt it! The media is mostly dead or coopted, and the powerful won’t willingly set up a system where you can rat them out.
> Snowden, who is living in Russia.
Yes, to avoid retaliation. Your point?
> The only way to do this is on social media, anonymously? If so, we have a much bigger problem. An emergency, even.
Good, you’re getting it.
> I complain about past employers all the time. I don't think you lose this.
The popularity of anonymous outlets for this shows that most people don’t share your opinion. It would have a chilling effect.
> I don't think so. And both left and right political blocks have gotten plenty of people fired, even those who post anonymously.
Thanks for making my point for me. It’s even easier to target people when they are not anonymous. A number of left and right wing commentators are having to pay for private security because of threats. The ones who successfully remain anonymous don’t have to do this.
Yea but I can think of lots of other examples. You are missing the point.
> You’re welcome to try and push through an amendment to limit free speech rights, but it won’t pass!
I'm in favor of free speech so I wouldn't want to limit it.
> I doubt it! The media is mostly dead or coopted, and the powerful won’t willingly set up a system where you can rat them out.
Sounds like defeatism.
> Yes, to avoid retaliation. Your point?
He's not just there in Russia because of that. My point is he is either an actual traitor, or someone who was duped into doing what he did.
> Good, you’re getting it.
Haha I think you missed the point, but I can explain it for you. If you are relying on social media for these things, you have already screwed up. Regulating them one way or another is immaterial, because the dependency is a far greater problem.
> The popularity of anonymous outlets for this shows that most people don’t share your opinion. It would have a chilling effect.
I don't think it'll have a chilling effect. People publicly complain about their employers all the time using their real information. The popularity of something isn't an acceptable argument to me.
> Thanks for making my point for me. It’s even easier to target people when they are not anonymous. A number of left and right wing commentators are having to pay for private security because of threats. The ones who successfully remain anonymous don’t have to do this.
Maybe you shouldn't say things that result in you needing private security? It's no different than walking down the street yelling vulgar or offensive things. You might get punched. I see much more harm done by anonymous broadcasting here than I see benefits. Plus you are never truly anonymous on these platforms. Sure it's slightly more difficult for someone to identify you, but if you make enough people mad you will be identified and no amount of "anonymity" will save you. If the government itself wanted to identify you it can do so at the snap of a finger.
Maybe you shouldn’t have spoken up. Maybe you shouldn’t have walked down that street. Maybe you shouldn’t have worn that dress.
Done with this convo, I think this says enough.
But, let's say you are right and we should maintain anonymity on social media platforms.
I don't think that kid who was wearing a t-shirt or sign or whatever supporting ICE should have been punched or face any consequences whatsoever. He should be free to exercise is right to free speech and/or protest, face no repercussions in public or private life, and when he goes home he should be allowed to hop on TikTok or Facebook or whatever, and post the most vile, hate-filled stuff he can think of, anonymously.
That's the world we live in today, and the status quo you are advocating that we maintain. Don't you think that warrants further discussion? I do.
Anonymity is a shield against public lynching for communities that are targeted by hate groups such as LGBTQ+ (one example, there are plenty).
It would happen a lot more often without anonymity.
This works the other way too. You tell others online "hey maybe we should stop killing X people" or maybe expose that X people are being killed without the public knowing and the people in favor of killing X people can and will ruin your life.
We in fact saw more of this happening in the past few years than the opposite.
How valuable is speaking up anyway? It's all good to argue when you see the positive case or the one you agree with, but do you also give sympathy to folks who are "speaking up" about white replacement theory or "speaking up" about avoiding COVID-19 vaccines, or other such nonsense?
If you have to behave everywhere like you are in public, that is the very definition of having no privacy whatsoever.
then I'd never say the things i'm saying about Russia/Putin as i still have a family there or in case US kicks me out back there.
Yes it is.
> You're supporting a systematic chilling effect on free speech.
No I'm not.
~~~~~~
There's no point in free speech if the only free speech is from bots and propagandists. Social media platforms aren't free speech platforms either, you're subject to their terms and conditions.
You're absolving the social media companies of why they continue choosing to amplify bots and extremist content in one big "community", rather than working towards creating smaller communities that can have social trust and social regulation.
That is the core perverse incentive here that actually needs to be addressed, and by sidestepping that you're then going off into the weeds with some mistaken idea that we can approach the problem by purifying who can use such websites.
> and by sidestepping that you're then going off into the weeds with some mistaken idea that we can approach the problem by purifying who can use such websites.
On the other hand we have what we have today, propagandists, bots, hatred, &c.
It's like you're complaining about potential problems, but ignoring the current problems happening today are those potential problems.
I am also not "going off into the weeds" because I'm just responding to the OP.
Sure, great! Go right ahead! I honestly think sec 230 was a mistake. Not in that I want to see it reversed so the fascists currently in power can use the dynamic as a club to go after speech they don't like. But rather that I think the Internet would have developed healthier without it, and what it has enabled.
> On the other hand we have what we have today, propagandists, bots, hatred, &c.
You seem to be pigeonholing all of the problems into one bag. "Hatred" does not go away with real-name policies.
> It's like you're complaining about potential problems, but ignoring the current problems happening today are those potential problems.
No, I am pointing out that you're approaching this from the wrong angle. The core dynamic of the Internet has always been "don't trust what you read on the Internet". The lack of needing permission to communicate is precisely what has enabled so much innovation. Defining context is the responsibility of higher layers.
What changed from that core dynamic? The social media companies showed up, took unvetted and unfiltered streams of content, and presented them to the public as trustworthy finished products. "We'll figure out a better system than naive voting later". Well later never came, did it? At least Slashdot tried.
Facebook relies on real names, creating lists of bona fide friends, and can (could?) show you only posts from friends-of-friends, right? How does this differ from what you're proposing? If you're seeing Facebook posts from bots, you've either friended bots or Facebook is responsible for showing them to you, right?
I think I am just more aligned with, for example, the French president on his criticisms: https://archive.ph/JMrd4 (archive link to avoid Bloomberg paywall)
"“Having no clue about how their algorithm is made, how it’s tested, trained and where it will guide you — the democratic consequences of this bias could be huge,” Macron said Wednesday in New Delhi. “Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech — OK, we are in favor of free algorithms — totally transparent,” Macron said. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided to this so-called free speech, especially when it is guided from one hate speech to another.”
> Sure, great! Go right ahead! I honestly think sec 230 was a mistake.
I would but it's not up to me. I am not sure Section 230 was a mistake, at least in principle. But if you think Sec 230 was a mistake what would social media companies do in response? Verify you. Which the government has access to...
Yes I wholeheartedly agree with Macron's quote, and basically agree with your interpretation of it. Maybe you can see we have some common ground here and re-read what I wrote before? My critique isn't trying to reject that there is a problem. Rather I'd say my critique is that your proposed solution is specious and will enable worse things
> not exercising a constitutional right
Except individual users are also exercising a constitutional right. That's the problem - users' main modern ways of partaking in their constitutional rights are being modulated by corporations!
(Just to be clear though, I think the legal system's current framing of the owners/workers of Facebook having a "constitutional right" to control users' speech is utterly disingenuous)
> if you think Sec 230 was a mistake what would social media companies do in response? Verify you
Now that the situation has been set up, maybe, and maybe users would stand for this. But verification wouldn't actually resolve their problem when Joe Judgementproof posts fascist hate, they'd become jointly responsible for publishing it. The point is that the moral hazard created by sec 230 is precisely what has allowed the centralized social media industry to grow to the point it has.
That's exactly the opposite of what Section 230 has done.
Section 230 doesn't stop anyone from suing folks who defame or otherwise break the law. Rather, it specifies that those who say such things are the proper target, not the platforms that host such third-party speech.
And that's the important point. Section 230 covers third-party speech. Because litigation is expensive. As such, it mostly protects the little guy who doesn't have the resources to fight tens, hundreds or thousands of lawsuits because some folks don't like the restaurant/movie reviews or opinions about the quality of book plots or political speech or the Epstein Files or a myriad of other things that folks don't like and wish people would shut up about.
Nothing stops an aggrieved part from suing an individual for the things that individual says. But Section 230 says you can't sue the platform (say the website, Matrix or XMPP server you personally host) for the speech of a third-party who uses that platform.
In the absence of Section 230, huge, deep-pocketed companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, et. al can pay for legions of lawyers to fight such lawsuits.
Do you have such deep pockets? Not all Internet content exists on those huge, deep-pocketed platforms. Many useful and interesting sites hosted by individuals or small businesses exist, but would be put out of business in a week if Section 230 didn't exist.
Getting rid of Section 230 would only cement the huge platforms' dominance and make them more unaccountable and powerful. Is that your goal? Not saying it is, but it's important to think through the impact of Section 230 beyond the (false and misleading) pronouncements of those who want to control you, your speech and the means of disseminating that speech.
I agree that removing section 230 today would have an even more centralizing effect. We've already got huge tech companies that would happily shoulder such liability, and lots of small sites that would find themselves in an uncomfortable position.
My point was that if we never had section 230 to begin with, then we would have kept the strong incentive against setting up sites revolving around centralizing speech in the first place. There would have been more emphasis on protocols, and keeping communication under the control of the person speaking.
Where did you get that idea? Section 230 never provided any preference or privilege to large organizations over small ones.
In fact, it did exactly the opposite for reasons I discussed. You say that without Section 230:
...lots of small sites that would find themselves in an uncomfortable
position.
How long is your aunt going to keep the completely free and volunteer site up when she has to pay lawyers $5-10K every week? And if she doesn't delete it, continue to flood the site with garbage until it's unusable, turning a knitting discussion site into 4/8chan.
All while doing nothing to stop the big boys from creating a dystopian hellhole because they have legions of lawyers on staff.
In fact, without Section 230, $BigCorp and/or other bad actors wouldn't even need to buy out their competition or wage costly efforts to destroy them, just post oceans of objectionable/off topic stuff, sue if it's taken down or wait for it to go under because its awash in garbage they posted there to make it unusable.
If we never had, or got rid of Section 230, your preferred candidate or issue advocacy group could trivially be taken down through these tactics, stifling free expression. Think fake DMCA take downs, but without recourse except through $500/hour lawyers and the courts.
Not sure where you got the idea that Section 230 ever was some sort of "giveaway" to big companies to encourage centralization. It was not, and even today it primarily protects the little guy, just as it did 30 years ago.
Do you have your mind made up and no amount of actual evidence will change it?
If not, feel free to check out the following:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/R46751#_Toc155275791
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stratton_Oakmont,_Inc._v._Prod....
https://www.techdirt.com/2020/06/23/hello-youve-been-referre...
https://www.propublica.org/article/nsu-section-230
https://theconversation.com/law-that-built-the-internet-turn...
There's lots more of that to be found, but don't believe me. Check it out for yourself. Thanks to Section 230, among other things, you can.
> Without Section 230, your aunt would take down her knitting pattern discussion website/chat room/mailing list/whatever within half a day, with whoever it was posting something objectionable (or just off topic) and when your aunt deletes it, file a lawsuit claiming censorship.
I don't want "my aunt" to be running a knitting pattern discussion website! I want "my aunt" to only be publishing/hosting what she herself writes, while her discussion partners each publish/host what they themselves write. I then want all of these messages stitched together to form a cohesive presentation on each person's computer, by software that represents their interests.
There was the better part of the decade after the CDA passed that the tech community was still focused on protocols that worked this way. Section 230 immunity made sites that centralized user content feasible rather than legally radioactive. Centralized sites then took off because they were easier to develop, and investment-wise they caused Metcalfe's law power to accrue to the entity running the site rather than to an abstract protocol.
I do agree that in the current context, there is a strong path dependence here - neutering section 230 would not rewind the clock. And the present political push is from a movement that wants to censor speech even harder than corpos already currently do. I'm talking about what could have been.
Which protocols? I was designing and implementing networks throughout the 90s and aughts and I really don't know what you're talking about. Perhaps I wasn't in the right place at the right time?
Email mailing lists? IRC? Instant Messaging? NNTP? Those all would have been vulnerable to frivolous and malicious lawsuits without Section 230.
Honestly, I'm at a loss here. Please do enlighten me as to which protocols you're referring.
>I then want all of these messages stitched together to form a cohesive presentation on each person's computer, by software that represents their interests.
Sounds like you want personal ActivityPub platforms. I'm all for that. But nothing even approximating that existed in the 1990s. In fact, there's nothing like that now that a non-technical person can host for themselves.
Perhaps your coming up was a little earlier than mine? My perspective included things like gnutella and edonkey. There was a general feeling of building new application protocols to support new types of applications. Hard problems that needed to be figured out, for sure. But also background baseline values of people running software they choose on their own computers.
For protocols, there was also websites themselves. Someone with something to say would host their own. And some rough solutions for distributed discovery there like webrings.
Then web 2.0 came along and swept that all away in favor of the old centralized-mainframe dumb-terminal model (3270->browser, rs232->http, 80x24->html).
> there's nothing like that now that a non-technical person can host for themselves.
Yes. All of the high-cost productization/advertising work to make software palatable to normies doesn't get done, because investment money heads towards technical architectures that are more capable of exfiltrating value from end users. So any software still based around representing the interests of its users gets relegated to developers scratching their own itch.
Firstly, the concept of "publisher" is irrelevant to Section 230, then and now. IRC and IM (at least chat rooms) require servers to host the back and forth. As such, the issues were exactly the same as with email or usenet. Section 230 protects the hosts of any platform that allows third-party content. Full stop. This whole "publisher vs. platform" thing is a canard and a malicious attempt to muddy the waters. The law itself does not make such a distinction, nor does the case law surrounding it.
>Perhaps your coming up was a little earlier than mine? My perspective included things like gnutella and edonkey. There was a general feeling of building new application protocols to support new types of applications. Hard problems that needed to be figured out, for sure. But also background baseline values of people running software they choose on their own computers.
Sure, I was aware of gnutella and edonkey and other peer to peer file sharing tools. And yes, you're correct that there was much discussion of peer to peer applications for, well, almost everything. And even before that, there was KA9Q[0] which I ran on my PC/XT back in 1990. But none of that really went anywhere once NCSA-Mosaic[1] was released and the web (as you mention below) was born.
>For protocols, there was also websites themselves. Someone with something to say would host their own. And some rough solutions for distributed discovery there like webrings.
Right, and Section 230 protected (and still does!) the hosts of those sites too, while Mark Zuckerberg was in middle school.
>Yes. All of the high-cost productization/advertising work to make software palatable to normies doesn't get done, because investment money heads towards technical architectures that are more capable of exfiltrating value from end users. So any software still based around representing the interests of its users gets relegated to developers scratching their own itch.
On that I kind of disagree. It's not so much that the normies aren't interested. They certainly would be if the could click to download and then follow an install script to set it up, and it just works.
Going all the way back to Diaspora[2], to pixelfed, mastodon and it's offshoots, etc., I've set up a variety of open source platforms that tried to fulfill that dream of personal ownership/possession of one's content.
As a technical person, most of them were installable with significant complexities, but none were simple to install for the non-technical user.
And that is/was because the developers didn't make it that way, not any sort of malicious conspiracy. In fact, I recall some discussion around Diaspora, with the developers saying they preferred to focus on functionality rather than ease of installation.
The developers of Fediverse projects have continued in that vein.
tl;dr, I think we're mostly in agreement here, but you seem to be a little confused about how Section 230 works/worked. No matter. It's all good. I certainly appreciate the discussion and your perspective. Thanks!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KA9Q
Show us your passport and one piece of recent utility bill to prove your hard earned right to post shit on the Internet.
I don't use social media besides I guess LinkedIn, but I don't think that platform is material here.
Given that I don't really use social media, in what way is my free speech destroyed? One of the fundamentally incorrect assumptions people make, as you are doing now, is that they assume that the mechanism (social media in this case) is what defines whether or not you are able to exercise free speech, but you will fail to produce a coherent argument when it comes to people such as myself who don't use the platforms.
I also enjoy watching folks turn themselves into a pickle defending the actions that the EU and UK are taking to curb free speech. These actions range from age verification, in, say Australia, to supposed hate speech curbs in the UK (you mentioned western civilization and defending free speech in that context, not me) to a number of actions taken by the EU or EU member states that also curb free speech. If you post something pro-Nazi in Germany on Facebook you'll go to jail. That's curbing your right to free speech.
The topic of this thread here is of course Arizona, but the US actually is far more permissive in speech than any other western country. Maybe you and others should spend more time focusing on other western nations, generally speaking.
> Show us your passport and one piece of recent utility bill to prove your hard earned right to post shit on the Internet.
When HN implements the feature, sure. For now I use my real name. How about you?
Sure, but this verification rubbish comes from the government.
> leads exactly to thriving of bots and propagandists while suppressing dissenting voices of regular people.
This is the current state, today, with anonymity.
> Just look at any country where it is already fully or partially implemented.
Which ones?
whatever the current state, removing anonymity will remove dissenting voices of regular people.
> Which ones?
Russia for example. The sites where verification is implemented has become pro-government bot cesspools.
Here you mentioned LinkedIn - it is where pro-Russian propaganda runs free (especially if compare to for example HN where people freely respond to it), and it is exactly where my even pretty mild response to it got me almost banned, and so I don’t engage it there anymore.
I wonder how do you square your de-anonymity of speech position with anonymity of voting, or do also think that voting should not be anonymous?
I don't think so. It may moderate them, which given our political environment is likely to be a good thing.
> Here you mentioned LinkedIn - it is where pro-Russian propaganda runs free (especially if compare to for example HN where people freely respond to it), and it is exactly where my even pretty mild response to it got me almost banned, and so I don’t engage it there anymore.
Well I don't know what the specific example is. I've seen pro/anti all sorts of things on LinkedIn and when I do I unfollow or find another way to hide the content. But it's also not super engaging. Why is that? Because, well, firstly LinkedIn is a heaping pile of garbage, but also because money, careers, and more are at stake. If you find a pro/anti anything post and start saying really crazy stuff, yea someone might tell your employer about it. How LinkedIn moderates its discussions I think is a separate issue, and, frankly, is yet another demonstration that these platforms are simply not "free speech" and using them means you agree to the terms of service which allows them to moderate how they see fit.
When folks complain about these algorithms or the wrong group buying their favorite platform, there is a very easy and simple solution which is to just stop using them and delete your account. Then, nobody is policing your speech.
> I wonder how do you square your de-anonymity of speech position with anonymity of voting, or do also think that voting should not be anonymous?
I think voting should be anonymous, but you should have identification for voting issued by the state. It's an exercise of your constitutional right, and there are plenty of mechanical and morally good reasons for it. Yelling the most obscene shit imaginable on TikTok is not even in the same ballpark and is not exercising a Constitutional right.