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Comment by cosiiine | Hacker News Reader

"Anonymity on social media has brought a lot of problems and I'm not sure what the benefits are"

Anonymity is a shield against public lynching for communities that are targeted by hate groups such as LGBTQ+ (one example, there are plenty).

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But that is happening today with anonymity, but then we have all the negative stuff too.

> But that is happening today with anonymity

It would happen a lot more often without anonymity.

No it wouldn't. Accounts would be identified right so you would know that some account is a China bot farm or Russian military or whatever. And then when Jane down the street starts talking about the need to kill "insert group here" well you know who they are and you can go down and have a talking to them or tell their employer, or whatever. If you say crazy stuff maybe there should be repercussions. Today there are none. It has a moderating effect when there are consequences.

> And then when Jane down the street starts talking about the need to kill "insert group here" well you know who they are and you can go down and have a talking to them or tell their employer, or whatever.

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.

That's just the messy fundamentals of democracy. I think it comes down to perception of what the threat is. I think groups like white nationalists, Antifa, pro-Hamas, pro-Russia, &c. are a much greater threat now than the potential downside of supposedly silencing people who "speak up".

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?

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