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Comment by Avicebron | Hacker News Reader

Do you believe people should be able to traverse the internet anonymously?

Why should you be able to traverse the internet anonymously? You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations. Majority of the people traversing anonymously are doing so because they are routine troublemakers and do not want to bare consequences for their malicious actions. The ones fighting for this complete anonymity but not doing crime are naively just sweeping for bad actors.

> You cannot traverse real life society with the same expectations.

I actually can. For real. I can not get job or housing anonymously, but overwhelming majority of my real life interactions are anonymous.

Same goes for the internet though. Privacy controls would be at a government level. All that we need is a way to actually hold someone accountable for their actions on the internet. Websites dont need to see who the actual person is.

One of the things that I liked about the old, text-based internet was the anonymity it provided. I particularly liked being able to engage in discussions about things that interested me without being sexualized, since nobody needed to know I was a teenage girl. No creepy messages, no looks up and down, no having to figure out ways to turn someone twice my age down without worrying if they'd react dangerously, no having to leave because someone more integral to the group was a creep and nobody would accept it if I spoke up, no worrying about my small statue making me a target for physical intimidation, etc.

(Now I am old, so it's different.)

It was very freeing to be able to talk about my interests (e.g. space, web development, and video game modding) without being subjected to the bullshit that people brought to the table if they saw me.

You can't. Even if you haven't registered or logged in, companies like Facebook have identified you and track you everywhere you go.

Yes. At least to read.

Not sure what you mean. I am totally against surveillance capitalism and TooBigTech. I am in favour of end-to-end encryption and privacy-preserving tech.

I shouldn't have to show an ID to buy a newspaper or to load the website of a newspaper. On the other end of the spectrum, I should not be allowed to buy a gun without showing an ID (and all sorts of other constraints).

Somewhere in the middle, I understand that we don't want to expose 8 year old kids to pornography, but I don't think that one has to wait to be 18 or 21 to be allowed to access it. Same for social media. Where and how exactly we set the limit is a societal choice to make.

I also believe that "living in a democracy" doesn't mean that "everybody agrees with me, always". Many times I am in the minority. What matters is that people are informed. Telling them that if they disagree with you they are either bad parents or fascists isn't constructive, IMHO.

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