Reddit has the killer social network feature: anonymity | Hacker News Reader

Reddit has the killer social network feature: anonymity

garthontech.blogspot.ca

140 pointsRandyRanderson145 comments

This blog describes how reddit is the solution to facebook fatigue.

This is why the most interesting OC on the 'net seems to come from the swamps of 4chan and reddit (and SA and YTMD and the like).

There is very little to gain (other than targeted advertising and srs bznz) from giving up anonymity online, and if you make friends somehow you can always coordinate out-of-band.

I'm really sad that so many places want me to integrate my gmail or my real name or my birthday or whatever other bit of personal info I claim into their registers.

We're still recoiling from the NSA stuff: why the fuck should we accept companies that want to do the same things to us?

EDIT:

I'll go one step further. An author I'd read in some scifi story or something similar had suggested that the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy. The idea was that, having embraced moral relativism and given up any attempt at judging people on a cultural basis, nerds and soon the rest of people flocked to the last bastion of the judgemental: chiding others for doing something other than what they'd preached, or saying something different at different points in time.

Without anonymity, it can be very difficult to conduct useful intellectual discourse, especially if you aren't strong-willed enough to deal with trolls and jerks who say "But aha! Yesterday you claimed A, but today B; which is it?".

Or "your future prospective employer is going to google your name when you apply for a job"

In which case I'd suggest you've got a very strong motivation for not posting anything remotely controversial under a real name account.

At this point, even with my handles and nicks, that cat is out of the bag. I look at it this way: if they wouldn't hire me over something I said online, I don't want to work there anyways.

That assumes you'll always have the luxury of being able to pick and choose your job. For you perhaps that's the case, for others it won't always be the case.

I wouldn't want to claim that mindset for anyone other than myself--and again, I support anonymous pseudonyms for people.

You bring up good points.

And speaking of privacy in anonymous forums and NSA snooping, I've been thinking as of late:

We can reasonably conclude now that NSA is probably in the game of data mining in a manner much like Google or Facebook, graphing networks and all. Data mining is considerably easier to do on social networking sites like Facebook where there's a push from the beginning to tie accounts to real identities, unlike anonymous forums. Now, the thing is, Reddit/4chan is a breeding ground for contrarian thought, indeed it is where a lot of the interesting stuff is born in the eyes of three-lettered agencies -- half of the Lulzsec memebers were active Redditors, Edward Snowden was a Redditor, every other programmer with unorthodox political interests is on Reddit. So I am really very confident that NSA/FBI keeps a special tab on Reddit, but what I'm curious about is how they go about doing that. I don't think Reddit staff has made a deal with three-letter agencies to help them tie anonymous accounts to real identities... but I wouldn't be surprised if these three letter agencies are putting a concerted effort on gathering data from anonymous networks in hopes of linking all things said and done under the guise of anonymity back to some real world id. (I imagine are probably sitting on a good many zero days, and can presumably carry out operations in which they surreptitiously steal a lot of data that can help them to tie Reddit accounts to real id's, for example).

First, basic reddit isn't even encrypted. Many probably use it that way because their https is slow.

Now since there are time stamps on reddit posts, even https could be possibly annonimized using traffic analysis.

And if you use Tor, there are tools that might work against Tor.

Considering all this, the fact that reddit sells anonymity, and people use it for really personal info - which could easily be hacked even by someone with a network sniffer - is not honest.

I don't think the point of this post was anonymity against those with large resources, but rather day-to-day anonymity for social interaction.

The parent asked about NSA. i replied.

But the lack of default https IS relevant to day to day hacking: the case of a wifi sniffer.

I wouldn't trust Tor. It's surely deeply penetrated by the NSA, if in fact they didn't create it to begin with.

This keeps popping up again and again. The source code for Tor is public.

The idea that Tor is compromised by the NSA, if true, is not by releasing compromised source -- it's from the NSA running the tens or hundreds of thousands of Tor nodes required to compromise the system.

That's a red herring.

It's the network that is compromised. If you operate enough exit and relay nodes, you can be pretty damn well sure of where the traffic originated.

Anonymity hinges on the nodes, if an entity controls most of the nodes then the network is pretty much an effective honeypot.

Given that the FBI has been incredibly vocal about their efforts to take down Tor, and the fact that it is synonymous with illegal activity (drugs and child porn); operating enough nodes to investigate and bust criminals seems right up their alley.

There are user options to specify which entry and exit nodes to use [1]. I'm not saying there aren't ways to defeat Tor but I dislike this knee-jerk reaction that a lot of people have with it because of its origin.

[1] https://gitweb.torproject.org/torspec.git/blob/HEAD:/path-sp...

That doesn't prevent the 99% of Tor users accessing hidden services exposing the location of the service to whoever is operating the majority of honeypot nodes.

It also doesn't prevent owners of relay nodes from construing the origin of traffic. It may not be as accurate assuming the user routes their traffic through uncompromised entry/exit nodes, but given the resources certain agencies have they can cross reference ISP etc traffic logs to determine the identity of tor users.

Reddit doesn't really sell anonymity in the face of someone who is determined to find out who you are. People expect a basic level of anonymity, but they don't expect it to hold up before NSA level scrutiny.

I imagine these agencies as being the same as big companies - huge bureaucratic messes with, hmm... not the best employees.

Yeah I remember reading this article a while back:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-gloucestershire-1414498...

Basically, GCHQ have to operate on the same pay-schemes as other civil service departments. Which means roughly £20k starting salary. Now if they want to hire the best of the best, straight out of university, they're going to have to compete with the City firms who will offer £90k+ to fresh grads. Not to mention the fact that GCHQ is in Cheltenham, not exactly an exciting cultural hotspot for young 20-somethings.

Makes me slightly less worried about government spying when I realise the trouble they have to go through to keep anybody half-decent.

No idea whether it's the same in the US. Do anyone know if they have strict guidelines on what they can pay civil servants?

You are forgetting that most governments then take in contractors in big IT projects, which in many cases have outrageous budgets. Now you've got the A+ people employed.

Just look at the prime real world example: Edward Snowden was a contractor, and not employed by the government.

Cogs that are missing a few teeth will still turn most of the time, albeit inefficiently. No matter how much of a bureaucratic mess a business or government department is, shit always seems to get done ... eventually.

I've given some thought to anonymity on reddit and I've come to the conclusion it is all but unobtainable. Every now and then you see it happen, posting similarities or offhand comments are tied between accounts exposing what happened to so-in-so in the myriad of subreddit dramas. I change my account every so often, mostly because I tend to come across as a dick. Still I gain karma fairly steadily yet I prefer being blunt on reddit and that's not the person I wan't friends and family interacting with online, so I change it from time to time to keep my visibility low. So while I may not be 'strong' anonymous it still serves a purpose for me and allows me to engage in discussion whereas on other sites such as G+ or FB I completely abstain from conversation for fear of offending someone. At the end of the day that is useful even if I know full well those with the inclination could easily discern who I am.

I think you should try being less of a dick in general. It happens to me too, as I get easily offended, however what I noticed is that if you want to educate people, it is far better to do it with well reasoned and nicely phrased arguments. Few people get away with being dicks, like Linus or Jobs, but that only happens for people that earned respect and credibility.

Incidentally this is why I prefer HN for the moment. The comments on Reddit tend to get too negative and full of insults. Anonymity is a doubly edged sword, sometimes bringing out the worst in people.

I agree that it is unobtainable.

I mode one of the top 50 /r/ on reddit, as well as some much much smaller ones. I have multiple accounts - but not in a gaming-the-system sense; I had a primary account and a novelty account... I wound up posting "primary" comments under my novelty account by mistake after leaving myself logged in with that account some time ago... now my novelty is my primary and my primary is dormant.

In the smaller /r/ I mod - I post instructional vids, and google linked them back to my real name. Even though I have an anonymized account for youtube, I also have a real-name account.

Once when posting, for reasons which are obfuscated by google, my uploads went to my real-name account which I posted to reddit...

So... ultimately, its easy to tie all these together as strong-selectors back to me :(

I have an idea on how to deal with tracking which may completely eliminate the ability to track a browser, but the issue is that even with 100% anonymity of an account on a site like reddit, ultimately you will post something that connects that account to your real-ID.

> An author I'd read in some scifi story or something similar had suggested that the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy.

Sounds like Neal Stephenson's "The Diamond Age": http://steveedney.wordpress.com/2006/11/08/hypocrisy-relativ...

Aha, I believe that was the one!

>> the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy.

You must live on a different planet than me. :-)

Let me take an example I saw this week:

I have some Eastern Europeans with different opinions in my Facebook. One upset discussion right now is about why Russia gets so much criticism for homophobia these days.

They assume it is an old Cold War prejudice, since the whole Middle East and much of Africa are something like a factor of ten worse.. And they get almost no media cover. Including the immigrants (at least in Sweden), which have the same opinions.

It might be some unspoken racism from the left wing (not expect better of the primitives), but it is probably just hypocrisy -- harsh criticism of an external example as a way to get everyone on the same page.

I'm all for tolerance and acceptance of the gay community, but I seem to be quite unusual in being equally shocked by hypocrisy and double standards as by homophobia.

Even if you use double thinking in a good cause to spread tolerance in a group, it clouds your analytic capability in the group. That is a bad thing.

This is not hypocrisy and has nothing to do with the cold war. Quite to the contrary: we hold Russians to a higher standard than Saudi Arabia. Like we hold the USA to a higher standard than either country in regards to privacy.

If totally different standards for different people/countries regarding intolerance is neither hypocrisy nor racism -- what is it?

My theory above is that totally different standards for different parts of the world really is political propaganda to the citizens of the country where the media writes.

Do you have another explanation?

(To take another example -- even with a Palestinian description of Israel, the Sudan atrocities were a thousand times worse. My local leftwing media (more or less all local media) complained many times more about Israel, anyway. And never about that Israel was criticized every year in UN but Sudan very little. How many thousands of times is reasonable for different standards?)

Edit: Note when I wrote that immigrants, even citizens now, in Sweden is criticized much less.. Not even that is neither racism nor double standards?!

Its got a mythos as the last frontier of Europe, of hard country and hard men, enduring under dogs ... down trodden but never giving up.

Emerging from each massive injustice with a new culture rich from strife, from the cossacks to beauty hidden within the works of the communist era. And the sadness of what totalitarian rule did to a people trying to build an equal and fair society, the people who died for others, and eventually all in vein.

It resonates as a country to admire, a people to admire, the mystique of its history and taste of its asian influence. And despite that its a foreign place. London to St Petersburg is closer than LA to New York, at times Russia has been part of Europe.

The double standard for me and many of friends (whom I talk history with it) is one of love, sorrow, and admiration. When the illusion of the Russian mythos breaks and the reality of human condition seeps through you get held to that standard. Not one of a distant problem, a stranger in a strange land, one of a friend.

Are you a Turing Test program that misunderstood and went off on a tangent? (That would explain a lot on HN, recently.) Or are you just trying to change the subject?

No Im just jet lagged :/ and gave you another reason for the double standard towards Russia.

On consideration, sorry for being pissy (English slang, iirc). Your comment was relevant to part about what I wrote and very well written.

I posted a theory about something I find strange -- and waited with bated breath for either support or to be short down with a good reference that taught me a lot about the world. Sigh, no luck on that part. Maybe no one knows.

So you claim its "political propaganda to the citizens of the country where the media writes" and ask "Do you have another explanation?" and he responds that its "the mystique of its history and taste of its asian influence".

Not seeing a problem here?

I gave another example. It is easy to give more examples of the hypocrisy I talked about -- without Russia.

Edit: Not that it is relevant, but I've liked most every Russian I've spoken to more than five minutes. And Putin scares me when he limits press freedom and organized crime gets integrated with the police.

This might be an issue of thinking on the margin - that given their starting points, it's theoretically easier to get Israel or Russia to meet (leftist) American standards than to get Sudan to meet them.

I am far from an expert in either case, but that doesn't seem logical.

The Russian government is killing press freedom and stealing the oil income. They need external enemies and blame the west. Any criticism from the Western world seems to be dismissed as anti-Russian hate mongering.

Re Israel, good luck influencing them: (1) Consider the US reaction on 9/11. Israel had something like that continuously since long before 1948. (2) I believe most of the Jewish population there aren't descended from European refugees but people kicked out from countries in the Middle East, for having the wrong religion. They think things like "They stole three times the size of Israel from us personally when they forced us out, we're getting back the parts of the West Bank some of us was kicked out from".

I am Russian and live in Russia. I don't usually write comments, but, since I've never seen any reasonable explanation of the Russian homophobia issue on any Western website, I'm going to bite the bullet:

First of all, as banal as it may sound, Russian State Duma doesn't represent the interests and wishes of the general public in any meaningful way (at least, if compared to any Western European country or US). The votes are constantly rigged, and even though the Putin is supported by the large majority of population (sad truth), Russian State Duma by the huge part is literally a bunch of degenerates, clowns and Putin's yes-men at best. So, they can pass any insane law that they wish to pass.

Secondly, the regime's popularity is monotonically decreasing, albeit slowly. And the reason is that the relative economic prosperity is based only on high oil and natural gas prices (which can still help you during the next couple of decades). The industrial complex is in decline and nothing is able to revive it (because of the fact that any owner of successful company can be stripped of his ownership in any time -- and this is de facto at the core of the regime and cannot be changed).

When you begin to understand that your popularity trend wont ever change, you start looking for means for tightening control and providing alternative channels to drain the public discontent. For their main ideology the ruling regime has adopted the "back into the future" style monarchism and religion (which is miserable at best, but is the only choice when the largest opposing part of the public still praises higher standards of living in atheistic USSR).

Some jerk has made an arbitrary decision that it is a good idea to also go after gays. The passing of the anti-gay-propaganda law and the half-assed media campaign followed.

How does majority of the Russian people really relate to gays: 1) First and foremost, no one even thinks about the issue. When the large part of a population lives below poverty line, when there are significant issues with police misconduct and corruption, etc. etc., you have larger issues to think of. 2) Literally the overwhelming majority of the people I ever new are highly tolerant to gays. I'm speaking this as a person that has contacts within diverse social groups (university dropout, served as a conscript in a military for two years, born in another region, but now a long time Moscow resident). 3) This does not preclude that the Russian people as a whole are probably less fond of gays than Western Europeans, but not even near the scale of the current media hype. This is sad. But there are some orders of magnitude sadder things in Russia for everyone to deal with every day.

Now, when US and UK have some relationship issues with Russia, they have decided that this is a good time to raise the issue. Since the Russia is de facto tabula rasa for West and vice versa, the bullshit card has worked really fine.

I am personally for allowing gay marriage etc. etc., but we shouldn't even be talking about this, because this "Russian homophobia" is pure propaganda stuff, on both sides. There are huge issues in the West and Russia that are much more important.

Slightly offtopic: great lecture about ideology by Slavoj Žižek https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Kb4JZGpA0

Thanks for an interesting read about a subject, when the main discussion was about the media garbage regarding the subject!

Some points:

1. I was lucky I saw that, stuff disappears quickly from the front page on HN. Next time the subject comes up, please post it again (or a link). Others would appreciate reading it too, imho.

2. If you go back just a few decades, intolerance to homosexuals were also official policy in the west. This moral panic about Russia is a bit ridiculous (my original point). Russian attitudes will change when (/if :-( ) the economy gets better and social development gets going.

3. As probably most West European computer people, I know enough Russians/East Europeans to understand that "Russians are X" is as stupid as generalizing about West Europeans.

4. I doubt there is a conspiracy to make Russia look bad. The coverage of human rights violations in Caucasus would then be much better. (You bought your local media's hype. :-) )

(I added the video to my "Watch Later", I would rather watch that than write more tests for old code... Just 20 pages of tests or so left. :-( :-) )

Hi! I'd like to thank you too! It was kind of disappointing to become aware that my reply wasn't probably read by anybody (since there were no new posts on the thread at all). And equally refreshing to read your reply! :)

Thanks for a tip about posting a link on HN news, it didn’t cross my mind since I usually think of it as if it is a feed with important and interesting stories for the general public. It's hard for me to judge if my reply was interesting to anyone apart of you and a couple of other posters on the thread.

As about conspiracy theories, maybe I didn't choose the right words. I don't think about the Russian homosexual issue as a part of some grand plan, rather as a temporary and somewhat arbitrary distraction from more important issues. At least today, when Russia is more or less compliant with the West on the major issues. Even when the most of the people like to think otherwise, Russia is nowhere near waging an independent foreign policy (we can probably argue on that for a long time, but I don't think it's worth it). Also, such distractions and theme changes as "Snowden revelations" >> "Problems of Russian homosexuals" don't even need to be conscious.

You've made a great point about Caucasus and the overall horrendous human rights record of Russia. And it is a really interesting point that the media has raised some relatively mild issue instead of, just from the top of my head, jailing of union workers that were fighting for better wages and improvement of abysmal safety controls on the factories of Western automotive conglomerates that are based in Russia. Or even something just as horrible and at the same time not strictly related to the interests of Western business. An equally interesting question is why we hear lamentations about the homosexual propaganda law now and not couple of years before, when the policy was implemented. These are important issues that you've raised, but the answers to them don't lie on the on the surface. IMHO, they also don't lie in the field of conspiracy theories, rather in the field of human psychology and the somewhat recent history of US-USSR relations. I'd really like to expand on this, but now I need to write some code, too. :)

Good luck!

It would be interesting to hear your opinion about Žižek's points! (Don't consider this too binding: if you won't find time to watch the talk, or would be reluctant to express your thoughts about it, I would understand! :))

P.S. If memory serves me well, the largest media hype about atrocities in Chechnya was just before the Kosovo War, when Yeltsin hasn't yet decided not to provide direct military support to Milošević regime. At least, that was my impression.

Hi again,

I have no clue how posting stories works. (I have a suspicion that a of extra accounts are often(?) used to vote most stories up, so they get to the front page.) Most of the times when I get (or lose!) karma is when I write something in a very new story.

Interesting point about laws re homosexuality, I didn't know they were that old. Hmm, maybe there is some reason why it is so visible right now. Maybe not only the Chinese state can set the media's agenda...?

Good luck yourself! Still writing tests and I'll go drink at a wedding this weekend. :-( :-)

I'm aiming for beginning of next week.

I'd like to correct myself: I've said that the policy was implemented couple of years before, this is not correct. The first country-wide law ‘against propaganda of homosexuality to minors’ was really passed on 11-th of June, 2013. But we had multiple similar laws that were passed on regional levels long before, starting in 2006 when the law was passed in Ryazan Oblast, and culminating in 2011 when it was passed in many other regions and Saint Petersburg among them. And the media was talking about the need for such laws probably for five or six years.

Here is a good summary of the situation: http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=...

I should have checked the facts earlier. The media was babbling about the need of the law for so long, that it seems that I've lost touch. The ruling party has introduced the bill in March of 2012. They government is doing so many blatantly absurd things, that it's hard to track of all of them. The current issues that I'm interested in are the dissolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences; extending of blatant religious propaganda to small children in schools; possible two-fold or three-fold increase of the utility payments; introduction of the ‘non-state’ center for fighting ‘atheist extremism’ by the church which is so integrated into the ruling regime, impudent and crooky that it alienates not-insignificant part of it's own congregation; the legislation for prohibiting the Tor network and the growing list of banned websites; dismantling of free education. And the disturbing fact that anything that doesn't go along with government's plans is becoming ‘extremism’. Even small local protests against non-political issues are being videotaped by the FSB, in the regions some people literally go to jail for protesting against minor stuff, etc., etc.

Have a good time! Since I haven't been invited to any wedding party, I have no choice but to resort to drinking alone. Ha ha, just kidding. In the coming days I would probably do some work. )))

Oh my Cthulhu, thanks for a depression :-( :-)

I had forgotten about the Tor network and most of the other craziness.

So, the last dictators kept the church down and the coming one one hugs it closely? Re religion...

As a hard line atheist, I have to admit the Orthodox churches I saw in a short St Petersburg visit long ago impressed me.

You know Scandinavian "taste"? One extra line in a design is a bit... brave. Two lines is, well, avantgarde. Three -- beyond tacky. The churches there made my eyes bleed from the sheer amount of details, while they blew me away with sheer beauty. Cool feeling.

I exaggerated the drinking. I was outsourced to Romania a couple of years back and am still here. People here are nice but just don't drink for fun. (In the small villages they are said to drink like sponges, I'll avoid moving there. :-) )

Israel and Russia are considered 1st world countries. That implies a level of social progressivism and standards of living that 3rd world countries don't have. So when a country fails to live up to those standards they get criticism.

You might see that as propaganda, I see that as acknowledgement of reality. Everybody expects Israel to behave like the democracy they claim to be, nobody expects the Sudan - with its self-appointed president of nearly 25 years - to behave like a democracy. In other words, Sudan's problems are a symptom of Sudan's level of social progress, while Israel and Russia's problems are seen as an aberration in their level of social progress. You would never see the Olympics hosted in Sudan.

As for immigrants being criticized for holding 3rd world views after moving to a 1st world country, they don't have the kind of power that a government does so the harm they can do by acting on their beliefs is significantly less than what the state could do.

>> Israel and Russia are considered 1st world countries. [There are higher standards for them]

I acknowledged that when I wrote "How many thousands of times is reasonable for different standards?"

So, how many factors of ten higher standards should be held for Israel than for, say, the countries that spend a large part of their GNP on artillery for use on civilians?

3? 4?

(I've asked that multiple times and never gotten an answer when people repeat your argument. Including in what you comment on.)

>> Sudan's problems are a symptom of Sudan's level of social progress

I also brought up that at least Swedish media avoid mentioning that the dictators taking control of the UNHRC and not complaining about each others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Human_Rights_Cou...

That is not explained by you thinking it is OK to have a factor thousands in different standards.

>>As for immigrants being criticized for holding 3rd world views after moving to a 1st world country, they don't have the kind of power that a government does

You really see no problem having factors of ten different standards for different groups of citizens inside a country?

Besides, I think you simplify (on the border of excusing) unpleasant regimes that oppress, mass murder and steal -- when you just describe the reason as "different levels of social progress". Countries today are poor mainly because they are controlled by corrupt juntas (or in a conflict, usually created by juntas). Every country on the planet with population over a few millions can and should have a competent government.

"How many thousands of times is reasonable for different standards?"

That is hyperbole. You've quantified something that is not really quantifiable. As long as that is your argument you'll got no satisfactory answer. All you are doing is begging the question.

>> [E.g. Sudan's atrocities is at least a factor thousand worse than anything from Israel] is hyperbole.

And that is not an argument. I motivated my position, you're calling names.

I wrote specifically that Sudan is at least a thousand times worse than Israel -- even with a Palestinian description (where e.g. killing people attacking civilians is not self defence). Look at number of dead, rapes, deportations etc etc -- what is NOT a thousand times worse?

If we can't quantify e.g. human rights violations we should close down international law.

Etc.

Your complaint is that the media criticism is not proportional to the level of harm. The hyperbole is in your measurement of the criticism.

Let me note that you are arguing something completely different than you started with.

>> Your complaint is that the media criticism is not proportional to the level of harm. The hyperbole is in your measurement of the criticism

Well, no.

One is at least a thousand times larger than the other in effect.

The criticism (in my local Swedish and from much of the European media) is much larger. See e.g. the UNHRC discussion above. That is all I need for my thesis to not be "hyperbole".

Notes: 1. Since the Syrian situation started it has been very quiet re Israel, the different standards would probably be too obvious. 2. Serious media, e.g. BBC/NY Times, was (well, by definition) more serious than bad media.

Let me note that you are arguing something completely different than you started with.

Yes, I started off explaining why there is relatively unbalanced coverage.

You made it clear that your argument is based on hard numbers that you've basically made up. So now I am pointing out that making up hard numbers and not accepting arguments that don't precisely fit your arbitrary numbers is just a form of rhetoric. Measuring the effect of coverage is even more arbitrary. "Effect" is something so vague that there aren't even any units to measure it.

You will not receive any satisfactory answers because you have designed the question to be unanswerable so as to advocate a position rather than seek an explanation.

>>hard numbers that you've basically made up.

Here are quick overviews of the facts I claimed in the GP:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_in_Sudan

http://www.oxfam.org/en/emergencies/sudan-southsudan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_con...

But you knew that.

So it is easy to claim different standards as a factor of thousands. But you knew that, too.

As an addendum, seeing this a few days later, I'll add a note also about the other side of my claim, to be complete; the Swedish/European media I'm familiar with.

For any given year before the Syrian crisis, you could find kilometers of criticism of Israel. On the other hand, the first thing I saw over decades in Swedish about the Tunisian dictator was when he fled!

The criticism of Syria, easily one of the planet's worst police states even before the present atrocities, was a bit more than Tunisia -- but far from even one kilometer/year.

(Note that Syria was a large part of the Israeli conflict, so it should be discussed quite a lot.)

(Not hard data, but hardly arbitrarily. I could continue with mentioning that Pallywood and torture among Palestinian groups where just censored in Swedish. And so on, and on.)

But frankly, I think you knew this too.

In most cases inter-country opinions are just a way to manifest bigotry in a polite and acceptable way.

The Europeans holding the American government to a different standard on privacy are doing so because they're reflexively anti-American.

The people holding the Russian government to a different standard on gay rights are doing so because Russia's an old Cold War enemy they intrinsically dislike.

The people who hold the Israeli government to a different standard than any other nation on earth do so because they hate Jews.

No one likes to admit they're a nationalist bigot, so this kind of frank talk is never popular, but we pretty much all are.

What a fantastic way to devalue other people's reasonable opinions. They hate what Israel is doing in Palestine territories because they hate the Jews. Brilliant!

After seeing the blatant double-standard and after the hostile Palestine grouse-fest I tend to get from people the second they learn I'm Jewish (not Israeli, not anything about my personal politics), yeah - I'm going to call it like I see it.

Sorry, but the vast majority of you are bigoted hypocrites. If it wasn't Israel it'd be how we control the media or some other damn fool thing.

I don't know where you live, but in the USA it has long been normal for pro-Israel jews to claim a sort of ownership of judaism. Ariel Sharon once said, "Israel is not only an Israeli project. Israel is a Jewish, worldwide project."

One of the most destructive stereotypes is the self-hating jew - that any jew who criticizes israel is incapable of making a principled argument, instead he's just internalized anti-semitism. So it isn't necessarily anti-semitism for people who have picked up on that cultural norm to assume that any random jew is in favor of israeli policies.

The younger generations of American jews don't feel that sort of affinity with Israel, and the Israeli government's policies have played a big part in that disconnect. It is such a big deal that the Netanyahu government ran some tv ads a couple of years ago that basically amounted to telling israelis not to marry american jews because they weren't jewish enough. That went over like a lead balloon, even the ADL criticized the ads. All in all, I think that sort of response is important progress in decoupling judaism from zionism.

And, fwiw, I'm a born athiest who married into a mixed family of secular muslims, secular jews and cultural catholics - my grand-niece is a mix of all three, although she's too young to know it.

It's amazing how often I - as a non-Jew - hear rants about the Palestinian territories eventually drift off into anti-semitic stereotypes with the assumption I'll be sympathetic to the opinion.

Just like yes, most Europeans I know (which is kinda a lot given that I'm British and just happen to live in the US nowadays) who are ballistic about NSA spying give their own countries, often much farther along as surveillance states, a free pass because basically it's just another reason to attack the US (as is European left's recent flirtations with Islam, an ideology which in many ways you'd think is diametrically opposed to much of what the European left professes to believe - but anti-Americanism trumps all).

Homophobia in the Middle East and Africa has gotten ten times the media coverage of homophobia in Russia, so I'd say the premise is wrong. Russia is getting attention right now because they just passed a hateful law.

I'd never seen any coverage at all of homophobia in Russia until a couple of months ago, when that new law seemed to come out of the blue - so I'd ask the question: why hadn't we heard more about homophobia in Russia?

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uganda+homosexual

There has been active Neonazi groups in Russia since the 90s, with gay bashing and attacks on non-whites. But it is a point, my example might be wrong since media coverage do differ.

Ah, the old "other people are doing it too!" excuse. Russia has actively launched several anti gay initiatives recently, and subsequently repressed the protests from that nation's gay community. Therefore the criticism in the west is more about supporting an ongoing struggle than suddenly one day realizing that Russia's gay laws are backwards. I suspect the same criticism would be leveled against, say, Iran if that nation were in the middle of a crackdown on the Iranian gay rights movement.

>...since the whole Middle East and much of Africa are something like a factor of ten worse.. And they get almost no media cover.

I am convinced that there is a secret agenda for letting the majority of Africa just devolve and kill themselves. It seems that should the western world largely ignore the issues of Africa, ~50 years from now corps will be able to move into that region using the same tactics we see today in the ME, and rape it of its resources.

The difference being that China has started this rape already - and has caught the western nations (UKUSA) largely unprepared to follow suit.

Ever play Trade Wars on BBSs in the 80s? That's pretty much what the world boils down to.

there are outcries when 3rd world countries do homophobic things, too.

i think russia's case is because 1) russia recently accelerated its homophobia by passing laws or intending to pass laws, 2) the olympic games are going to be held in russia, which brings up the question of gay athletes, 3) russia is in the news lately for a lot of things, such as for supporting the Syrian dictator, and 4) gay rights in general has received a lot more attention recently. in particular the U.S. essentially just legalized gay marriage

I completely agree that you really don't gain anything (as a user) by using a real identity. I'm not so sure the organization gains much on the other side either...

Footnote: An author I'd read in some scifi story or something similar had suggested that the mark of our era was the relentless pursuit and shaming of hypocrisy.

That was "The Diamond Age" by Neal Stephenson. Lots of other interesting sociocultural post-scarcity speculation there, too.

> Without anonymity, it can be very difficult to conduct useful intellectual discourse, especially if you aren't strong-willed enough to deal with trolls and jerks who say "But aha! Yesterday you claimed A, but today B; which is it?".

I believe being held to account for one's past actions and present views is called "personal responsibility", and yes, that has certainly fallen out of fashion. If you think being forced to be consistent from moment to moment and day to day hinders useful intellectual discourse, maybe we're using different definitions of "useful".

Being responsible has nothing to do with not changing your mind. What in the world are you talking about?

> Being responsible has nothing to do with not changing your mind.

Being responsible has everything to do with changing or not changing your mind. An anonymous troll can lie and say, "I never said that." A named person cannot -- he has to accept personal responsibility for his past statements and actions.

I think you're confusing different scenarios. Nobody was talking about lying. A responsible person will respond "I said that, but I changed my mind because X", and everyone should be happy. But in the problem angersock mentions, people complain, accusing hypocrisy as if everything you have ever said in your life was uttered mere moments ago.

Reddit to me serves a completely different purpose from GMail, Facebook, and Google+. Those are for using the internet to talk to people I know (or knew) by real name.

If Facebook was pseudonymous I would never touch it again. The only advantage it presents over email is that I can find out about and message someone in my real-world life when all I know is their name. It's email without the need for an address book.

Reddit is a community in its own right, just like HN, so it makes sense to have separate identities in those spheres. That's not an argument for letting my friends make me discover and remember AIM-esque screennames just to send them messages.

I'm working on a hosted forum/community platform, and the feedback we received when asking customers (site admins) and users was strong, and unequivocal: They want to present themselves as an alias and not have their interactions with their interests be tied or related to their real identity.

When asked why, various reasons were given:

People view their hobbies and pastimes as a sanctuary from real life, home, family, a safe space, and they don't want that safe space ruined by being forced to use real identity.

People distinguish themselves in ways that their real identity might not allow. Their work or social position might not grant them the ability to express themselves fully as an avatar in an online world, or as someone into tap-dancing, but a constructed alias allows them to immerse themselves more fully.

People fear that engagement in their interests/pastimes will lead to them being judged by future employers/partners/others.

Aliases allow people to really engage with their interests, and from that it becomes more likely that the experts in a community will congregate and share information. That the value for a community is realised.

And if you need to cite an example of that: Hacker News

For all this, the downside is that you have to have ways to deal with trolls and spammers that do not use the very easy and simple mechanism of "who are you?". That's harder to do, and so you either allow it (4chan) or you create complex flagging/reporting/moderating layers. The really interesting part for me is how active/engaged and in-your-face that moderation is, or how invisible it is, and where the line of transparency is (the more transparent the easier to game, the less transparent the harder to trust).

tl:dr People want anonymity so that they can share freely, but the price you have to pay is managing spammers and trolls.

I don't see anyone arguing against pseudonyms for forums, internet communities, or anything else that's separate from your real life. Hobbies are indeed sacred.

Google's stance with Google+ is pretty clear: this isn't the place for internet lives and internet friends. This isn't a forum, or Reddit, or HN, or any of those things. It's a place, like Facebook, for people's real identities to engage with each other.

Actually it is not anonymity that makes Reddit (or HN) successful. It is pseudonymity. You still have an identity, and the identity has value - karma. It is just disconnected from your biometric, "real life" identity.

The desire to protect the value of the pseudonymous identity is a powerful motivating force for making positive contributions. In many ways it is even more motivating than for your real life identity, because your real life, "biometric" identity is so precious that you will almost always favor low-zero risk contributions which are incredibly boring.

If Reddit was only anonymous it would be a horrible failure.

4chan is anonymous. Last I checked, it wasn't a horrible failure, and in some ways actually works better, since there's no "karma whoring"[1].

The Japanese equivalent of Reddit (2channel) is enormously successful, possibly even more so than reddit, and it's anonymous.

[1]: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/karma-whore

Easier to read, all around better source of information: https://encyclopediadramatica.se/Likes

Yes they just need to repair the karma with a tag system. So for example a user might have multiple karma values: karma-aww=2, karma-gonewild=1, karma-actual-content=1000, etc

You'd have a much better site!

Does this require different "types" of upvotes? If so, this kind of idea runs counter to sites like YouTube that have figured out that even things like 5-star rating systems are more complicated than users want to deal with.

At that point you're voting something 'cool' on Yelp.

In fairness, 5-star rating systems are often useless anyway. People either like something or they don't. Who goes "Wow, this is cool, but ... only a bit cool."? Whereas being able to say "This is funny." or "This is interesting." has a much higher value to effort ratio, I think. I guess my issue is that you say "even" 5-star ratings, which I generally consider to be one of the worst voting interfaces, so I'm not surprised it doesn't work.

Completely agree - most ppl won't rate. The ones that do either are interested or not interested. If even a small fraction of the ones that do rate, rate something in a category, say karma-aww+=1 then algorithmically one could classify things pretty easily.

I don't think it requires that. The system can keep track of which subreddit the karma points were received in and display them accordingly.

While there have been some good points brought up here, I think the author misunderstands what the purpose of Facebook is.

Facebook is not in the same category as Reddit. Social network used to be a very specific category of website, now almost every consumer facing website is a social network. Reddit is a content creation and discussion community, basically a centralized version of the forums and bulletin boards of yesteryear. Facebook is a photo, link, and life sharing network.

If I'm sharing pictures of my family and friends, I'm giving up anonymity by default. The whole point of Facebook is to give an online pin board of what is going on in my life, who I am as a person, and what I think and I enjoy. It's the online identity of my human self.

Reddit is an open platform for all types of discussion and interaction at a macro scale. What happens on Reddit will rarely if ever affect my actual day to day life. The phrase "hive mind" is all too true when you consider the mass amount of meaningless content there is. It's the brain vomit of millions of people and that's what makes it awesome and interesting. For every thought or idea I have, I can find someone else who agrees with me and someone who doesn't.

Saying Facebook should learn from Reddit doesn't make much sense to me. Reddit not a new concept or idea. Historically, social interaction online had always been "anonymous" in one form or another. Facebook was the first truly successful community that did away with usernames and forced people to use their real names. To get a billion people to do that is an incredible feat.

In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all. The "moat" around the site/business is not near as big as Facebooks. All it would take for a Reddit killer to emerge is for a site to hit critical mass in terms of content and provide a better more targeted form of curation to the user than subreddits and karma. In contrary, Facebook has built a massive moat. Your friend list, your photo history, your about page, your Facebook connected sites and apps...this is a huge fucking moat. I'm not saying it would be easy for a Reddit killer to surface, I'm just pointing out that it's more likely than a Facebook killer.

I think it's important for us to recognize that Reddit's social network is not Twitter's social network which is not Facebook's social network and to understand this when making comparisons between them.

> In my humble opinion, Reddit is not revolutionary at all.

This a thousand times. Reddit is a more user friendly, server-side usenet without most of its hard to grasp features (but with css, which actually matters way more than it seems with all those content: tricks.)

PS. I was on usenet for a couple of years, then slashdot, then reddit, then here. Nothing of substance changed except a few abbreviations.

It's funny watching people poo-poo other's successes.

Spoiler: if you think reddit isn't revolutionary, or doesn't have a big moat... put your skills where your mouth is and make something better and more successful. "All it takes to beat reddit is..." really? Really?

It's easy for a layman to stand there and call reddit non-revolutionary. (Note: I call you a layman because you can't even write the business name 'reddit' correctly... Yeah I bet your an expert on the business ;) )

We're all waiting for the reddit killer. Been waiting almost a decade. Digg didn't last this long, and slashdot was never on top for this long.

Social networks turned over quickly until facebook, and link aggregators turned over quickly until reddit.

It's easy to downplay someone else's achievement without being able to replicate it or beat it yourself. Illusory superiority. I bet the people with huge experience in reddit's field will be much more hesitant to downplay it.

There was nothing in his post about saying "I could do that". Only that the improvements made from slashdot to reddit were marginal at best.

The improvements of Facebook over it's predecessors were marginal at best, too.

so what?

Why can't Facebook be both? Ability to easily connect and find people on a personal level but also have the ability to have personas?

Your ability to conceal your identity on Reddit, and in public forums in general, is an illusion. Your identity can be revealed by your writing, regardless if you use a nym or not.

Text analysis algorithms can detect and match you by your writing style and reveal characteristics about your personality that you have no idea you're leaking (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-...). Even your use of pronouns provide clues. It's like your fingerprint, or your gate (http://www.cs.umd.edu/~chiraz/icpr02.pdf).

"The Secret Life of Pronouns: What Our Words Say About Us" (http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Life-Pronouns-Words-About/dp/16...), by Dr. James Pennabaker (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Pennebaker).

What if one writes in English under a pseudonym but only in another language under ones real name?

True, but you need an identity and written material to compare it to.

Seems like it'd be reasonably easy to run those same algorithms in reverse and change your writing style to someone else's.

I think most people on reddit realize this, and it is actually not a totally bad thing- it prevents people from engaging in excessively nasty behavior (at least with their primary accounts)

That whole anonymity thing is overrated, IMHO. Who would ever argue for such a thing?

You may have seen an extremely relevant speech on this topic :)

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...

Yet you are not using your real name.

Well, you tried.

thatsthejoke.jpeg

The username he used is "moot", the pseudonym of the long-anonymous Christopher Poole, the founder of 4chan, and privacy/anonymity advocate. Looking at his profile, he does appear to be the actual moot.

> For some reason big companies are really into real names. Actual people not so much.

Totally agree with this, but I wonder why? Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care? It's a mystery to me.

> Why does Google want me to use my real name while browsing videos on YouTube? Why do they care?

Because you're the product, not the customer - and you're worth more to them the more they know about you, your habits, your inclinations etc..

Thought experiment: let's say that anonymity was such an important thing to the average Google user that they would decide to use alternatives if they felt that their anonymity outside of their Google account was being compromised. Could Google know enough information about you to correlate data over a lot of your activities and preferences, but still make it so that you yourself are anonymous to them and the outside world (with a high degree of certainty)? If we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities?

Obvious problems are, for example if they know enough stats about your physical description to pinpoint you pretty accurately, and they also know where you live, and there are only 10 other people that live in that place. Even if they don't actively try to deduce your identity, it is very easy to do so with the available information.

> f we are not their products, then do they really need to know enough information about us to actually make a profile that is matched to our real identities?

Yes, because they can get more information about you from other sources using your real name.

What does my real name have to do with this? What you're saying would explain why they wouldn't let one see videos on YouTube without being logged in (I don't know whether it's the case but I suspect it's not).

Being logged in is one thing; using your real name is another.

1. Because if you do use your real name you are recruited into Google+ and they get to say "Google+ has X bajillion active users" in their next PR statements.

2. Because of networks effects on Google+ (maybe)

3. Because people writing with their real name are less likely to write mean/sad/critical things creating a more advertiser friendly environment

Have you ever read YouTube comments? It's not necessarily an "advertiser friendly environment" so much as one habitable by humans.

The original article is a good solution to a small subset of the problems, as relates to this direct quote "With this no one is risking real-life relationships"

The problem is the somewhat larger set of problems containing that subset, and also containing people perfectly willing to risk one of those apparently hated "real-life relationships". Not talking about dating although that's an obvious example.

One big problem is this whole topic in general is rife with people analyzing their own situation and declaring their individual solution to be the universal solution for all. One specific example of this, is looking at my paragraph above, individuals are going to categorize different groups as requiring, or not requiring, anonymity in a mostly unpredictable distribution.

The other problem is WRT "Pictures of Stolen Pets content" that the author makes fun of, he needs to talk to actual users of the network, and examine the above paragraph. I find it as boring as the author; however I know a lot of people occasionally enjoy a calming, simple, meaningless experience. It doesn't all have to be Shakespeare to be enjoyable, and setting the bar very high is probably an excellent way to repel most of the casual users. The advertisers and attention addicts are not going to like that, so if the casuals leave, they'll leave. Which results in an empty service. How to work around this spiral failure mode is unclear to me.

Well Quora does this. You can go anonymous for some answers. So is Quora the next big thing ?

Not necessarily - if you verify your account with (your real) email, that can be used to connect to the rest of your network.

I don't believe reddit is doing this right now... but the future is long.

(Of course, you can simply not verify, or use a fake email.)

Yes, indeed. I started to build my digital safe ~20 years ago ex nihilo. I think it's still possible today. Build a second identity with which you can really speak your mind. The funny thing is that your "real name" identity is, as the OP points out, a bit less representative of your real-self than your "fake name" identity.

A quote: "For some reason big companies are really into real names."

Yes, and increasingly so. The reason? People are forced to be more serious as well as more polite in their comments if they must post under their real names. The primary reason for the juvenile atmosphere in many Reddit threads is the fact that contributors mostly post anonymously.

Huffington Post recently changed its policy, now requiring commenters to post under their real names:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/22/tech/web/huffington-post-anony...

Quote: "Arianna Huffington is fed up with the trolls."

Well put. I've been posting under my real name since the days of Usenet, twenty years ago, when anonymous posting was almost universal. Now it seems the rest of the world is catching up.

Sorry, but the idea that real name policies are all about improving discourse is nothing but a load of self serving bullshit from the companies that push it. They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled.

> They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled.

How? Surely people are just easily matched on a pseudonyms?

Not when they choose a different pseudonym for each site. You only have one real name (usually).

It's pretty easy to link psuedonyms together so I don't think you're right.

Tell me something - would you say the sentence exactly like that in person? (Not to close friends, but people you only sort-of know.)

Or would you tone it down a bit? I hope you get my point.

I'm not the person you addressed, but I would. And just a single glimpse at facebook (or twitter or a newspaper comment column) shows people will show horrible, socially absolutely unacceptable behavior on the internet, even if their real name is attaced. I think facebook has worse manners than reddit. The believe that real names would increase the quality of the content or the manners is IMO back up by nothing but wishful thinking.

I think what I was trying to say in my piece is that if you have anonymity AND a reputation you get the best of both worlds. Trolls will be modded down by other users (assuming a reasonable reputation system) and people will be free to speak BOTH respectably and openly. Note that you can always use your real name as your handle if you choose.

> They (and their advertisers) stand to benefit massively the easier people are identified and profiled.

I agree that predatory advertisers are the scourge of the modern Internet, but one can profile a nickname as easily as a real name. On the other hand, it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result.

From the perspective of a website operator, a nickname has an associated IP, and a real name has an IP -- they're the same, both easily tracked. A nickname arises in a browser indexed with cookies, as does a real name.

> ... nothing but a load of self serving bullshit ...

And the tone of your reply proves my point.

> it is certainly true that a person posts more carefully if his real name is attached to the result

It's pretty easy to agree on this. What's up for debate is what carefully implies.

And there's no shortage of people who will still post stupid inane comments under their real name, so you've still got to rank them somehow.

I disagree.

Pseudonyms have in no way hindered polite, serious discussions on any forum I've ever seen. The only way to ensure the atmosphere you seek is through curated and carefully moderated discourse. Heavy or light-handedness in handling discussion will kill the atmosphere and dissuade any honesty, politeness or even truth (for fear of reprisal) even if real names are enforced.

Reddit is the way it is because its founders and moderators wish it so. Every community gets the users it deserves.

Edit: Some cleanups (not enough coffee... also it's 5:13AM here)

Obviously good moderation works better, but that doesn't mean real names can't help.

And how do you know if someone actually used their real name, or just something generated by a tool like rig?

Look at Twitter; Almost everyone uses their real name. Even terrible trolls. Discourse is as uncivil as you can get on the internet.

Moderation makes communities; Real Names do not.

I 100% agree,it is all about the kind of community one wants to build. If your content is trash like in some sub reddits or 50% of the huffpo articles, you'll get the trolls.

Some more serious sub-reddits are totally clean of trolls.

There is a place in the market for anonymous social networks. Checkout racut. (racut.com)

From the site -

racut is designed so you can be anonymous as you want. Choose a profile picture, craft a witty bio, and you're on your way.

You don't have to tell us where you went to school, what your favorite color is and if you're in a relationship.

It's a bit naive to think Facebook doesn't care about people. Broadly speaking, there are introverts and there are extroverts. Introverts love Reddit, 4Chan, etc. for their anonymity. Extroverts love Facebook, Twitter, etc. And those in the middle belong to both.

How about we let Reddit be Reddit and facebook be facebook?

And it has "downvote" button

So does HN, but you need 500 Karma before the downvote button appears.

I'm assuming that he's comparing it with FB.

So does Diaspora.

Without trolls, the internet would be a barren place.

Oh wait, maybe not :)

Anonymity is for geeks

I am not a fan of real name policies, but anonymity should not be a long term solution if possible. Better solutions should be sought.

You can take my online anonymity when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.

With a few very carefully selected exceptions, there is absolutely no upside for me in being recognised online, and there is a lot of possible downside - from being 'targeted' for advertising, to having my habits tracked, to being hounded and hunted in real life by people who have nothing better to do.

All the reasons for wanting to take my anonymity away come from people who have something to gain by doing so.

I do get it - you would rather not have anonymous people posting on your website, fine. You get paid more if you can provide identified 'consumers', thats awesome.

Nothing in it for me though.

I did say I am not a fan of real name policies.

you seem to feel strongly about it, so I'll ask you: what's the downside to targeted advertising? I've honestly never figured it out, and honestly if I'm going to have ads shoved in my face, I like it better when it's for things I might actually want.

Not trying to be snarky

"downside to targeted advertising"

Mode shifting. When I'm in "work mode" I don't want to see ads for my daughter's birthday gift shopping research, and vice versa, its kind of jarring and probably the near opposite of the "smooth personalized engagement" the advertisers were promised. Heck, if I'm not at work, and work is stressful, I don't wanna see anything about work when I'm not at work. Or if I'm going on vacation I don't need the distraction of vacation ads while I'm theoretically working.

Another jarring impact is related to the current sorta-anonymous way the internet presently works where what I looked for on ebay has very little to do with what I looked for on amazon so ads based solely on one or the other are going to be an epic fail. If you google for the term "uncanny valley" what I'm claiming is 2013 era state of the art targeted advertising is very near a local minima or whatever of the uncanny valley. Less personal and it wouldn't be so creepy, and more personal and it would actually be in at least some danger of occasionally being useful...

"things I might actually want" - things I might actually want At This Moment.

One fundamental problem is "targeted ads" usually mean target to one identity. If they were ever implemented as one identity AND simultaneous activity, well OK.

This is before we hit process issues. Don't spam me with car ads after I've signed the papers and driven away in something else. Yes I researched heavily online so you think I'd be a great advertising victim, but you're too late, the project is done. Why can't I see ads relevant to what I'm interested in Now as opposed to what I was interested in the past?

I buy a new video card every 2-3 years. Advertising would be almost useful for a couple weeks every hundred or so weeks. Most of the ads will be after I make a purchase, probably viewed at work where I'm theoretically not supposed to be doing home computing projects.

The other issue is that no company will ever not show you some type of ad if they don't have enough information on you. Instead, you get lowest common denominated and wind up seeing something of the category "alcohol/dating/deordant" (at least if you're a white male under-30 it seems).

If you want to see "good" targeted ads, go to Amazon. They have a vested interest in having you return again, so they put effort into finding a product that you will actually enjoy.

I highly doubt the average advertiser online cares if you return or not after the initial purchase. Their motivation is not to match you with something you want or will even like, but with something you will buy. It is therefore in their interests to use the targeting information to craft as manipulative an ad as possible for something your demographic can be tricked into purchasing.

That's why, when ABP fails, I always see half-naked swordswomen advertising yet another click-and-wait castle building "game". It's definitely not something that I would enjoy; it's a slot machine with virtual payouts that costs real money. If I payed $10 into it, would I be happy with myself the week after? Compared to e.g., a novel I might like, spend as much time on, but have a decent memory or experience that adds to my life.

If I thought advertisers would use my information to find me things that are useful or actually a good experience, I'd be more receptive to it. I'd still refuse because I hate all this data collecting stuff, and there's no way to get your information back out, but I would feel like it was an okay deal for people that opted into it.

There are a bunch of things, lets see whether I can summarize them:

(1) I dont want to be advertised to at all, if I want something - I will go looking.

(2) I dont want my browsing habits in the hands of third parties, they should be between me, the browser and the remote server. Its creepy.

(3) Targeted advertising doesn't work - having crossed the rubicon, invaded my privacy, tracked my habits and carefully curated the extensive data they have collected on me - they then advertise something to me that is almost, but not quite, exactly unlike anything I need or want to buy.

(BTW, 90% of the 'targeted' advertising isn't targeted at all, because limiting the number of people who see my ad based on my guess at their needs and preferences is just dumb. Its WAY better to advertise to everyone and let them sort it all out.)

I don't want ads shoved in my face at all. The only time I'm receptive to advertising is when I'm actually searching for a product (on google search, amazon, newegg, shopbot etc) and then only if the ad is a product I want at the lowest price.

What makes you say that solutions better than anonymity should be sought?

I am talking about individual problems that make anonymity necessary, to be more precise. One reason is that some of these problems are results of fundamental flaws.

You're going to have to be more specific than that. What "individual problems" are you referring to? What "fundamental flaws" are there?

One of the reasons Facebook beat MySpace was because Facebook insisted on real-names.

(See Quora for more discussion http://www.quora.com/Facebook-1/Why-did-Facebook-succeed-whe... )

So you have to login to fb or g+ to see this... hilarious!

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