> Anonymity doesn't stand on its own. The right to anonymity is only important because it protects other rights. If we're not trying to preserve people's ability to express ideas that the government dislikes, then who cares if their identity is public?
The same is true of speech. It is a right that exists to protect other rights. Speaking, in and of itself is nice, but the function that right serves is the circumscription of state power.
> Anonymity is a tool to shield people from otherwise unpreventable consequences. Separating them is like saying, "you have a right to privacy, not a right to encryption." One of these things allows you to get the other thing.
I totally agree. That doesn't make it equivalent to the right to speak, however. The fact that anonymity augments the right to speak is great. That may be an argument for having a right to anonymity. It does not make the right to anonymity equal to the right to speak.
> Think about why voting is usually anonymous. Most countries recognize that even with the general restrictions on government retaliating against speech, it is fundamentally impossible for us to block all of the many avenues it has to punish citizens. The only way to block that is to not allow it to know who specifically to target.
Again, totally agree. We don't disagree that attribution has a chilling effect on speech. You're preaching to the choir here. We disagree that the right to speak is inalienable from the right to have your speech unattributed.
> People aren't conflating anonymity with free speech because it makes the argument stronger, or because they're trying to sneak it in on the side. I couldn't care less about anonymity, in except that it is the only strategy that anyone has ever come up with that allows me to have a large number of other fundamental rights that I do care about.
Your argument seems to be that "anonymity makes the right to free speech stronger, therefore the right to speak and the right to speak anonymously are equivalent". Which, to my reading, does not follow.
I think there are great arguments for the right to speak anonymously. I think you have articulated several of them nicely. I personally believe in the right to speak anonymously. But it should not be discussed as if it is the same right as the right to speech, because it is not.
Anonymous speech has costs and it has benefits. One of those costs is president. I still think it's worth it on balance, but if you say that anonymity and speech are the same, you're saying that arguments against anonymity apply to speech, and that's a dangerous game that I, and I don't think even you, really want to play in this political climate.