Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer • Hacker News Board

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#51

Post by sharklazer » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:07 PM UTC

colpabar wrote: post #33

polartx wrote: post #14

The article cites the recent murder of politician David Amess as the purpose for revisiting discussions about banning anonymity on social networks. But Amess was stabbed to death by a Somali migrant with ‘religious and ideological motivations’. What does that have to do with social media anonymity?

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/oct/18/pm-urged-to-... >While police are investigating whether there are any links to Islamist extremism and have not connected the killing to the targeting of MPs online, allies of Amess said he had voiced growing concern about threats and toxicity within public discourse as they demanded a crackdown. >Francois, the MP for Rayleigh and Wickford, which neighbours Amess’s South…

> So there is absolutely no link between his murder and seemingly any online activity, but they're still going to use his murder to to justify... harsher punishment for being mean to government employees online? Never let a crisis go to waste I guess.

Hitting the nail on the head.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#52

Post by babyblueblanket » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:11 PM UTC

showerst wrote: post #39

Somewhat tangential to the article, but here's what I would like: A site like reddit, but you have to get your government ID verified when you sign up. You can still pick any alias you want, but mods see your location within, say, 100 miles. Imagine reddit with no bots, banning has consequences, and local subreddits can actually just be people who live there. The painful sign up flow makes that totally unreasonable,…

Do you trust a site like reddit to keep your government ID secure? I don't.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#53

Post by CapitalistCartr » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

chomp wrote: post #7

I don’t know… my Nextdoor group is pretty abusive to certain groups at times, and people post happily with their real life name and the rough area of where they live attached. Hate towards an individual person isn’t super common, but it happens. If this extrapolates, I can’t see removing anonymity doing much other than e.g. hurting LGBT groups online (imagine asking questions as a member of that group in a conservati…

Nextdoor has had enormous racism/bigotry problems. They have had to revamp a variety of their interfaces to minimize this problem. It's like they have to do A/B testing to minimize it. Real identity doesn't do anything to slow down the oblivious.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#54

Post by bilbo0s » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:12 PM UTC

specialist wrote: post #28

No, there is no silver bullet. Yes, banning anonymity is dumb idea. Also, opt-in authenticated identity is necessary. It's ridiculous that bots, trolls, and sockpuppets are given the same esteem and protections as real people. To curtail harassment, nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic newsfeeds) and ad revenue biz models.

>To curtail harassment, nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic newsfeeds) and ad revenue biz models.

Speaking only on the money side of this, that is a very easy (and popular) thing to say, but a very difficult thing to do. How would you support these services without the ad revenue business model? Most of the other business models people have tried do not pay the salaries of the network operations people required to run the service.

And I can only imagine that even today people are still going to be reticent to pay for most of the social media services they get online. Most will just wait for another free social media service to come along.

To rid ourselves of ad revenue based business models and algorithms, we need to find, and prove, new business models that work at scale. They don't have to rake in as much money as ads, but they do need to pay for operations and the resultant salaries. And that's not a small amount of money at scale.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#55

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:13 PM UTC

lionkor wrote: post #23

Anonymity is important because it allows you to have discussions purely based on the arguments and opinions, without the bias of who youre talking to. I often find myself having a wonderfully deep discussion with someone online, and when I eventually find out what they look like (etc), I often realize that they dont look as friendly, educated, etc as they are. Humans are really bad at this, and you will put people in…

[deleted]

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#56

Post by bell-cot » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

colpabar wrote: post #44

specialist wrote: post #28

No, there is no silver bullet. Yes, banning anonymity is dumb idea. Also, opt-in authenticated identity is necessary. It's ridiculous that bots, trolls, and sockpuppets are given the same esteem and protections as real people. To curtail harassment, nerf the outrage machine (algorithmic newsfeeds) and ad revenue biz models.

> It's ridiculous that bots, trolls, and sockpuppets are given the same esteem and protections as real people. Agreed. I think any talk of the problems of online anonymity should be focused on bots first and foremost. From my understanding, it's pretty easy to detect like 90% of bot users. Can't we go after those instead? I don't really care that real people online can be mean anonymously, because at the end of the d…

While banning ~90% of the bots sounds pretty good to me - how long would it take the folks behind those now-banned bots to replace them, with new & "improved" & less easily detected bots?

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#57

Post by babyblueblanket » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #43

There is one simple, easy way to stop abuse (both online and offline): stop accepting when your peers do it. There are more people who think abusive behavior is bad than there are abusers who think it's good. If all the people who think it's bad call it out when they see it, avoid people who do it, make a point admonishing people who do it, refuse to accept working with people who do it at work, refuse to socialize w…

The definition of abusive behavior is unfortunately ambiguous though. Not everybody agrees to it. That's how you get people claiming folks are too sensitive and other people claiming so and so is an abuser for some more ambiguous circumstance.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#58

Post by anon22hdjsks » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:16 PM UTC

woeirua wrote: post #48

The simplest solution here is to require users to present government recognized credentials when signing up for accounts. Users can then create pseudonymous accounts that preserve some notion of anonymity, but when they become abusive the user can then be held accountable in the real world. Any solution here needs to be gated by the courts though, otherwise it would be ripe for abuse in and of itself through doxxing.

How is this "simple"? how do you imagine I would implement this to allow people to comment on my blog.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#59

Post by DrBazza » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

I wish people would go back to cutting out letters in a newspaper and gluing them to a bit of paper and sending that. It took thought, effort, and wasn't a spur-of-the-moment thing.

But in all seriousness, there are a lot of women (and men) who have suffered abuse by a partner. Not having anonymous social media accounts ends up being at the very least exclusionary, and at the very worst can lead to physical harm (even murder) by an abusive partner easily tracking someone down.

The other elephant in the room here, is that abusive social media messages have nothing to do with the death of David Amess.

Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer

#60

Post by G79 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

999900000999 wrote: post #5

saasaccount2 wrote: post #2

totally agree, cyber-bullying is mostly due to anonymity, and technology is well developed, and hackers find their way to do heinous acts and hide behind, this type of abuse cannot simply be prevented by banning social media, the cause is deep within the society's roots.

The actual solution is to limit your social media use unless you want to be subject to abuse. I only have my Facebook for friends to contact me via messenger. As well as it's original purpose, commenting on a ( real life )friend's engagement photos with a nice congrats. The moment you get into stuff The Facebook wasn't designed for; like actually meeting new people, arguing with strangers, etc , then you run into pro…

I agree. If people lack the emotional intelligence to realise when it is time to stop a conversation ( in real life and on social media), then they are simply being infantile by asking government or tech companies to do it for you. The block/ignore buttons are there for a reason.