Seems worth trying, since we’ve never tried it before with the big social networks of today. We’ve been locked onto anonymity for decades now as a priority and we need more data for science to consider anyways.
Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
111–120 of 297 posts
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2&selY... 51% of Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter is committed by about 7% of the US population. This is directly from Government data. There are real biological factors identified for this discrepancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A
I think you are overstating your case, and I question the motivations for doing so. The vast majority of people with either the 2R or 3R allele have not committed any criminal acts, and in fact the 3R allele is heavily associated to the type of risk taking behavior that is often rewarded in society. There may be a correlation between those who end up committing criminal acts and their gene expression, but it alone is not a causative factor and it's completely unsupported by evidence to make such a claim. Stronger causative factors are environmental, such as poverty, which has a direct causative relationship with criminal behavior.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#113No, 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…
[deleted]
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Anonymity can enable that but it also enables far nastier things. There are pros and cons. Simply pointing out pros is not enough to win the day.
When the conversation starts with, "Let's ban anonymous accounts!", then enumerating points in favor of anonymous accounts is the right response.
The conversation didn’t start with that. The conversation started with widespread abuse online originating from anonymous accounts.
Communities without abuse problems never even float the idea of banning anonymity. One reason being it’s extremely expensive to do that if not effectively impossible.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#115Anonymity 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…
I can see the pros and cons of anonymity. However, personally I would delete a lot of my social media accounts if they forced me to disclose my identity. The case of Monika at Stackoverflow suggest you have to be really careful when using your full name, even on reputable sites. Data miners would also absolutely love it and governments are powerless to act on abuse as many of these companies are outside an enforceable jurisdiction.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just discussed this with a bunch of my friends. If you're having a high level technical exchange with somebody that you don't know, then you find out that that other person is a female, you're really impressed, that a girl will be that good at this very technical topic. If, OTOH, you find out that that other person is a black guy (assuming you're white), you go through one of two reactions: If you're opinion of bla…
My reaction is to say that people should have the choice of being either (1)anonymous or (2)nasty when on-line. Not both. (Non-anonymous and nice obviously being allowed.) Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale.
> Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale
That is the problem. It's an unsolvable problem for the near+ future - unless we shift so much power from the public to the powerful that they can silence the public on a whim.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the conversation starts with, "Let's ban anonymous accounts!", then enumerating points in favor of anonymous accounts is the right response.
The conversation didn’t start with that. The conversation started with widespread abuse online originating from anonymous accounts. Communities without abuse problems never even float the idea of banning anonymity. One reason being it’s extremely expensive to do that if not effectively impossible.
The conversation here, I believe, refers to the posting of this link, and the replies to it.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#118Anonymity 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…
As someone who was a long time user of 4chan and that believed this once before, I now adamantly disagree that total anonymity leads to better discussion and believe that 4chan and the like are ultimately failed experiments. With total anonymity you end up with trolls or people who are just seriously misinformed arguing vigorously. You can spend the time and present arguments to possibly convince an actual reasonable…
Well, you name quite the case, but besides that. I think the fact that anonymous discussions derail easier and don't exactly get the best out of people, isn't relevant at all. I would even say, it is a price, we should be willing to pay.
First of all being anonymous is important if you want to call out far more powerful entities than you, which can lash out to you. Second I think it is important to see, what the darker side of society thinks. Even if you remove them from the normal internet, they will still find a way to communicate, but now it is no longer out in the open. It is better to know then to not know.
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#119Earlier quoted context omitted.
You need anonymity with reputational score. Satoshi Nakamoto. Associate anonymous posts with an optional pubkey signing. Have tooling that can filter out bad actor signatures and highlight the ones you care about. Have your interest graph and peer graph suggest new public keys to follow. Identities can remain private.
I'm not aware of any platforms, blogs or other internet entities (accepting public comments) that chose this system. I'm thinking there are reasons for that choice.
The reason is that it's a technically difficult problem, and thus requires investment to solve (and the most profitable/successful platforms don't want to reduce the amount of information they have about their users).
Fortunately there is work being done in this area by Free Software projects. In particular, the Matrix team are trying to implement a decentralised reputation system[0] and there's no reason this couldn't be applied to the Fediverse too.
[0] https://matrix.org/blog/2020/10/19/combating-abuse-in-matrix...
Re: Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer
#120Why not go the other way, and make all social broadcasts be anonymous? Then we would talk about policies instead of personalities. It just becomes ideas and thoughts in the cloud.