Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theconversation.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 297 posts

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

#151

Post by hunterb123 »

AndrewUnmuted wrote: post #145
majormajor wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to say a lot about you but not so much about others. You're saying your default opinion is that women wouldn't be good at a technical topic. And that you believe that white people only have two possible opinions coming in to an encounter with a black person: your opinion could be low, or you could be racist. That's a very limited perspective.

Not all people that use this site will have undergone the same sort of intellectual journey into race as those of us in more diverse areas. True tolerance would be to understand that not all people in the HN demographic come from places like the US that are true melting pots. There was no evidence of racist thinking in the OP's remarks, and you don't have to go about suggesting there was to make the point you're atte…

You don't have to come from a "true melting pot" to know not to be racist.

I do believe there was some racism to GP's remarks, that this hypothetical white guy can only make prejudice assumptions.

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

#152

Post by kodah »

oxfordmale wrote: post #115
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…

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 enforceabl…

In case anyone else didn't know the story of Monica Cellio at StackOverflow it's a good one: https://cellio.medium.com/dear-stack-overflow-we-need-to-tal...

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

#153

Post by ethanbond »

Telemakhos wrote: post #138
ethanbond wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Communities without abuse problems never even float the idea of banning anonymity. This implies that many communities with anonymity don't face abuse problems, so anonymity is not the root of the problem. Maybe the problem lies in the subject matter that the community handles and the sort of people that attracts.

No it really doesn’t imply that, and I don’t think many people would argue anonymity is “the” root of the problem. It just appears to be a contributing or exacerbating factor.

Of course if you attract only polite people you don’t have abuse problems regardless of anonymity.

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

#154

Post by EGreg »

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…

The more I questioned why we need profile pics or real names, or even usernames online, the more I realized ... we don't. They are just vectors for deanonymizing people across sites.

Will I remember "lionkor" among thousands of other HN posters and think about your previous posts? No. But I can click and see your other posts, if the site lets me have that feature. And more importantly, your REPUTATION tells me how many people have upvoted your content that you produce. That's what's relevant. I could also maybe see how strongly you support certain positions (tags/badges) in your profile. It's the latter (reputations and badges) which can serve as a filter for people to set up if they want to ignore trolls and sybil accounts: https://xkcd.com/810/

Similarly we don't need human-readable URLs, we could do perfectly fine with hashes and no politics about domain names. The domain name system is just a glorified search engine, and URLs are only useful for landing on the homepage of a site ... anything longer becomes increasingly hard to verbally communicate, and if we're doing it non-verbally then we may as well send a non-readable URL (e.g. via a link or QR code or a javascript variable).

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

#155

Post by ethanbond »

KingMachiavelli wrote: post #140
ethanbond wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Then don't use those platforms? If you need a community that is going to be prone to abuse problems then make your own platform. Politicians and government offices should know better than to be using a commercial social media as their primary platform especially when it's not even based in your own country.

FWIW I agree governments should not ban anonymity, but that’s a position I’d hold regardless of whether it impacts abuse at all.

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

#156

Post by Cycl0ps »

slg wrote: post #125
JasonFruit wrote: post #95

Earlier 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.

This is troubling logic if we expand it to other areas. For example, what if someone says "Let's ban killing other people"? Is it enough to point out that sometimes killing people saves the lives of other people? Should we outlaw killing in self defense? Should we outlaw killing people who are an imminent threat like active shooters? If you agree that sometimes killing can be justified, does that mean we need to allo…

I agree with that. My concern, and what I assume is the concern of others, is that those putting these regulations in place would have neither the knowledge or intentions to consider that nuance. Considering that nuance myself, I don't think I could properly implement such laws.

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

#157

Post by gjs278 »

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.

abusive how? for calling them names? what if an admin starts leaking your details for defending them?

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

#158

Post by White_Wolf »

slg wrote: post #135
WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Simply pointing out pros is not enough to win the day. It's enough to convince vulnerable people who are calling out the misdeeds of the powerful. It might not be enough to sway the powerful who compulsively deploy (Gov/Corp/LEO) revenge on people who call them out.

>It's enough to convince vulnerable people who are calling out the misdeeds of the powerful. Vulnerable people like the trans community that is often the victim in this type of anonymous social media abuse? Are they allowed to call out the powerful and disproportionately white straight cis men who control social media companies and allow this abuse to continue? I just find it funny that you are using an argument that…

You know... I'm starting to think you are correct to be entirely honest. If anonimity is banned we can actually see who is part of those twitter cancel mobs and actually fine and imprison those harassing other people and send death threats.

50% /s

I'm 100% against it tbh. There are people that would be dead without it(just in case anyone missed the sarcasm)

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

#159

Post by AndyNemmity »

xkcd-sucks wrote: post #134
BitwiseFool wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here. Besides, what I type here today may not be controversial at all, but who knows how activists will change what society sees as acceptable vs problematic? All it would take is one motivated activist to dig through my comment history and find something to get me cancelled in the future.

"Enterprise software is totally fucked and working on it sucks, and b2b sales people are lying sociopaths. I just want to make more money with less effort and don't care about half-baked mission statements" If I weren't anonymous this could make me unemployable

Exactly. The net result is a complete hiding of the truth. Everywhere you go would be marketing vs. truth, because the truth is too dangerous.

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

#160

Post by smoldesu »

rndgermandude wrote: post #143
Larrikin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

4chan's failure to me has little to do with perceived anonymity, and a lot more to do with the culture of an online community, what is tolerated within that community, where the red lines are, and how this is enforced. And "gamification" plays a role, i.e. virtual online points of some sort, be it "likes", be it "karma", be it "upvotes". Compare 4chan to HN, which is also open to anybody like 4chan, allows anonymous…

4chan is also just a bad demonstration of how anonymous culture functions, too. It's become such a pop-culture hotspot that not a single board is really 'usable' like they were in 2012 ("I think I'll check /t/ for $NEW_MOVIE"). However, as you start to branch out into other imageboards, this lack of identity really helps drive the discussions. When you completely remove the upvotes, downvotes, score-based comment ordering and profiles, people are less interested in petty, pyhrric victories. IRC is also another great place where people are oftentimes more interested in fruitful discussion than saving face.
Post reply on HN