181–190 of 297 posts
Why 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.
"Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people."
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,…
A bit of a long and winding road to head off in the direction of noting that some of the old techniques that were being explored in the crypto cambrian explosion of the early 90s are still out there and still have merit. They just seem buried in the back-and-forth jousting between all or nothing when it comes to online identity.
>Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online abuse Entirely true, but it is also not the reason for the push to de-anonymise (and de-pseudonymise) the internet. It is merely the pretext. The true reason is to make it impossible to speak your mind without fear of retribution. The democratisation of the public discourse haunts and frightens the ruling classes to their bones. The broad disseminat…
Meanwhile, the enlightenment was specifically when a wide variety of viewpoints started getting published.
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…
Being attacked and/or killed is almost never voluntary. Viewing anonymous posts on the internet is almost always voluntary. Whatever damage is caused is emergent from the framework of interpretations of the individual. This is closer kin to victimless crime as opposed to real crime than it is conditional rules of engagement. I'm under the impression you're engaging in sophistry though, "This is troubling logic if we expand it to other areas." You're correct, a square peg does not fit in the round hole. And you've also failed to negate the myriad arguments favoring continued anonymity with any salient cons, but have instead erected a strawman.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
"It is hard to make a good law" is a bad reason to stop people from even trying.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Being rebuked for saying something ignorant and harmful will just be part of their "intellectual journey".
Many of us may be programmers but we should still be able to grok things with more nuance than this.
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 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…
What nonsense is that? I've never noticed any correlation between gender and technical skills. I mean, I've noticed that there are fewer women in the technical space, but not that their skills are lower.
You then seem to go on to assume all white people are racist against black people. Because both of your examples are racist.
>Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online abuse Entirely true, but it is also not the reason for the push to de-anonymise (and de-pseudonymise) the internet. It is merely the pretext. The true reason is to make it impossible to speak your mind without fear of retribution. The democratisation of the public discourse haunts and frightens the ruling classes to their bones. The broad disseminat…
You think the push to deanonymize is to censor people? It's to extract more value from them. It's for more ads, more dynamic pricing, etc. Meanwhile, the enlightenment was specifically when a wide variety of viewpoints started getting published.
>Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online abuse Entirely true, but it is also not the reason for the push to de-anonymise (and de-pseudonymise) the internet. It is merely the pretext. The true reason is to make it impossible to speak your mind without fear of retribution. The democratisation of the public discourse haunts and frightens the ruling classes to their bones. The broad disseminat…
"democratization" does not exist in social media. Algorithms designed to maximize profit rule what people read and watch. It's not a meritocracy, and you even can buy credibility of you want. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dum0bqWfiGw)
So, be careful on thinking that no rules means that everybody has the same opportunities.