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

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

#251

Post by nobody9999 »

vangelis wrote: post #176
majormajor wrote: post #86

Earlier 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.

my favorite part about non-anonymous accounts is being able to find their employer if they say something that's annoying.

>my favorite part about non-anonymous accounts is being able to find their employer if they say something that's annoying.

An excellent (sarcasm registered and understood, BTW) point.

I am a practitioner of BDSM[0], which is, in some circles, quite controversial.

Despite the fact that my activities are always consensual and never cause harm to anyone, if my employer, clients or others with whom I have unrelated interactions with had negative ideas about such things, I could suffer serious repercussions.

I generally don't discuss such things online (or offline, if those I'm around aren't trusted), but if I did (as I am now), forcing me to link those discussions with my "legal" identity, could inflict real damage on my life -- even though nothing that I do is illegal or harmful.

As such, Vangelis is 100% correct. My private activities, unrelated to my work, are none of my employer's (or anyone else's) business, nor is it a danger/threat to anyone. If I didn't have the veil of pseudonymity here, I would never even hint at it.

And that's the problem with de-anonymization.

[0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/BDSM

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

#252

Post by willhinsa »

pluto8195 wrote: post #107

Could there be a way to guarantee that each account is "verified" ie: a real person, but still have the platform allow you to hide your identity to others

This comment talks about this idea: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28947131

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

#253

Post by mrtksn »

lm28469 wrote: post #243
mrtksn wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Currently, if you say something unpopular you will be downvoted and your speech will be hidden from the rest on most platforms. You can also be silenced completely by getting banned. I am proposing a mechanism to overcome this kind of censorship in exchange of your anonymity in case you had a problem with the management. If you get banned, if your posts are removed and you believe in what you say, you put your reputa…

What if your employer find your messages and decide he doesn't want to associate with you ? Same for landlords &c. Having everything you say attached to your name forever seems extremely icky (we both know that "banned" and "deleted" don't mean anything on the internet). In an hypothetical perfect world with hypothetical perfectly rational people why not, in the mess we live in it would be a nightmare.

With the mechanism I'm proposing, you get to keep your identity hidden as long as you are a good citizen of the platform you participate. If you can't stand for the things you say, and they are problematic for the platform you simply don't say them then. In the current system it's exactly the same situation, if your stuff are not O.K. they get removed which is effectively the same as you not saying it.

I don't know why people feel entitled to say something without facing the consequences of it. If you don't believe in it enough to defend your position and put forward your reputation, you don't need to say it.

Why do you need to deceive people? Let's say, you are a racist and feel very strongly to say something about your opinions. Say it and win the argument and improve your life or say it and lose the argument and people can choose not to be associated with you.

That's a fair situation, what's not fair is to annoy people or maybe even harm them from another persona and then pretend that you are something else.

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

#254

Post by SeanLuke »

Follow the broken logic.

1. "Banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer to online abuse."

2. Primary section in support of #1 makes the far weaker claim: "Many abusers are not anonymous"

3. Primary support for #2 is the sentence: "However, research [link] shows that people using their real names perpetrate abuse and bullying too."

4. Linked article actually contains no scientific research, or even data gathering, on the topic at all.

This was just a festival of bad argument.

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

#255

Post by nobody9999 »

mrtksn wrote: post #249
nobody9999 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm proposing a system where platforms lose their ability to censor people if the people in question are ready to bear the personal responsibility of their actions. It is an interesting idea. However, there are some serious issues with that approach: 1. The old adage, "If it's connected to the Internet, eventually it will be hacked/compromised," applies, potentially exposing the links between accounts and the identi…

I haven't worked out the cryptographic mechanisms but my ballpark assessment is that it should be possible to work out a mechanism that protects your identity up until you accept to exchange exposure for ability. The business model is probably more of an issue, as you pointed out. Oh BTW, it doesn't have to be a legal identity, I think. It could be some kind of identity that you build, it costs something and can be i…

>I haven't worked out the cryptographic mechanisms but my ballpark assessment is that it should be possible to work out a mechanism that protects your identity up until you accept to exchange exposure for ability. The business model is probably more of an issue, as you pointed out.

Another piece to this that you haven't addressed is that in the environment you propose, once you've chosen to expose your identity, every single thing you've ever posted and will ever post is now de-anonymized.

>Oh BTW, it doesn't have to be a legal identity, I think. It could be some kind of identity that you build, it costs something and can be identical across platforms.

I'd note that's already the case. If you're pseudonymous and offend the powers that be on a particular platform, they can already ban/censor/block you.

Please understand that I am not attacking you, nor am I dismissing your thoughts. There absolutely is merit in exploring ways to combat abuse/trolling/sundry nastiness online.

Rather, I find your proposal unconvincing and likely unworkable. It would be way too easy to game such a system and it would impose serious consequences on anyone who might espouse an unpopular opinion -- even if that opinion isn't abusive.

I sincerely hope that we can find ways to limit abusive/destructive behaviors online, but given that we've been unable to do so IRL when one's identity is already known, that seems incredibly unlikely.

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

#256

Post by tomjen3 »

mrtksn wrote: post #201
_0ffh wrote: post #173

>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…

But retribution is an important social construct. Sometimes, you speak your mind and get retribution. Sometimes you deserve it however if you are not getting a fair one people side with you. I know that this is very unpopular opinion but there are very few cases where anonymity is useful. The rest is mostly useful for the abusive ones. Instead of banning people and removing content, I would prefer losing anonymity. I…

>But retribution is an important social construct

Within friend groups, yes. On the internet I don't think it makes sense, simply because what is acceptable within different groups is so different.

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

#257

Post by wintermutestwin »

naravara wrote: post #230
fouric wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is indeed not "democratic" - but the reasons that you gave are completely wrong. "Algorithms designed to maximize profit" are a feature of specific social networks - Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok - not the concept of social networks. For instance: Mastodon/Fediverse. Sure, it's not popular at all - but it's still social media without manipulative profit-maximizing algorithms. So, if anyth…

The profit-maximizing algorithms are ad-supported, which means they maximize profit by maximizing engagement time and attention. This means things that don't maximize around those things will inherently be disadvantaged against the manipulative ones (barring regulation against the manipulation or some sort of very unlikely social movement to consciously eschew the manipulative ones). As long as this particular set of…

>inherently be disadvantaged

If the only measure of social platform success is $. I'd say the true measure is adoption and the existing players are not on such strong fortifications by that measure. The existing platforms are begging to be disrupted by non-profit or benefit corps. It's not like you would need FB's salary budget to build a more healthy social platform.

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

#258

Post by tomjen3 »

mrtksn wrote: post #221
fouric wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> retribution is an important social construct I would like to see evidence to back up your claim - evidence that supports the extension of this idea from the real world to the internet , because you don't get that for free. Moreover, I can think of far more examples of retribution causing harm in the real world than doing good. Bullying in school, being fired for whistleblowing, being jailed or executed for wrongthi…

The real life interactions are much more civil because of the fact that being an a*hole gets retribution from the person you are being an a*hole to or from the society. Perfectly nice people turn into psychos when they interact with people online. Observe kids playing games in real life, they are very rarely as vulgar or sadistic as on online games. A walk even in the most crowded places is much nicer experience that…

Being vulgar is a function of there being women present. Get a group of exclusively young men together and the tone and talk will become very, very though, very, very quickly.

But if we want to avoid dealing with assholes, lets have excellent block tools. There might be issues with trolls on Signal, but I have never meet any because I only interact with my family.

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

#260

Post by heavyset_go »

_0ffh wrote: post #173

>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…

> 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 dissemination of information and opinions was firmly in the hands of a feudalistic elite until just a few decades ago.

Social media companies are fiefdoms whose real customers are other companies and individuals with large piles of money that want to use it to sway public opinion for profit or power.

YouTube et al. had no problem taking plenty of Mercer money to promote things like Brexit and other content that shifts focus away from those in power to other working class individuals. All someone with enough money has to do is pay to run promoted content on the platforms and it will be disseminated instantly to billions of eyeballs.

Social media platform owners and operators regularly remove content that might rock the boat. They already know that governments will pull the kill switch on them should real unrest happen, because it's happened countless times before. That's bad for revenue, so they play ball with people in power.

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