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The Real Name Fallacy

blog.coralproject.net

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Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#141

Post by DanBC »

marknutter wrote: post #138
DanBC wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Further under this definition of Harassment no one can be harassed online, since you can not violate a persons PERSONAL space if you have no physical proximity to the person If I falsely and maliciously accuse you of being a paedophile that can cause you to undergo intrusive investigation, possibly leading to you losing work; it can cause people to physically assault you, perhaps even kill you. I have no physical p…

You've just identified a form of harassment that is objective, and probably would be agreed upon by the wider community. That's ok because it doesn't rely on a single person's definition of harassment.

There are plenty of people on HN who are horrified by the UK definition of harassment.

See, for example, how people react when they read the sentencing remarks or Mr Justice Spencer in Regina vs Joshua Bonehill-Paine

https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/judgments/sentencing-remarks-of...

There are people who'll try to deny that this was antisemitism; that it was actually harassment; that she wasn't harmed by it etc.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#143

Post by type0 »

pjc50 wrote: post #51
danmoz wrote: post #6

Real names is one thing, but I'd really like to see a "real age" system on the internet. That would make ignoring trolls -- who I suspect are frequently not old enough to drive -- a much easier task. It would be more akin to real life, if a 14 y/o tried to bully us in the street we'd laugh them off, but when they're anonymous on the internet it doesn't seem to occur to us that we may be dealing with a child.

Coincidentally the UK government is trying to impose age verification on websites.

Makes me wonder how long will it take until they try to impose real name verification on the web

Edit: could one dare to imagine - someday UK will be worse than NK when it comes to tyranny on the internet.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#144

Post by brainfire »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #96
dirkt wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've shared by real name on Usenet for decades, nobody got crazy ideas (though I've encountered quite a few crazy people). "Calling my bank and doing something silly" doesn't work in the country in live in. There's not a lot people can do with just my name.

I wonder about treating home address as such a secret. If someone wants to kill/kidnap me, they could always find me at my workplace or on a conference or sth. So what else are people going to do with my home address? Send me a postcard? In the good ol' days, we had this thing called "a phonebook", which was basically a big printed book of alphabetically sorted mappings of surname to phone number and home address...

> So what else are people going to do with my home address?

Send the police to save your (non-existent) hostages: http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/03/the-world-has-no-room-for...

Or to arrest you for the drugs you ordered (or were sent to you): http://krebsonsecurity.com/2013/07/mail-from-the-velvet-cybe...

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#145

Post by Girlang »

vog wrote: post #87
stupidcar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. People using real names on Usenet did not usually face a serious risk of being harassed and endangered in real life by an army of trolls: E.g. having their address, phone number and other private details stolen and publicly disseminated. Having armed police raid their house because someone has made a bogus 911 call. Having their utilities and back accounts cancelled because someone rang up using their details. H…

> Yes. I see the issues you are stating, but not so much a qualitative change. > serious risk of being harassed and endangered in real life by an army of trolls This type of trolls (aka "stalkers") have already existed decades ago. Back then I had no trouble finding such cases documented in the Usenet archives. Of course, these happened to fewer people, but then, the net was a lot smaller, too. > For many, preserving…

Yes yes yes. Read about rec.pets.cats, alt.syntax.tactical, and Karen Kolling.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#146

Post by TorKlingberg »

pc86 wrote: post #120
stupidcar wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. People using real names on Usenet did not usually face a serious risk of being harassed and endangered in real life by an army of trolls: E.g. having their address, phone number and other private details stolen and publicly disseminated. Having armed police raid their house because someone has made a bogus 911 call. Having their utilities and back accounts cancelled because someone rang up using their details. H…

If you could die using your real name on an internet service, you are much better off not using that service at all, especially if they require that you use your real name. Use of a particular service or website is not a human right. If your particular situation is such that it's unsafe or you need to violate TOS/regulations/laws by using a service... don't.

Today, not using the Internet at all is not really an option. Not using a particular service may not help, harassers on one service/site/social network often organize to attack someone outside.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#147

Post by CM30 »

hashmal wrote: post #99
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And being anti-immigrant or anti-LGBT is their right; it's freedom of speech, which extends to freedom to hate. Lots of people hate Trump, that's their right to have. There's a line drawn when it becomes harassment or incitement to violence (then they veer towards becoming a terrorist organization).

I feel like today this freedom profits more to awful people than to the good of society.

Well not really. Freedom of speech is meant to protect all views, including those other people might find wrong, abhorrent or against social norms. This can easily be both a 'good' (in the case of say, a pro gays right campaigner in a conservative theocracy) or 'bad' (in the case of a Neo Nazi in Germany) thing.

But your view kind of sums up in a nutshell why freedom of speech is a hard battle. Because it's all too easy to only see 'horrible' people and views benefiting due to them being the type of views people would want to ban if freedom of speech didn't exist.

It's the same kind of problem Tor advocates have when arguing that privacy and anonymity are rights people should have. Because people only see the drugs, crime and illegal porn and think that privacy is only something 'bad' people need.

Either way, both freedom of speech and privacy benefit everywhere, yet get a bad rep due to people only seeing the negatives they allow rather than the people and rights they may save.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#148

Post by DanBC »

nommm-nommm wrote: post #134
DanBC wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A post by ESR was even flagged off HN because its message was that he expected evidence to back claims of harassment, No. People flag ESR posts because he's a pathological arsehole and his threads contain some deeply unpleasant posts. >I reject the assertion that these issues are "common" in the US Interesting that you complained about people not bothering to support their claims, and then immediately make a claim…

Who is ESR?

Eric S Raymond, author of some important and influential software related books (Cathedral and Bazaar, for example), but also a mysogynistic, homophobic, conspiracy theorist

It's hard to pick one example because there are so many, but read what he says about the Catholic abuse scandal: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=26

There are so many errors scattered through that piece that there's no point rebutting them. It's best to just flag anything (not related to computing) about ESR.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#149

Post by CM30 »

janwillemb wrote: post #56

My real name doesn't uniquely identify me, because there are more people in the world with the same name. According to some web searching, I have already died a long time ago, I am a technical illustrator, I collect model trains, etc. So a "real name" could be compromising even if totally unjust

This is a very good point. Using real names doesn't 'reduce anonymity'. It 'reduces anonymity' for people with rare names and leaves those with common names nearly as anonymous as before.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#150

Post by CM30 »

type0 wrote: post #143
pjc50 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Coincidentally the UK government is trying to impose age verification on websites.

Makes me wonder how long will it take until they try to impose real name verification on the web Edit: could one dare to imagine - someday UK will be worse than NK when it comes to tyranny on the internet.

South Korea already has many sites require your 'Resident Registration Number' to be entered for you to sign up:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resident_registration_number

In some ways, I guess that would be a sort of real version of the 'real name verification being mandatory' idea.

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