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The Real Name Fallacy

blog.coralproject.net

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Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#151

Post by hashmal »

CM30 wrote: post #147
hashmal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

I completely agree with you. It doesn't change the feeling I have.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#152

Post by bluetidepro »

Does anyone have any good examples or resources that they can point to that possibly show an online community switching one way or the other with real/pseudonyms and the results that showed? Would be curious to see some first hand data about the issue.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#154

Post by DanBC »

CM30 wrote: post #147
hashmal wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

> Freedom of speech is meant to protect all views,

Too often one person's freedom of speech is a megaphone used to drown out some marginalised group.

http://imgur.com/a/LKiRU

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#155

Post by virgil_disgr4ce »

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.

> If you could die using your real name on an internet service, you are much better off not using that service at all

Classic. "I'm not at risk, so we need not change anything. Your behavior is therefore at fault."

> Use of a particular service or website is not a human right.

Of course not. Would you say that being able to freely live your life without threat of death (as you most likely already do) should be?

Allow me to extend your conclusion:

- People harass me at the laundromat because of my appearance, to the point where I fear for my life. "Don't go to that laundromat ever again." OK, I'll now have to go 30 minutes out of my way every time I need to do laundry. And suppose that this other laundromat is no different?

- People shout threats at me at the grocery store. "Don't go to that grocery store." Or, better yet, maybe I should just perfectly change the color of my skin and facial features to match theirs, so that the problem is solved!

I know you guys are going to hate this, but this attitude is precisely what is meant by "white privilege." Please let me know if I am misunderstanding your attitude, or what you think about this.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#156

Post by msabalau »

Dowwie wrote: post #153

The article focuses on improving online behavior yet doesn't acknowledge trust-- a key reason that user identity matters in online communities.

Surely trust can be achieved through consistent identities which aren't real names, or by allowing the option of (but not mandating) user names which are real names.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#157

Post by syshum »

CM30 wrote: post #140
syshum wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Trying to remove anonymity will not 'fix' trolling and harassment. After all, a lot of people simply don't care what others think of them, know they're too far away to be affected (in most cases) or just have nothing to lose to begin with. While that is true, many times what person A considers to be harassment, the person that is harassing them does not consider it to be harassment at all. This is not to say the per…

Reddit definitely suffers from the free speech and social acceptableness clash. That's in part because the site was founded specifically on the assumption that it would allow freedom of speech, without realising that 'true' freedom of speech is basically 'anything goes if it's legal, social norms and rules be damned'. It's why they're struggling with communities like The Donald and had a lot of previous issues with t…

Reddit suffers because people in general do not believe freedom of speech is a right.

I disliked the Fat People Hate subreddit, you know what I did... I did not visit the Fat People Hate subreddit.

The communities I join and participate in on Reddit are moderated well and do not suffer from the problem, if you do not like what is talked about on The Donald, don't go there, not that hard.

The problem is people do go, get "offended" then complain or raise hell because the mere existence of speech they dislike is what they want to end. This is not Freedom of Speech, but censorship.

Reddits Original model is the correct one, Allow Communities to form on the platform, and if people do not like the content of those communities they can unsubscribe, or avoid them.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#158

Post by syshum »

mirimir wrote: post #125
syshum wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is becoming harder and harder to do as Facebook increases their level of knowledge Just the Facial Recognition alone has caused problems for people attempting to do this. Further OpSec is not just on you, I know a couple of people that have tried this only to have OTHER people expose thier data or information by posting things on facebook and other sites about them.

One aspect of compartmentalization OpSec is not telling your meatspace friends about your fake-name accounts. And vice versa . And you wouldn't use real photos in fake accounts.

The problem comes in when/if you use your Alternate Identity (I dislike "fake" as it is no less real than your government approved Identity IMO), to attend events, meetups, or other real world activities.

I know many people are a part of Real Worlds clubs, attend conferences, or other events under Identities that do not match their government issued documents. They do this for a verity of reasons.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#159

Post by CM30 »

syshum wrote: post #157
CM30 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reddit definitely suffers from the free speech and social acceptableness clash. That's in part because the site was founded specifically on the assumption that it would allow freedom of speech, without realising that 'true' freedom of speech is basically 'anything goes if it's legal, social norms and rules be damned'. It's why they're struggling with communities like The Donald and had a lot of previous issues with t…

Reddit suffers because people in general do not believe freedom of speech is a right. I disliked the Fat People Hate subreddit, you know what I did... I did not visit the Fat People Hate subreddit. The communities I join and participate in on Reddit are moderated well and do not suffer from the problem, if you do not like what is talked about on The Donald, don't go there, not that hard. The problem is people do go,…

I agree with you here.

However, Reddit and similar platforms usually can't operate under this logic. Why? Because they need to make money to stay online/keep operating. And unfortunately, that means content that alienates advertisers (like a lot of the more controversial subreddits) ends up actively hurting their revenue stream.

They could try and get round this by monetising in other ways (micropayments, subscriptions, purely donations, etc) or by looking for ad networks with real low standards, but those methods likely wouldn't pay enough to keep them afloat.

It's why in the long run, I suspect the answer to the problem isn't a centralised platform that hosts a lot of different communities, but a system that connects individually hosted communities into a 'network' of sorts with similar features to Reddit.

That way, you can have both controversial and non controversial 'subreddits', with the latter paying their own hosting bills and the former either doing the same thing or getting subsidised hosting by the network owner.

It also shuts down any future attempts at censorship by not giving the company running the service any way to edit what happens on any one community.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#160

Post by thanatropism »

blauditore wrote: post #10
wfunction wrote: post #4

Thing is, if I had to guess, I would say Facebook doesn't attempt to make you use your real name to make the community better in the first place. That's almost certainly just its pretext for everyone who's willing to fall for it. Most likely, it does that to make sure it can identify you globally and uniquely for commercial/advertising purposes. Think about how much more valuable your online identity is if you go sol…

I doubt this, since Facebook doesn't seem to care much about fantasy names. They get most interest data about you from within FB (what pages and posts you like etc.) and from pages across the internet you visit through like buttons embedded there (even without clicking them). So there's a lot of relevant meta data directly linked to your account and no need for them to know your real name.

Last time I tried to create an alt account they insisted on a phone number, though.
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