Online abuse: banning anonymous social media accounts is not the answer • Hacker News Board

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

#191

Post by _0ffh » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #183

_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…

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.

>It's to extract more value from them. It's for more ads, more dynamic pricing, etc.

Yes, this is a good point. But in my mind this is more of an incidental convenience, not the primary reason.

>Meanwhile, the enlightenment was specifically when a wide variety of viewpoints started getting published.

Exactly! And when was it easier than now, or even possible, to get access to practically the whole variety of viewpoints? Everyone can now play an active part in the conversation with barely any barriers at all.

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

#192

Post by travisgriggs » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:51 PM UTC

dane-pgp wrote: post #170

travisgriggs wrote: post #120

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."

Has the internet degraded along these lines over the years?

In the beginning, largely unknown (essentially anonymous) people discussed technical things. The net felt like a cool place. I was enlightened by it.

And then as more people showed up, news outlets pivoted more and more to keep us up to date with what was happening via the internet. Families took to keeping family blogs to share news with each other.

Now days, it's largely a platform to build and promote cult personalities.

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

#193

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:52 PM UTC

echelon wrote: post #92

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…

You need anonymity with reputational score. Satoshi Nakamoto. Associate anonymous posts with an optional pubkey signing. Have tooling that can filter out bad actor signatures and highlight the ones you care about. Have your interest graph and peer graph suggest new public keys to follow. Identities can remain private.

What's the difference between doing this versus just using nicknames like everyone does already?

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

#194

Post by ivan_gammel » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:53 PM UTC

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…

What you are talking about is not anonymity, it is identity protection. There are many pre-digital examples of what it could be: witness protection programs, confidentiality of journalist sources etc. They are all established, well regulated and with lots of precedents of analysis of those practices in courts. Full anonymity can and should be banned, but we need to develop some sort of new professional privilege to protect digital identity, where you can speak as Jane Doe, but someone knows who you truly are. Whether it is an independent identity platform, a notary keeping an encryption key, a government agency or anyone else who can be hold accountable, that can be discussed and established not just in a law of a single country, but ideally in an international treaty.

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

#195

Post by HWR_14 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

ademup wrote: post #136

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Too bad that seems impossible to effectively implement at scale. There are technical solutions to this. The old one was called hashcash, which a predecessor to cryptocurrency. To get an account you would have to do something like $5 in electricity worth of computation one time, which you can do without giving anyone your name. But then if you do something foolish and get banned, it'll cost you another $5 (or howeve…

This just seems like punishing the poor, very much like fines for speeding. "Rich" people get the freedom to do and say what they wish, but the poor must sit still and only convey favorable opinions.

Fixed fines always have that issue. Bezos racked up tens (hundreds?) of thousands of dollars in parking tickets in DC while visiting the site of his new house.

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

#196

Post by high_5 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

Banning anonymous social media accounts would just amplify the similar behaviour to swatting.

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

#197

Post by Sohcahtoa82 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 4:59 PM UTC

Factorium wrote: post #96

CapitalistCartr wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nextdoor has had enormous racism/bigotry problems. They have had to revamp a variety of their interfaces to minimize this problem. It's like they have to do A/B testing to minimize it. Real identity doesn't do anything to slow down the oblivious.

https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2&selY... 51% of Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter is committed by about 7% of the US population. This is directly from Government data. There are real biological factors identified for this discrepancy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monoamine_oxidase_A

I interpret comments like this as arguing that racism is justified by biology.

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

#198

Post by anyonecancode » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:01 PM UTC

vorpalhex wrote: post #132

anyonecancode wrote: post #127

I think the relevant property is not anonymity, it's accountability. The argument against anonymity is that it will make people more accountable, but that's not always true. Rather, it's the way an online community structures itself. For instance, here on HN we have the ability to be anonymous (on a sliding scale -- people can say who they are in their profiles, or be completely anonymous, or somewhere in between, po…

Part of why this works on HN is our small size. I will almost certainly bump into you again on here, and likely have before. Prisoner's dilemma is altered when it's a repeated trust action.

One interesting design choice on HN is that the user names are not very prominent. I often don't even notice them, skipping right past the user name and to the comment. So I do think what you're saying here is partly right, but not completely.

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

#199

Post by treeman79 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:03 PM UTC

HWR_14 wrote: post #183

_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…

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.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/jesse-kline-china-and-india...

Censorship is here and a big deal.

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

#200

Post by ls15 » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Where real data is required, why can't I see the names of all people who have access to my data and get notified when someone does access it or creates a copy of it. They look at my data after all. Shouldn't I know who is looking at my data, where exactly it is stored, how many copies exist and when it will be deleted? The relationship between a data-collecting website and its users is very asymmetric when it comes to data. Using the web as anonymously as possible is my only real defense against getting my data abused.