The Real Name Fallacy

> Designers need to acknowledge that design cannot solve harassment and other social problems on its own.

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.

What can 'fix' trolling is evenhanded, firm moderation of a community site. There are tons of forums and wikis and other such sites out there which do well here, because they simply lay out clear rules for participation and ban people for being scumbags and breaking said rules.

Facebook and Twitter struggle with this, partly because it's impractical to manually moderate a site with so many users and partly because their model doesn't really allow it. And maybe in part because they're very clearly inconsistent with who gets banned for saying what (like say, banning more conservative accounts than liberal accounts for trolling). Which itself undermines confidence in the site's rules.

So yeah, the key to an online community without harassment isn't removing anonymity, it's having clear rules in that place and enforcing them equally regardless of a member's status or political views.

I contend that the US doesn't belong in that list, and also that a generalization with a single enumeration is almost comical to defend as not attempting to identify as a specific case.

e.g. "Software pirates, including 7Z7, often..."

> the intent may be read as "'we' are not any better at this thing than we imagine 'other' countries are".

Except that the UK and the US is quite good about these things to the extent that the author had to cite something written about _Twitter_ (with a title mocking a perception of men, no less) to make a point about violence.

To some extent of course that means people can afford to be ruder on Reddit than here. But for my part at least I've "invested" as much in my Reddit username as I have in my username here, probably more. Just in different aspects of my life. What I say on Reddit has less effect on my work life, but just as much or more on my social life (most people around me are not on HN; most of them are on Reddit), and so I'm not about to "burn" my Reddit account.

The greater difference here I think is the same as you see on smaller subreddits: A relatiely large proportion of the comments come from a small pool of heavily invested long term users.

It doesn't matter if you know who we are in real life as much as it matters that newcomers that don't settle in to the culture here will be quickly pushed away (often after a number of downvotes and "this isn't reddit" comments) by longtime users that outnumber the newcomers. That happens on many subreddits too. But when you go to the bigger ones, the turnover is huge and it becomes impossible to police without very dedicated moderator teams which many subreddits lack, and the trolls congregate where they can get away with their trolling.

There are plenty of subreddits where I'd be happy to go by my legal name. The reason I don't is more down to already having an established identity over the course of many years and no reason to.

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. Having the same harassment happen to their friends, relatives and colleagues. Etc.

And this is without considering people living in countries with oppressive governments, where using their real name could see them arrested, beaten and imprisoned.

Basically, the stakes are a lot higher for a lot of people. For many, preserving anonymity isn't a matter of "politeness" — it's a matter of personal security. It can literally be a matter of life and death.