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The Real Name Fallacy

blog.coralproject.net

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Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#91

Post by Twisell »

mirimir wrote: post #72
bad_user wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that back then you didn't have service providers with lock-in on a market, like today's Facebook and the Internet was only a thing for techies, whereas nowadays more than half of the world's population has access to the Internet. Can you just not use Facebook? There are obviously only 3 choices: (1) not use it, but then you won't have an account where all of your friends are; (2) use it with your real…

There's a fourth option: use Facebook with your real name, and separately with fake name(s). For the real-name account, carefully manage "friends" to avoid problems with family, friends, coworkers, etc. Make sure that there's no leakage between your real-name account and fake-name accounts, or among fake-name accounts. Practice good compartmentalization OpSec.

Actually I would eventually consider re-opening a Facebook account should they introduce an alias/identity system so that I could manage easily and separately my différents circles.

Of course ads profiling of each identities should also be kept separated. And of course a strong privacy statement backed up by some technical information on the architecture should also be a part of that change (Apple iOS security guide is a good example to follow IMHO).

Unfortunately this look so far away from the current Facebook approach to new users "hey trust us type in your IMAP credentials so we can scrape all your acquaintances by snooping all your mails!"

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#92

Post by syshum »

bleair wrote: post #77

I'm biased by empirical data - e.g. look at youtube comments (anonymous) vs. amazon reviews (real identity owned by amazon). Human nature demonstrates that a fraction of people really like to put down / bully / see others suffering because they are personally unhappy (e.g. the shock talk shows). Anonymity allows bullying behavior with no consequence. More simply, why do people spend time and energy online "trolling"…

I often see this comparison, it is hardly "empirical data"

Leaving a product review is a completely different social activity than commenting on a Video, videos that are often political, religious or other personally controversial topic

Comparing YT comments to Amazon Product reviews holds no value at all.

It is telling that you dismiss actual research for your own anecdotal and flawed observations to accept the idea that Real name Policies are a good thing

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#93

Post by syshum »

ChrisNorstrom wrote: post #18

I really don't want to say this but, the real names policy does help in terms of trolling behavior for certain communities. When TechCrunch switched over from Disqus to Facebook comments, the amount of trash and trolling was immediately reduced and stayed at a minimum permanently. A lot of the media outlets (Motherboard, Vice, NPR) who've disabled commenting altogether were using Disqus. I've noticed media outlets th…

>>those that love them have already made up their mind and won't look at contradicting evidence.

Like you are doing here...

>>TechCrunch switched over from Disqus to Facebook comments,

I stopped commenting, Did the level of comments drop as well because I do not have today, nor will I ever have a Facebook account, any site that uses Facebook as a comment system does not want nor will get my feedback or participation

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#94

Post by freshyill »

mirimir wrote: post #72
bad_user wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem was that back then you didn't have service providers with lock-in on a market, like today's Facebook and the Internet was only a thing for techies, whereas nowadays more than half of the world's population has access to the Internet. Can you just not use Facebook? There are obviously only 3 choices: (1) not use it, but then you won't have an account where all of your friends are; (2) use it with your real…

There's a fourth option: use Facebook with your real name, and separately with fake name(s). For the real-name account, carefully manage "friends" to avoid problems with family, friends, coworkers, etc. Make sure that there's no leakage between your real-name account and fake-name accounts, or among fake-name accounts. Practice good compartmentalization OpSec.

Google requires phone or text verification on new accounts. I'm not sure about Facebook, but they do require an email address, and that has to come from somewhere. Eventually, you will require verification via phone or text, and that's when it gets harder to prevent these services from linking back to you. I'm not sure what it takes to create a burner phone number not linked to you these days.

None of that really matters if you just want to maintain an anonymous persona aside from your real identity. However, you're still only a subpoena away from the government tracking you down. I haven't even given it that much thought, but it seems really hard to cover your tracks these days.

A few months ago, worrying about such things seemed kind of silly to me. Now, I think I understand the need better.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#95

Post by TeMPOraL »

stupidcar wrote: post #68
vog wrote: post #39

The real name discussion is as old as the Usenet, maybe even older. I find it strange to see it re-appearing again and again every few years for almost decades. Back then, the consensus was roughly: 1. If a community accepts pseudonyms, it is polite to use either your realname or an obvious pseudonym. 2. If a community places high value on realnames, either use your realname or a realname-sounding (i.e. non-obvious)…

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…

Besides the point about oppressive governments, everything else seems to be old news - it's not that this generation invented stalking and swatting along with bloated JS frameworks. Nor is it new that anonymity on-line can be a matter of "personal security" for someone; this is pretty much as old as public Internet, with obvious parallels to any older medium of communication.

It's not that pseudonyms are a new thing either.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#96

Post by TeMPOraL »

dirkt wrote: post #90
Swizec wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same rules apply as always: don't share your real name and address online outside very very small and personable communities. People often ask me why i still haven't changed my name to Swizec legally. This is why. You never know who out of the thousands of people you interact with online could get crazy ideas. With a pseudonym they can still identify you and know who you are, but they can't call your bank and do some…

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...

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#97

Post by stupidcar »

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…

You asked whether something had substantially changed, not qualitatively. A change in degree can still be a substantial change.

It's the difference between living in a city with one murder a year, and one hundred murders a day. To the individual killed, the distinction is irrelevant, but in terms of the effect on others, and on the measures taken by the society as a whole, it's everything.

But I would also argue there has been a qualitative change, from harassment conducted by isolated individuals, to large scale, organised harassment, as well as an escalation in the tactics used. A malicious Usenet user could not call on an army of globally distributed 4chan trolls to endlessly pursue a particular vendetta. And the much greater integration of technology into institutions means the available methods to harass someone and remotely disrupt their life is far greater.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#98

Post by bearcobra »

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…

With the qualifier that I am someone who never participated in Usenet, I'd imagine the scale of the problem is a substantial change. As you point out, certain types of trolls almost always existed, but now instead of a single person performing the harassment it can often be thousands. The larger userbase also seems to have created a more diverse set of believes, which in turn creates more opportunities for conflicts, and more likely that someone will escalate these conflicts into harassment.

Re: The Real Name Fallacy

#99

Post by hashmal »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #70
some1else wrote: post #58

Facebook hate groups are real (anti-immigrant, anti-lgbt, ...). They're getting better at skirting the rules, so there's no way to disband them. I'm seeing dozens of such groups form for a country with a population of ~2 million (Slovenia). I think the mentality those bubbles breed is even more dangerous than Twitter harassment. Instead of manifesting itself in bullying and conflict, it's nurturing the different flav…

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.
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