Question for the masses because I’m curious:
What do you think social media would be like if there was no anonymity?
Is it fair to say some people behave differently online because of anonymity?
Would it be good or bad if everything you posted could be tied back to you by your friends, family, employer, etc?
Some obvious concerns people express:
- personal safety
- freedom to express views contrary to community, government, etc without retaliation
- fear of stigmas related to support, education, etc for stigma topics like mental health, sexuality, etc
What reasons do you have for not wanting to own your online identity other than being able to talk trash without being identified? Some people are public and still talk a lot of trash, looking at you Twitter.
You you got doxed, what do you think the impact would be just related to social media conduct?
Edit: With the introduction of online protections for minors, how does that affect the question?
Not from a political standpoint but from a technology one, how do you see that even working?
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I think this comic sums it up well:
Certain politicians want to force everyone to dox themselves so that they can always find out exactly who is saying what.
No more whistle blowers, no more protest organizing, no more political statements that rock the boat. No more shitposting for fun, no more porn, no anything else that you might want to keep private for any reason.
That it would drastically harm queer people and those questioning their identity. Social pressure, fear and shame keeps people from asking certain questions or exploring their desires when it’s potentially tied to them for life.
Look at the while concept of “queer appropriation” by celebrities. Their entire life is public and ironically while feeling themselves out and experimenting with new presentations, it’s ironically met with backlash from some queer people thinking it’s a capitalist ploy to appeal to queer fans.
Being able to just ask questions and explore is a fundamental part of understanding yourself. Anonymity is a precious gift, but one that is also easy to take granted.
Edit: Also religious folk.
One time on Reddit I said guns were bad, and some nut job looking for a fight tracked me down because my username (at the time) was able to identify me with enough effort. They threatened lots of stuff on various communication methods. Fortunately, I had just moved states, so all their efforts were concentrated on the wrong area. So now I’ve made an entirely new identity for social media. I never post personal things, like where I’ve been recently, or even simple things like places I like to eat. On one hand, if it were not anonymous, I would have had a better chance of identifying them. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been able to make a new identity.
I’ve thought occasionally about how there could be real accounts, but there are so many dangerous reasons for it that I don’t think it would end up working in the end.
All stories like this are super frustrating to hear.
I’ve heard some stories where a person was targeted because of their social media handle being desirable. The anonymity part works both ways for both parties, sometimes, but I feel like it helps criminals more often than regular people.
Well, every time a person isn’t attacked can’t be tracked.
This is not the way the CIA and secret services all over the world works, I mean do you expect agents to have a “Working as Secret Services agent at CIA” in their bio info with a history of all the stuff they publish online??
There are countries like S Korea that used to demand new users national ID at signup (not anymore thankfully) and many websites, especially at the early 2000s, had your real name featured next to your nickname (following the tradition from their own national dial-up BBS forums). The argument was that revealing your real identity would make internet interaction more “civil”.
Guess what happened. Identity theft was rampant, trolling was equally widespread, you think Facebook spearheaded mixing real name profiles and internet sewagery, you haven’t seen anything like CyWorld from early 2000s.
The cases of identity theft ranged from minors borrowing their dads and uncles ID to actual Chinese hackers dumping massive records from the same Korean companies gathering them because of that stupid law. This was done so they could… access forums that demanded a valid national ID from a 18+ years old citizen, for example.
I was there, man. You’d find out your typical forum shitposter (that had surprisingly “ample” tastes) with a profile that says “46 y.o. male (ID verified)” is revealed as an elementary school kid using their uncles ID and gets banhammer’d. Monthly.
Queer people would be denied a chance to explore their identities and find peers if they lived in an unaccepting environment. This would be particularly damaging to closeted queer kids.
Just read a thing about how persistent usernames may work better than actual ID. Of course, I don’t have a link, and I’m not finding anything on Google right now, but as someone who uses the same handle across multiple services, which makes my activity traceable, but not necessarily to my real identity, I definitely think there’s something to that.
The problem there is that once you’re doxed in one place, you’d be doxed everywhere. Also how do you prove you’re the same person? Whatever info they hold to prove that is in one single location, which for security isn’t great if they get hacked.
There was a time when not revealing your identity was considered the safe way to be online, and telling strangers your name or personal info was taboo. Really, it was basic internet hygiene. The first push for real identities on social networks came mostly from advertisers, and those can go to hell.
Yes, some people abuse anonymity to be assholes with no repercussions, and obviously I am not okay with that. There should be ways to deal with those without forcing everyone to expose their identity to the whole world.
I will keep defending the right to anonymity. You only need one deranged maniac with different views on whatever, or trying to ruin your life for whatever reason to get into serious danger.
I live under a rock. I just had to look up who Nikki Haley was. This question was not initiated by a political view, but I guess it will be.
Side note, I don’t mind the idea of algorithms or decisions being public though.
Nikki Haley wants to Dox the entire world because she thinks trolls are way worse than they really are.
The reality is she and many others like her just want to be the only ones who control what people get to say, like the old days before the internet was easily accessible.
prohibition of anonymity means that everyone is mandated to dox themselves…That’s a bad time for everyone if they’re forced to have their real name and real location attached to literally everything they do online.
Why?
Edit, location, I get that. That could be unsafe under certain circumstances, and it’s sometimes hard to protect your location privacy.
That could be unsafe under certain circumstances,
That’s unsafe in ALL circumstances. The only one who should get to decide who reveals your real location should be you and you should have full control over who you reveal it to.
Don’t vote for Nikki Haley, she wants to dox the entire world to “prevent Russians bots”
It has had shockingly few consequences so far
Yes actually…When people are anonymous online and they have an argument, it can’t go anywhere besides the online space.
If everyone is forced to dox themselves, then the violent people in online arguments know where the other person lives.
I was not making that argument that everyone should be forced to dox themselves and that online anonymity should be abolished
I was just pointing something out
Would be pretty awful for any minority group.
Queer kid in Idaho is going to have an even worse time trying to find community and such on the Internet when their identity is publicly associated with their activities. People would die. They would be murdered by conservatives.
I take your point. I might argue to swap conservatives with something like bigots. Quoting Ted Lasso: Every person is a different person
Conservative ideology is based on bigotry. Always has been. The fact the Republican party has so easily and wholeheartedly embraced white supremacists, misogynists, rapists, etc, proves the point. Indeed, the de facto leader of conservatism in the United States proudly embodies all those things and more. All the while he is the clear leader in their presidential candidate race without even having to participate in the process. It is impossible to extricate conservatism from bigotry - if you’re a conservative in the US you are a bigot either directly or through association. You know, the ol’ ten people and a Nazi having dinner is 11 Nazis having dinner.
This is difficult to argue with.
Arguing with it might get you banned so ya, tough to argue with.
It would put victims of domestic violence and other similar situations in a lot of danger. It would also paint a red x on the queer community, feminist activists, police reformists, housing rights activists, people opposed to war and genocide, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Chase and his white supremacist buddies would continue to post their bile behind their real identities, just as they always have, and Mark and Elon would still sleep like babies.
not to forget the new most popular target: “ecoterrorists”
I think there should be two parallel networks:
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anonymous one run by private corporations or volunteers with heavy moderation and the company taking full responsibilityp for anything posted there. pretty much what EU is trying to establish. You want to make money of anonymous posts? You take financial responsibility for making sure there’s nothing illegal on the platform. You could still have right leaning sites but with no misinformation or harassment. Fedivers instances that notoriously post illegal content would get the same treatment as neo-nazi sites.
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publicly owned platforms (like mastodon instances) available for everyone for free but with no anonymity: you want to make something public, complain about something or simply interact with normal people you can always go there. Less moderation would be needed so it would be cheaper to run. Users will be responsible for the things they post, not the platform.
This way if Twitter is unable to moderate their content you block it and people would have public instances as an alternative. We would see if running a platform like that with proper moderation is still profitable. If not they would start charging people or shut down. I don’t think losing sites like Facebook or Twitter would a big problem if we had public alternatives.
Both of those ideas are stupid. All online platforms should be regulated like public utilities and everyone should be allowed to go by a pseudonym if they want to.
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