[buth_lika]

Okay, but what about political dissidents, people in abusive relationships, people in backwards areas who aren't heterosexual, just play shy people, and many others?

I don't have a clear cut answer myself, because on the other hand, anonymity opens the floodgates to so much manipulation that also ends up hurting real people, and that will only get worse as technology gets refined in those directions. Those that want to control and manipulate won't give up easily either way, there's totalitarian "victory" possible in either direction:

Tie everything anywhere to a real name, and people will ultimately police their own thoughts, because wanting to say things you can't say sucks, so they'll stop wanting that, the one thing they have control over. Keeping foggy and dynamic what is and what isn't allowed to say will make people shrink to the smallest possible attack surface that still allows basic physical survival.

Go the other route and make everything accessible to (super advanced) bots, make it impossible to confirm anyone's identity or follow any money trails, and with enough of that people can be be manipulated by an overwhelming, yet fabricated social consensus, and herded into bubbles.

Of course, the worst of both worlds is also possible.

Anyway, anonymity online gets a very onesided rap. Some of my fondest "internet memories" were exchanges were with total strangers. Maybe I just remember those differently (I don't really think of online interactions with real life frieds as online interactions), because they always came out of the blue, or because they seemed to mean more, since we both know we'd never meet again and were being open or helpful just for the sake of it, with the reward being purely personal gain (even joy is gain), not social capital.

> Why do we travel? Among other things, to meet people who don't think they know us once and for all; so we may experience once more what is possible for us in this life.

-- Max Frisch

[seventhtiger]

I think policing your own thoughts and communication in a social setting is an essential element to human discourse, and the lack of self policing is exactly why online discourse is substantially lower quality and is based on bad faith.

[kup0]

There's a difference between self-control and a chilling effect on speech, though. I see no problem with someone being mindful about what they are saying and how they are saying it. I do see a problem with someone self-censoring a discussion or expression of an idea because of fear, especially fear of the government, or fear of other damage to their lives.

If people are afraid to express ideas simply because those ideas aren't popular (even if they aren't very controversial) I think the quality of discourse is lowered.

When a not-out member of the LGBTQ community can't enter a discussion or express something because doing so would tie that to their real name, having to self-censor because of a lack of anonymity becomes a problem.

I don't know that there is a perfect solution, either. Having full anonymity introduces other problems.

[seventhtiger]

Although that is conceptually sound, how far can we go when we suggest the Internet invented dissent? The biggest social changes in modern times happened before the Internet.