[CharlesColeman]

This. There are both honest and dishonest reasons to seek anonymity. That tension makes this a very difficult problem to solve satisfactorily, in the context of liberal democracy.

The decision is much easier in authoritarian states, because authoritarians typically hate and fear honest domestic political dissidents even more than they do foreign information agents.

[tzs]

There is a difference between honest anonymity and dishonest anonymity that can probably be exploited to help.

People who need anonymity for purposes such as expressing opinions that could get them in trouble with their government, religious community, abusive family, employer, school, etc., generally do not need complete anonymity. They just need to be anonymous from the adversarial group that would penalize them for their comments.

Such people will usually be able to have contacts that they can trust with proof that they are legitimate, and who are sufficiently outside the influence of the adversarial group that they can openly vouch for the comments from the anonymous person without fear of reprisal, and openly explain how they verified the legitimacy of the comment author.

Certain contacts would probably end up being used by multiple anonymous commenters. For example, Amnesty International might serve as a contact for people who want to write anonymously about their government's human rights violations.

People who need anonymity for criminal activity or for disinformation campaigns would have a harder time finding a contact to vouch for them that their targets would trust.

[jrochkind1]

If the government finding out who you are would result in imprisonment or death, would you want to entrust your safety to Amnesty International's opsec practices? Against a state actor?