[scoopertrooper]

Regardless of the morality, I suspect that it will prove to be quite efficacious. Banning this kind of nonsense from mainstream platforms will certainly not reduce the toxicity of the existing radicals, but it will curtail their ability to spread their message and recruit.

These movements did not materialise out of a vacuum. Their growth and replenishment of strength is largely contingent on permissive mainstream platforms on which to set up shop.

I think platforms like Youtube and Facebook have shown the dangers of democratised mass-broadcasting. There were dreams at the dawn of the internet that enhanced access to information would create a better informed citizenry, but rather it has just exacerbated our worst traits as a society.

I don't know what the solution is really. The current situation is untenable in America, but how does one unpick it without resorting to totalitarianism? I'm somewhat partial to ending anonymity on social media posts, so at least people must stand publicly by their positions and can't create sock puppets to inflate their message.

[FreeTrade]

Pseudo anonymity is probably fine, but web-of-trust solutions to help quarantine armies of sock puppets and manipulators would be really useful. Can't imagine why Twitter/FB won't implement. (Ok. I can imagine)

[chongli]

Doesn’t Facebook already have a quasi-WOT? People on Facebook generally see the posts of their friends and those they follow, plus ads. That doesn’t stop fake news from rippling through the social graph.

How would a “true” web-of-trust be superior?

[scoopertrooper]

I can't see any benefit to even pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media in a free society. If your message has a reach on the order of hundreds of thousands of people, then you should be able to stand by what you say.

[stale2002]

Let's say the government does something bad. Say it starts an unnecessary war or something.

I want people to be free to criticize that without being worried about being targeted by the government or it's supporters.

It is extremely important that people are free to criticize the government, while being as immune as possible to retaliation for that criticism.

[scoopertrooper]

If it gets to the point where we have to fear the government retaliating against us, then that government would have probably already shutdown or blocked the popular social networks.

[colordrops]

It's not a binary development. There are stages to getting to that point.

[stale2002]

Do you think this is new or something?

The government has a documented history of retaliating against people regarding speech issues.

There was a long period, know as "the red scare" in which this happened.

There are many forms of "in between" retaliation, that is in between a democracy and an authoritarian government.

And it is important to also protect people against these in between consequences, by allowing them to be anonymous.

We don't have to straw man the situation, and talk about a dictatorship that kills people.

Instead, we can also say that lesser forms of retaliation are also bad, such as the kind that happened during the red scare.

[scoopertrooper]

The red scare didn't end with the advent anonymity, but rather it was ended by the checks and balances within the government belatedly stepping up to the plate.

Joe McCarthy was censured by congress and fell out of political favour. Furthermore, the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions that greatly reduced the scope of the government's ability to penalise supporters of communism such as: Yates v. United States, Scales v. United States, and United States v. Robel. This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society, rather than coming up with elaborate mechanisms to hide our views from the government.

[kiba]

No, they showed the danger of popularizing and amplifying the most virulent messages, which usually are hatred and paranoia. If it were just a randomly uploaded youtube video that showed up on the front page, it would be much less likely to be picked up.

Instead, we have the possibility of the recommendation engine recommending videos en-mass.

[bccdee]

Doxxing and harassment are already huge problems on the internet; a zero-anonymity policy would be terrible for marginalized groups because it would make spokespeople and activists extremely vulnerable. Imagine that whenever you said anything on the internet, every Trump supporter with a phonebook could find out where you lived. Then imagine you're (eg) trans.

Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely unafraid of attaching their names to their beliefs. Just look at the stuff people say on Facebook. And consider that you don't need to publish your name in order to listen to a far-right ideologue -- only to be one. And it doesn't take many ideologues to reach a large audience.

I don't know that there is a solution, outside of "encourage platforms to effectively deplatform bad actors." This has been successful in the past in dealing with movements which recruit heavily through social media, like ISIS — the difference is that social media companies have feared partisan backlash from conservatives if they apply these strategies against the far right.

This risks suppressing free speech, but I think this entire issue is a result of us wanting to treat social media companies as perfectly neutral universal forums. The notion of unbiased platforms needs to be abandoned, and social media monoliths need to be split into distributed, federated platforms, like email or Mastodon. This way, platforms can moderate to their heart's content: excessive moderation of any particular instance is less of an issue because users can always move to a different, better instance, but people who were justly banned will be isolated from the general public in their own servers.

This model will have challenges, foreseen and unforeseen, but it's got to be better than the current media oligopoly. At the very least, it's progress.

[scoopertrooper]

To be clear, my comments were limited to mass-broadcast over social media. If people want to form small clubs within which to share lived experiences without fear of societal retribution, then I'm fine with that.

> make spokespeople and activists extremely vulnerable

As you've demonstrated, anonymity is an imperfect system of protecting such spokespeople, so they should have greater legal protections. Reducing the spectrum of internet anonymity would actually support this goal as it'd simplify applying existing legal protections such as restraining orders within the internet domain.

> Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely unafraid of attaching their names to their beliefs. Just look at the stuff people say on Facebook.

Perhaps, but that far right ideology must receive social promotion through 'likes', 'shares', and other such mechanisms in order to spread their message. Why is it necessary for these acts to be anonymous?

I sincerely don't understand how further decentralisation or federation could help resolve the problem. It just seems to me like you'd be making the moderation problem harder as you'd be shifting the burden from a few large companies to many small companies.

[bccdee]

You're advocating to remove any ability to communicate anonymously online with the intent to shame reactionaries into not saying reactionary things. What you don't understand is that the reactionaries think they're right, and they're proud of their beliefs. They flaunt them; they print them on hats and wear them around. They have no shame.

Meanwhile, the people who are actually threatened by this are the people reactionaries are victimizing — closeted gay and trans people, for instance. They lose their ability to find supporting communities online because as soon as they engage with a forum like that, such as for instance a relevant subreddit, their participation is broadcasted to everyone they know in real life. It's easy to say "they should have greater legal protection," but they already have legal protection. It's already illegal to murder trans people for being trans, but trans people are nonetheless subject to a massive number of hate crimes. Isolating these people and making it impossible for them to reach out when they're in abusive home life situations is a terrible policy.

And this is just one example of a group for whom the loss of online anonymity would be hugely damaging. You've massively underestimated the harm which being de-anonymized online can cause (that's why "doxxing" someone, or releasing their personal details online, is such a serious threat to their safety).

[toofy]

> I think platforms like Youtube and Facebook have shown the dangers of democratised mass-broadcasting.

Does anyone know of any good research on the early days of radio? I have a suspicion we had a similar problem before regulation due to the overcrowded airwaves.

If you know of any good books that cover this era let me know please.