[ACow_Adonis]

on the flipside, like with my Facebook account, i hold and use it purely so that i can control what other people say about me and so i can stop them tagging me in photos, and i can track what information the network has on me. but I'm never going to engage on the site, and I'm sure as hell never going to speak or share my true opinions on there or ever link them to my true name. here on hacker news i try to politely limit myself to certain topics and positions.

in my country (Australia), there's some irony that i think our biggest problem with "foreign influence" isn't Russian or Chinese troll accounts, but genuine American accounts, media and American social media companies talking absolute crap and spreading the general phenomenon and quality of American politics worldwide. anonymity and Russian trolls aren't the problem when your mainstream spread so much FUD worldwide and largely serves the same purpose as those trolls but in a "legitimate" form. American media has far more reach, both in absolute power, influence and damage, than any subtle espionage agent or internet troll, and its personalities and commenters are happy to use their real names because their medium of influence is "legitimate" and they're commercially/socially rewarded for doing so. It seems, given the state of things, that the obsession with "Russian trolls and foreign actors" is prima facie absurd, and the limited influence they actually have compared to the elimination of sane discussion or valid analysis and criticism that will similarly be removed if forced to link back to real identification is something that should be considered in any cost benefit, as well as their relative effect compared to the bullshit consumerism/ partisanship/culture-war/ racist/religious/lobbyists/violent material that's seen as somehow "legitimate".