[headhasthoughts]

What could possibly be the harm in allowing people to harass others based on posts they made decades ago? What could possibly be harmful in making a person who for whatever reason has changed their online identity easier to track? What could be remotely harmful about allowing Marlboro to find the accounts of ex-smokers? What could be the harm in tracking underaged users site by site?

I'm sure this is completely harmless and will not harm society.

[lifeisstillgood]

I think this might be old age creeping up on me but I find it harder and harder to work backwards through "argument by sarcasm" to arrive at what you meant. I think clearly you are heartfelt in your views that having your identity online be a real one is bad - but I am not sure if that is because of posts you made years ago being linked back to you or nefarious advertising ?

The old posts issue is interesting- do you mean that there are posts from years ago you would find upsetting to be linked to you? Is this because you have chnaged your mind (a normal process society needs to understand) or because you said things thinking yiunweee anonymous that you would not have said under your real name? Far less of a social issue I think.

It does make for some interesting thoughts if we made everyone post under their real name.

[headhasthoughts]

My view isn't that accounts tied to real people are bad. It's that your lack of ability to think of cases where what you propose could be harmful points to a total lack of critical thought on your part.

The point that I am making is that it's incredibly easy to decipher why "track everyone under every identity they choose" can go wrong and lower the quality of discussion, and specifically, that it's so easy the fact you can't think of a single reason why it's a bad idea to completely eradicate privacy.

If I can find an alt of yours saying that you've quit smoking and then push tantalizing ads to you, you're going to bring me a better return than blind-firing into the American public.

If someone is looking for people who are easy to manipulate in borderline-illegal fashion (let's say, sex crimes), it's a cheat code if they see some throwaway account on HN comment on a post about the treatment of youth, "As a present high school student, I disagree with your statement because..." and track it back to a minor.

[lifeisstillgood]

I disagree that tracking leads to lower quality discussion - for example I know my name and identity is tied to this account and instead of responding to "lack of ...thinking" with an insult I am forced to come up with intelligent responses (now you try ... it's really annoying isn't it :-)

I also explicitly ask for real life examples and studies of harm - I can imagine and create examples but I much prefer the real world to my imagination as a guide. We learnt that as basis of science.

I also think there is a difference between privacy and secrecy. You seem to conflate the two - if your actions online were secret then advertisers would not send you smoking ads. Secrecy is probably impossible - privacy is merely the politeness of our neighbours. And at scale politeness is enforced - by social norms and sometimes legal measures. We are seeing this come in (GDPR) but it's hard to have legal enforcement before the social norms have arrived.

On the smoking ad front, Gabriel Weinbergs main argument is that searching for "red men's trainers" should be enough to serve ads without having to know if I am a 20 something graduate in wisconsin or a middle aged bloke in London. And I suspect he is right within a few percentage points.

As for online grooming -yeah this is a huge danger. Every parents nightmare. And still absolutely something that needs to be enforced in the real world. And may need extra police and social resources. But if we want to stop predators reaching out to vulnerable children then it requires co-ordination amoung many groups onleine and offline - funding, political will, training education over many years.

There will be no quick fixes for the problems tech is bringing - but I remain optimistic that the cost benefit ratio is worth it and that we can vote for and require change to defend against the dangers

which takes me back to my point - what are the real world examples of dangers so we can make sensible policy