[unethical_ban]

In one thread I am defending anonymity online from government mandated ID laws.

Then I think to the persistent, malevolent, destructive lies that people spread with complete impunity and with faked video and photo evidence. This is not what the first amendment was designed to protect.

Wary of making government the arbiter of truth, I don't know what society should do to combat this evil. In a fantasy world where I were king, the person who ran this tiktok would be in jail.

[Aurornis]

This person wasn’t anonymous to TikTok. They were doing this for payments.

TikTok had their information! Voluntarily, too.

Forcing everyone to ID themselves to companies would not have changed anything about this story

> In a fantasy world where I were king, the person who ran this tiktok would be in jail.

Now take this thought one step further and imagine if the king was someone you disagreed with, putting people in jail for posting things they didn’t like. Imagine if the king disagreed with you. Straight to jail?

[unethical_ban]

That's why I said it was a fantasy, and why I didn't suggest it as policy.

There is such a thing as objective truth and objective lies, though, don't deny that.

[glasss]

Yes but in my fantasy world I'm the king because my morals and opinions are best for society. And of course I'll always be reasonable and never have a bad day or let my personal interests take priority over the good of my subjects.

Obviously this is just wishful thinking about governance that people have been saying for milennia. Socrates said philosophers should of course be kings / the ruling class.

There's no simple solution to creating a harmonious society, which of course leads people today and from thousands of years ago to say "Gee, wouldn't it just be nice if everyone listened to me about how to act and what to do when people get out line?". It's a fantasy, and a reminder that anyone wanting a benevolent dictator or to give up their responsibility of being a good citizen shouldn't be taken seriously.

But I do pinky promise I would be a good king if everyone wanted to give me a try.

[unethical_ban]

Right, it's a fantasy. Like I said in my original comment.

[autoexec]

> imagine if the king was someone you disagreed with, putting people in jail for posting things they didn’t like.

Which is why if we passed laws against this kind of thing they shouldn't make posting what the king doesn't like illegal. They should explicitly make it illegal to post disinformation harmful to others. It should work similarly to defamation laws where it makes no difference if you publish something someone else (king or not) doesn't like, as long as it's actually true.

[Legend2440]

This is a very slippery slope. Who gets to be the arbiter of truth? What if you think something is false, and then it later turns out to be true or at least undetermined?

What if you create all this infrastructure for regulating speech, and then the political winds shift and a strongman president ends up using it to suppress speech they don't like?

[autoexec]

> Who gets to be the arbiter of truth?

The same people who decide truth in a defamation case. Let's not pretend that truth doesn't exist or that it's impossible to determine. Anybody can make a factual error, or make a well-meaning post that turns out to be wrong, but that's not what we're talking about here. We're discussing accounts whose entire purpose is to spread harmful disinformation.

> What if you create all this infrastructure for regulating speech, and then the political winds shift and a strongman president ends up using it to suppress speech they don't like?

Again, if the law banning this practice is well written it will be impossible to do that within the context of the law. The fact that some hypothetical strongman president might be able to get away with suppressing speech by acting outside of the law, or might be able to pass other laws that allow for it, is irrelevant. They could theoretically do anything at anytime to anyone regardless.

[glasss]

I have the same dilemma. Privacy and anonymity has always been a top priority for me, but we can't excuse malicious actors, we shouldn't even accommodate people with good intentions but misguided means if the outcomes are so clearly detrimental to society.

I don't think there is a good answer without limiting freedoms in either direction, and I don't envy the people in government that are earnestly trying to do good for their constituents but are struggling with a solution.

[GaryBluto]

> This is not what the first amendment was designed to protect.

There is no codified constitution in the United Kingdom.

[graemep]

A reasonable compromise might be to require ID before payments are made to people.

In a lot of places this is required by KYC regulations anyway.

[wiseowise]

Don’t forget that not only they can do that, but they also disproportionate amount of damage (see US elections).

[AlienRobot]

You are conflating different things. Anonymous or not, people can post hate on the Internet. That's a question of moderation.

Personally I think it would be easier to just ban anything that is political altogether. Bluesky for example is 90% politics. Just because something can be allowed in some spaces on the Internet that doesn't mean it should be allowed on every single space. No reason for the "funny short video" platform to become a news/opinion essay platform.

[autoexec]

We need laws to stop this sort of thing for sure. I love the first amendment but we place sane limits on it all the time. This seems like one of those things cases where it's easy to draw the line and when people are being paid it's easy to trace the money to those responsible

[LorenPechtel]

Thought here: perhaps the answer is a restriction on promotion of material that doesn't expose a real identity.

[thomassmith65]

Pseudonymity is sufficient to curb most antisocial behaviour on social media. A site operator doesn't need to know a malicious user's name but the operator should be able to permanently block someone.

It isn't necessary for anyone to be the arbiter of truth, but some body should be the arbiter of good taste. That someone doesn't need to be the government; it can be the community. Since good taste is subjective, it should be defined democratically.

At this point in history, it seems that unless social media has a mechanism to promote civilised behaviour, society will lose the ability to advance and improve.

[lordnacho]

It's not that easy to block someone. It's easy to block a particular account, sure.

But there are now people who purposefully make a bunch of accounts to spread lies.

> that unless social media has a mechanism to promote civilised behaviour

We need more Dangs.

He is maybe the major reason this forum is still decent. Tasteful moderation is really hard, I'd say the vast majority of Reddit subs don't have good moderation.

[thomassmith65]

Anonymity leads to the multiple accounts issue. Pseudonymity addresses that. Eg: "We don't know the name of the person behind this identifier in real life, but we see we blocked them last year, so we will deny their request to open a new account with us"

You and I agree the moderation here on HN is fantastic. There is a minority of people who would prefer HN allow spam, bigotry, calls to violence, revenge porn, snuff content, etc. A large community - a nation, for example - should have the ability to 'tyrannize' an antisocial minority into enforcing some base level of standards. For example, at a minimum, to prevent a site operator from showing those types of content to users who do not specifically request them.

[encom]

>faked video and photo evidence

Yea, I've also watched mainstream news. Remember that time ABC showed "war footage" that turned out to be footage from some Kentucky gun range?

>combat this evil

Teach media literacy. I know this is utopian even as I say it, because you can't even teach people to close the door behind them, but I sure as hell don't want the government or anyone else to tell me what I'm allowed to read. That right is worth any cost. Any.