[akie]

This is a very libertarian and ultimately low-trust forum where most people seem to think the government is out to get you, but I have to say: what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway? I mean, seriously. Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be?

It's not as if there are no downsides. There are, and some of them are so severe that they are impacting the whole of society.

People can impersonate to be 500 or 5000 or 500000 people from another country and all echo some detrimental or even treasonous sentiment, critically influencing and steering voters, which changes politics and election outcomes and thereby the trajectories of whole countries. I cannot understate how serious that is.

If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online. I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics.

You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.

[bigjimmyjohnson]

Just off the top of my head, what if I want to use reddit mostly to talk about mundane things like local events in my city or technology and don't really care if that ties back to me, but I also want to ask about embarrassing health problems or just weird shit and I would rather not have that tied back to me? I should have no options without everyone in the world being able to easily find out about it?

If some sites like Facebook want to be real-name only, that's fine. People can use Facebook for that if they choose. But don't ban alternatives for people who want alternatives.

[monssooon]

Isn't the entire idea that all sites and use of the internet should be tied to your real identity. Of not publicly displayed then at least verifiable by the state

[bigjimmyjohnson]

Yes, and that's why it's a bad idea. I have no problem with sites tied to your real identity, such as Facebook, existing. In fact when I was younger, Facebook was quite useful for finding people I met in real life and connecting later. I just think it would be very bad to mandate such a thing should be mandated by law.

[akie]

Which alternative measures do you propose to counter the society destabilising effects I've described in the original comment?

Because I believe there are none.

[bigjimmyjohnson]

People will go nuts even with their real names. People will lie even with their real names. See: Facebook. Doesn't stop shit. So don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Even if you are not American, HN is very tied to American culture, so I assume you dislike either Trump or Biden (or both). Which one should be able to arrest people more easily for their online posts? https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg7pyjxjxrvo

Are you a big fan of Peter Thiel? If not, why give him more power and money? https://www.openrightsgroup.org/press-releases/roblox-reddit...

Cementing Trump and friends' power may be considered some form of stabilization, but it's not one that I'm a fan of.

[ImPostingOnHN]

I'm not convinced that the status quo needs changing. Can you make a case with statistics?

[AlienRobot]

It used to be that real life was anonymous, then people started pointing cameras to everyone in public all the time. Now they want to deanonimize communications you make from inside your private residence.

Eventually you'll get a chip implanted in your brain that just sends everything you see and hear to the cloud. Because why not? Privacy doesn't matter anyway!

[defmacr0]

> Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be?

In real life you are largely anonymous if you go to any place that is not in your social circle. If I go to any physical store under the sun and pay in cash I remain completely anonymous. The only exception is staff checking your ID for alcohol etc. if you look underage, but that datum is only stored in one persons brain for as long as they bother to remember. Many people would take issue if the clerk noted every persons name when getting carded.

> what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway?

Because liberal governments can always become repressive governments. Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future. Infrastructure that has a minor benefit under a "good" government, but would serve as a major tool of repression under a tyrannical regime should not be built out of principle.

As a thought experiment, ignoring issues with technical feasibility, would you approve if every person is only allowed to leave the house, under a stiff prison sentence for violation, if they wear a shock collar that can be activated remotely by a law enforcement official? That way, if police want to arrest you, they don't need to use violence and they don't have to chase you if you tried to run. It would make the police's job a lot easier, would it not?

> If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online

To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing, realistically it'll just give a monopoly of influence to whoever controls/bribes the company or entity doing the verification. There certainly would be technical/cryptographic solutions where there isn't some central entity with a master key, but I doubt that it'll work like that anywhere, especially if it requires a citizen safeguarding his own keys.

> I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics.

Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.

> You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.

It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.

[akie]

> Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future.

Any solution that can convince the Germans, the most privacy obsessed sticklers on the whole planet, has my support by proxy. If they think it's safe enough, it most likely is. Almost no other country has seen the dark side of what you're saying here as much as Germany, first with the Nazis and then in East Germany.

> To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing

Both Brexit and the Trump election have been significantly impacted by this, and it's not even controversial to observe that.

> Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.

> It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.

There was no debate because almost no one in (for example) tech circles is even acknowledging the problem, let alone coming up with a solution. Give me a better solution and I would argue for that instead. The status quo is unacceptable.

https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...

[iamnothere]

> Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.

I would argue that those crafting our policies are destabilizing society far more than social media, and that they, rather than social media, should be “regulated” (perhaps into a small cell).

[defmacr0]

> Any solution that can convince the Germans, the most privacy obsessed sticklers on the whole planet, has my support by proxy. If they think it's safe enough, it most likely is. Almost no other country has seen the dark side of what you're saying here as much as Germany, first with the Nazis and then in East Germany.

As a German citizen myself I argue that the more correct view of this is that the Germans are going back to their fascistic roots.

> Both Brexit and the Trump election have been significantly impacted by this, and it's not even controversial to observe that.

Yeah and most of that online chatter that made that happen originated from adult citizens that would not be blocked by online identification laws.

> Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.

Well if you agree with my point then that would imply that foreign social media influence operations are not actually the elephant in the room. I think a convincing case that these measures would meaningfully improve the political climate has a much higher burden of proof.

> There was no debate because almost no one in (for example) tech circles is even acknowledging the problem, let alone coming up with a solution. Give me a better solution and I would argue for that instead. The status quo is unacceptable.

This "well we must do something" attitude where people are willing to accept anything that promises to solve some problem is how the worst laws are created. It's easy to forget that things can always be made worse too.

[monssooon]

Unfortunately I think most normies is thinking like this. And buy into the idea that we must all give up what we have so far considered freedom ideals because the bad guys will get us if we don't.

In my opinion this is just blind compliance and misunderstood trust in a system which is changing rapidly.

People that came before us have fought hard for these rights and if I'm not mistaken the us was founded on these rights.

I'm not saying that we should allow criminals to take over and I know crime is rampage but if we give up our liberties, what are we then fighting for.

I think the ideas the leaders are proposing have been shown not to work in history. Like east Germany and Similar...