[summerdown2]

People will increasingly censor themselves. Not everyone, maybe, but those with non-mainstream views will increasingly learn they need to guard what they say on the internet.

And slowly, the greatest meeting place we've ever had will lose its potential.

... that's my biggest fear, anyway.

On a straw poll amongst my friends many of us are already self censoring to some degree. And we don't have extreme views, either, we're just cautious about how things that we thought might be anonymous no longer are, how jokes might be taken out of context in the future or links made between accounts that are meant to be separate.

We are essentially moving towards the Panopticon Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon

> the essential elements of Bentham's design were not only that the custodians should be able to view the prisoners at all times (including times when they were in their cells), but also that the prisoners should be unable to see the custodians, and so could never be sure whether they were under surveillance or not.