What If: No Social Media Anonymity (Edit)

People already post the most racist, hate inducing, vitriolic shit on facebook with their name and life history attached to it.

It might reduce some low effort trolling, but I don't think it will affect much.

So… Facebook?

There was a time when not revealing your identity was considered the safe way to be online, and telling strangers your name or personal info was taboo. Really, it was basic internet hygiene. The first push for real identities on social networks came mostly from advertisers, and those can go to hell.

Yes, some people abuse anonymity to be assholes with no repercussions, and obviously I am not okay with that. There should be ways to deal with those without forcing everyone to expose their identity to the whole world.

I will keep defending the right to anonymity. You only need one deranged maniac with different views on whatever, or trying to ruin your life for whatever reason to get into serious danger.

All oppressive governments strive for such laws. Sad day for whistleblowers and activists all around the world

I mean, Facebook did this already

I think this comic sums it up well:

https://www.butajape.com/comic/anonymous-a-hole/

There are countries like S Korea that used to demand new users national ID at signup (not anymore thankfully) and many websites, especially at the early 2000s, had your real name featured next to your nickname (following the tradition from their own national dial-up BBS forums). The argument was that revealing your real identity would make internet interaction more "civil".

Guess what happened. Identity theft was rampant, trolling was equally widespread, you think Facebook spearheaded mixing real name profiles and internet sewagery, you haven't seen anything like CyWorld from early 2000s.

The cases of identity theft ranged from minors borrowing their dads and uncles ID to actual Chinese hackers dumping massive records from the same Korean companies gathering them because of that stupid law. This was done so they could... access forums that demanded a valid national ID from a 18+ years old citizen, for example.

I was there, man. You'd find out your typical forum shitposter (that had surprisingly "ample" tastes) with a profile that says "46 y.o. male (ID verified)" is revealed as an elementary school kid using their uncles ID and gets banhammer'd. Monthly.

There is one more fear which might not be discussed, that is of identity theft.

It is easy to do it offline, but it is a lot easier online.

I’ll flip the question around: what are you trying to achieve with zero anonymity, and how could it be abused? Is the tradeoff worth it?

If real identity is required to participate, but is not publicly displayed, who would you entrust with this information, and how could it be abused?

Would be pretty awful for any minority group.

Queer kid in Idaho is going to have an even worse time trying to find community and such on the Internet when their identity is publicly associated with their activities. People would die. They would be murdered by conservatives.

Queer people would be denied a chance to explore their identities and find peers if they lived in an unaccepting environment. This would be particularly damaging to closeted queer kids.

Aside from the obvious privacy issues, which are definitely the main problems here, it isn't just users that behave differently. I've got several bans on Reddit that were literal bullshit, like saying a fascist Italy should be kicked out of NATO and the EU. Apparently this is "spreading hate", worthy of a permanent ban, despite the fact that both institutions require democratic foundations for their member states. Mods and admins are just as ridiculous, be it out of malice or simply incompetency. And once you're banned, there's nothing you can do. You can try to appeal but those are in almost all cases denied too.

But it also goes very much against the basic principles on what the internet was founded on. If we put some heavy identifiable restrictions onto internet accessibility then that's a very powerful tool of oppression. Maybe you trust you current government enough to handle that, right now. I personally don't. But even then, you never know what the next one will do. Tools of oppression like this, or AI based surveillance, could strangle any sort of meaningful resistance before it even gains the slightest bit of traction. Just look at how many far right governments had been gaining votes or even got into power over the last decade. Do you really trust those people to handle such tools with the needed responsibility?

That it would drastically harm queer people and those questioning their identity. Social pressure, fear and shame keeps people from asking certain questions or exploring their desires when it's potentially tied to them for life.

Look at the while concept of "queer appropriation" by celebrities. Their entire life is public and ironically while feeling themselves out and experimenting with new presentations, it's ironically met with backlash from some queer people thinking it's a capitalist ploy to appeal to queer fans.

Being able to just ask questions and explore is a fundamental part of understanding yourself. Anonymity is a precious gift, but one that is also easy to take granted.

Edit: Also religious folk.

It would put victims of domestic violence and other similar situations in a lot of danger. It would also paint a red x on the queer community, feminist activists, police reformists, housing rights activists, people opposed to war and genocide, so on and so forth. Meanwhile, Chase and his white supremacist buddies would continue to post their bile behind their real identities, just as they always have, and Mark and Elon would still sleep like babies.

Personally, sometimes I'm going to say things that are against the industry or specifically the actions of the company I work for. If my real name was shown someone could connect me to the actual business and they'd see me as some disloyal employee and not only would I not have a job, I could be blackballed by the industry because most businesses follow the same practices.

With this level of anonymity I can post my opinion about these subjects and not be calling out an individual company or connect the comment to myself in order to alienate myself from other potential employers.

If you spend enough time on Facebook, you'll see that there is no shortage of people that will happily write some of the most hateful stuff against either their own name or their employer/business. The guy that repaired my roof puts the laugh reaction against any local news article about LGBTQ+ or immigration, and recently commented "wtf" when our local football team changed it's badge to rainbow colours.

What I think will happen is that people will double-down on these hateful opinions, and if anything, become more militant in their beliefs.

Alongside this, one thing the internet has shown is that people are slow and unwilling to forgive. At some point, we've all written an opinion on something that people either disagree with or actively dislike. For many, having that follow them around for years might again be enough to make them more militant in their belief that they are right and you are wrong.

I think the 4chan hate trolling for funsies element would disappear, but I've seen plenty of hateful opinions posted by real people, under their real name, and next to a picture of their real face to think there'd be any real change in the world.

That sounds horrible, for common reasons, but also because I'd basically never comment or post again.

Already, I end up deleting more than half my comments before posting, and it was more like 90% on Reddit.

I need the mask, because it means I can just close the app. I can be wrong, or say something stupid, or catch the attention of someone who will cyberstalk me... It's enough to worry about what reaction I'll get and if this is what I want to say

I’ve always thought that it ought to be analogous to the real world. There are places in the real world where you can be anonymous, and the internet needs that.

But there are also public places on the internet. In the same way that there are laws to stop you walking into your local town square and starting to yell racist shit, there ought to be something that stops you doing that in the “town square” of the internet - i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube etc. Or at least, there should be a consequence to that.

I think that figuring out some kind of threshold beyond which a site needs to require an official, publicly visible ID could be of benefit, but agree that people will always need the opportunity for online privacy.

Much crime or just shitty activity that becomes possible once info is harvested. You don't need to be a minority to get targeted by scammers, businesses, corrupt govt. And while you are open to them, they would have an incentitive to get a fake ID or something or have none at all milking you. That saves them time and money.

Then the whole online sphere basically becomes like LinkedIn, where potential employers and your current employer can see everything you say, so you absolutely never say anything negative or remotely controversial ever, and actually saying anything at all is so risky than all you ever do is like other people posting a picture of themself under a bland life update.

I was having a conversation with a friend about this just the other day, in fact. I feel that it would make a lot of things better, but a lot of things worse.

Privacy would essentially boil down to normal internet users, and then the illegal ones. I feel a subset for illegally obtained identities would probably be par for the course. So how to actually enforce this seems really hard to conceptualize. At least for me.

On one hand, I think trolls would either scamper away for fear of actually being held accountable for the things they say, or they'd double down and be even more bold.

It would also enable stalking/harassment/potential violence towards those that are just going about their day.

So I think it would absolutely make terrible people be held personally accountable for all they write/post online. But unfortunately, it would absolutely endanger those that don't want to cause chaos and be trolls and join hate groups and stuff.

Lots of good. But way too much danger to those that just want to talk about their favorite anime or whatever.

This is not the way the CIA and secret services all over the world works, I mean do you expect agents to have a "Working as Secret Services agent at CIA" in their bio info with a history of all the stuff they publish online??

Just read a thing about how persistent usernames may work better than actual ID. Of course, I don't have a link, and I'm not finding anything on Google right now, but as someone who uses the same handle across multiple services, which makes my activity traceable, but not necessarily to my real identity, I definitely think there's something to that.

One time on Reddit I said guns were bad, and some nut job looking for a fight tracked me down because my username (at the time) was able to identify me with enough effort. They threatened lots of stuff on various communication methods. Fortunately, I had just moved states, so all their efforts were concentrated on the wrong area. So now I’ve made an entirely new identity for social media. I never post personal things, like where I’ve been recently, or even simple things like places I like to eat. On one hand, if it were not anonymous, I would have had a better chance of identifying them. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been able to make a new identity.

I’ve thought occasionally about how there could be real accounts, but there are so many dangerous reasons for it that I don’t think it would end up working in the end.

I live under a rock. I just had to look up who Nikki Haley was. This question was not initiated by a political view, but I guess it will be.

Side note, I don't mind the idea of algorithms or decisions being public though.

I think there should be two parallel networks:

• anonymous one run by private corporations or volunteers with heavy moderation and the company taking full responsibilityp for anything posted there. pretty much what EU is trying to establish. You want to make money of anonymous posts? You take financial responsibility for making sure there's nothing illegal on the platform. You could still have right leaning sites but with no misinformation or harassment. Fedivers instances that notoriously post illegal content would get the same treatment as neo-nazi sites.
• publicly owned platforms (like mastodon instances) available for everyone for free but with no anonymity: you want to make something public, complain about something or simply interact with normal people you can always go there. Less moderation would be needed so it would be cheaper to run. Users will be responsible for the things they post, not the platform.

This way if Twitter is unable to moderate their content you block it and people would have public instances as an alternative. We would see if running a platform like that with proper moderation is still profitable. If not they would start charging people or shut down. I don't think losing sites like Facebook or Twitter would a big problem if we had public alternatives.