1y ago

What If: No Social Media Anonymity (Edit)

Question for the masses because I'm curious:

What do you think social media would be like if there was no anonymity?

Is it fair to say some people behave differently online because of anonymity?

Would it be good or bad if everything you posted could be tied back to you by your friends, family, employer, etc?

Some obvious concerns people express:

personal safety
freedom to express views contrary to community, government, etc without retaliation
fear of stigmas related to support, education, etc for stigma topics like mental health, sexuality, etc

What reasons do you have for not wanting to own your online identity other than being able to talk trash without being identified? Some people are public and still talk a lot of trash, looking at you Twitter.

You you got doxed, what do you think the impact would be just related to social media conduct?

Edit: With the introduction of online protections for minors, how does that affect the question?

Not from a political standpoint but from a technology one, how do you see that even working?

68 comments

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.
- Good point. I chuckled at low effort trolling for a moment.

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
- Yep, there is already a great example of what would happen, and it pretty much proved what many of us believed: governments and employers used it as a surveillance tool, and it's not a replacement for a real content moderation strategy. People are just as happy to be cruel to each other and spread disinformation even if their real name is attached to it.
  
  I think it ruins too much. People have tentacles, each part of your personality needs to exercise, whether hobbies or romance or family, but those things don't need to see the other facets of you. It breaks the whole point of having multiple relationships and groups. We aren't just 1 thing and anything that limits us to that through transparent posting of everything publically is just horrible. I quit social media that has my name like 10 years ago. It was shallow and troublesome. I feel a little more isolated but I mean I would anyway at this point in my life
  
  Locking down social media to prevent employers from judging your whole life on some party post has definitely become a thing.
  It's harder to separate personal life from professional life if employers go through personal accounts.
  Government oppression is definitely a good example and would not be a desirable outcome.
- Yeah and then they ruined it by letting non people post. Like news, parody pages, interest groups...
- I am puzzled why this is always forgotten when this question comes up
- And it didn't stop people from being shitty.
- They didn't way back when I signed up.
  Later they started asking for it so I deleted my account.

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.
- That is super interesting. Not getting into the politics, Security Now podcast recently discussed two US child protection online related initiatives.
  From a technical perspective, I imagine it being difficult to both handle age proof, guardian proofing, and dealing with lack of anonymity. Part of why I posed the question.
  
  Precisely. The national ID number itself was easily to spoof using a simple formula, but the difficult part was actual the "adult" verification, which I presume it was done by consulting a government database with actual citizen info. It was very easy to leak, and it did leak a lot.

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?
- The phrase cognitive dissonance comes to mind.
  I like the idea of being accountable for your activities, for some it would cause some thoughtfulness. It's interesting to be able to scroll through a person's activity and see how they treat people, the reasoning and logic behind their thoughts, etc. Facebook has this. I don't think it counters much though. I feel like people double down on their views when challenged instead of reflection these days.
  However, as well mentioned previously, people publicly scream ridiculous stuff. It doesn't always prevent cyber bullying or curtail really convicted people from sharing unpopular, extreme, or hurtful things.
  It's sometimes nice to know who you are communicating with instead of a persona. I'm not a fan of deceitful context or misrepresentation. Opinions are funny. You ask a question, get a good answer, but have no idea who really said it. If you take advice from social media platforms, you might be taking advice from a kid, adult, senior, etc. There's interesting pros/cons with that.
  I think whistleblowers still need Anonymity to allow affective reporting, but I'm not sure that's on social media sites.
  calling out or spreading information on bad industry practices is a pretty good example of an advantage.
  Overall, I don't think there is as much idealistic positive effects on the social media experience as people might think/wish.
  
  You didn't answer the questions that the poster asked.
  " 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.
- I take your point. I might argue to swap conservatives with something like bigots. Quoting Ted Lasso: Every person is a different person
  
  Conservative ideology is based on bigotry. Always has been. The fact the Republican party has so easily and wholeheartedly embraced white supremacists, misogynists, rapists, etc, proves the point. Indeed, the de facto leader of conservatism in the United States proudly embodies all those things and more. All the while he is the clear leader in their presidential candidate race without even having to participate in the process. It is impossible to extricate conservatism from bigotry - if you're a conservative in the US you are a bigot either directly or through association. You know, the ol' ten people and a Nazi having dinner is 11 Nazis having dinner.
- That would apply to any minority opinion as well, like supporting Palestine today, or being opposed to Japanese internment camps during world war 2 or opposing the Iraq war. Or being opposed to COVID vaccine mandates or school closures. People get cancelled for this stuff all the time, and being able to speak freely is critical to derailing social movements that go too far, which they always do. Anonymity is a double edged sword, where it holds people accountable for hate speech, but also provides security to express opinions that are contrary to prevailing narratives, things that desperately need to be said.

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.
- not to forget the new most popular target: "ecoterrorists"

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.

- Why?
  Edit, location, I get that. That could be unsafe under certain circumstances, and it's sometimes hard to protect your location privacy.
- It has had shockingly few consequences so far

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.
- I don't necessarily disagree but those spaces/sites would have to be public. I don't want a private company determining whether or not I'm allowed to speak in a public space.
- That's how it is today. "walk" into a banking website and you need to prove who you are. And there are social media sites that do the same. I think truth social asks for a picture of your ID to verify you.
  
  The fact that the likes of Truth Social hoover up your personal information and documents is little surprise to me.

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.
- 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.
  Facebook proves the latter is more likely.

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??
- Well I don't want to commit suicide by shooting myself in the head, twice.

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.
- The problem there is that once you're doxed in one place, you'd be doxed everywhere. Also how do you prove you're the same person? Whatever info they hold to prove that is in one single location, which for security isn't great if they get hacked.
- Yes, enforced pseudonymity would work much better. You can have up to three, or some number, of identities, they're not linked to your info but they are all linked to each other.

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.
- All stories like this are super frustrating to hear.
  I've heard some stories where a person was targeted because of their social media handle being desirable. The anonymity part works both ways for both parties, sometimes, but I feel like it helps criminals more often than regular people.
  
  Well, every time a person isn’t attacked can’t be tracked.

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.

68 comments