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?
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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.
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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
agree with all these points. another thing I think about a lot is: I have the benefit of having grown up with the Internet but before social media, and so all of my embarrassing teen content is long gone. can’t imagine having that follow you around for the rest of forever, tied to your real name, looked at by potential employers and being asked to defend it for the rest of your 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…
And it didn’t stop people from being shitty.
I am puzzled why this is always forgotten when this question comes up
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:
deleted by creator
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.
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.
This is difficult to argue with.
Arguing with it might get you banned so ya, tough to argue with.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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I think whistleblowers still need Anonymity to allow affective reporting, but I’m not sure that’s on social media sites.
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calling out or spreading information on bad industry practices is a pretty good example of an advantage.
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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?"
Hmm, I trust the government because I don’t have a choice. Same for my ISP. Same for MS, Google, LinkedIn. They all mine data to compile and sell for ads. I don’t really care, I don’t buy crap I don’t want.
A guy named ‘Jerry’ runs the instance my account is on. I guess I wouldnt care if he knew who I was. It would be nice if I knew exactly who he was since he owns all our data in his systems.
Abuse in mild forms is a matter of opinion. I’m indifference to data mining in return for free services because I don’t buy crap I don’t want. I mostly hate advertising because it’s a distraction and you never get more time. Ever.
Abuse towards identity theft already happens every moment of the day. If the government provided digital identity services that could be used to sign in everything, maybe I wouldn’t have to put my social security number into anything anymore.
The irony of having an account on infosec.pub and not understanding even basic needs for personal infosec.
Did you ever know a world without smartphones in your adult life?
What do you take issue with?
Hmm, I trust the government because I don’t have a choice
It’s my understanding that the Arab spring was partially possible because of social media like Twitter which allowed organized protests against the government.
Another huge problem with real names is internet creeps doxxing women. If teens go to extraordinary effort to uncover the real names of people like Boxxy, then there would be a huge increase in online stalking if getting a real name was trivial.
As to Jerry watching your instance, a volunteer doing Lemmy as a hobby means there would likely be huge security lapses as time goes on and Jerry can’t keep up with maintenance because of work/family obligations.
If you think real names are useful, then you could post your name and address right now instead of using a handle. It would be the start of a real name movement that is opt in instead of forced.
(The reason for name and address is to identify the unique John Smith from the other John Smith’s. Otherwise people with common names keep their anonymity and people with unusual names are identified. )
“I trust the government”
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I’d rather someone explain why they don’t like something then just down vote it. Seems lazy? I usually only down vote low effort or trash talk.
Seems you answered your own question
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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?
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”
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.
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.
