Comment by lifeisstillgood
3 years ago
How much should we fear de-anonymisation ?
A lot of discussion on the thread are over "how can we prevent this". I would like to know why should we not embrace this and similar technologies?
The benefits in my view are large - online behaviour tracks back to real life - and epidemiology speaking the value of millions of test subjects across every question are invaluable - from traditional medicine to "mass psychology recommendations"
I can guess some downsides (hiding from abusive exes) but am interested in studies, surveys, reports etc - any HN thoughts welcome
Fear it happening or fear its consequences? Doxxing already happens all the time, but the main tools are things like account names or image search, this sort of tool could take it to a new level. A simple experiment would be to run this same algorithm against another site (say Twitter or Reddit) and see if it can reliably pick out the same peoples' accounts there. Once anyone on the internet can quickly/easily draw that sort of connection it would require incredible diligence to avoid de-anonimyzation while still maintaining any sort of "real self" presence on the internet. How much we should fear the consequences probably depends a lot on how marginalized you are within your society, but since just revealing your gender is enough to invite harassment in many forums I'm not optimistic.
>online behaviour tracks back to real life
This is good to you?
Okay, let's just make it like China or SK where your login is your citizen ID and if you write bad things the bad word police will take you away.
Also, no, I have no alts.
So I am asking because my views are only challenged inside my own head, hence the need for external thoughts.
But firstly the "governments will come and do bad things" argument - yes this is clearly and obviously a major problem - but not one solvable by technology in anyway. Fixing violent dictatorships is a IRL problem - one that requires enormous effort and sacrifices (see Ukraine for obvious example). We cannot pretend that a browser extension or a ground up rewrite of Twitter will defeat Putin or would have stopped Hitler.
As for "free" countries (something like 120+ have open free elections), we still have online abuse for voicing opinions that some people don't like (anything from pro/anti Trump to LGBT and bitcoin etc). Those are real consequences but rarely government inspired and honestly I suspect we need better support for police in prosecuting such things - I mean a death threat is a death threat.
In general my view seems to be we should have the same protections online as we do offline - and if those protections are "in theory only" that requires us to use our voting and other political power to chnage it - not to obfuscate IP addresses or so on.
The upside of tech is so great it is worth spending IRL to defend agains the downsides
I am of the generation and mindset that online abuse is not real. Straight up. Log out, turn off the screen and watch Netflix, take a walk and calm down, block the offending user. It's not real.
>I suspect we need better support for police in prosecuting such things
We do see that! But mostly people on Facebook. Here we have had judgements of people who posted threats on Facebook because it is tied to your real name.
And yes, abuse is part of the "fun". Under your system, my 10 years old Leauge and CoD chats would have me locked up.
>I mean a death threat is a death threat.
Is it? I would find it more concerning if someone on the street tells me he is going to kill me than a kid on xbox live.
NOW there is a difference in systematic stalking and harassment online if I would get bombarded with DMs and messages to kys. I don't know how to solve. But a one-off comment is NOT equivalent. Then it feels like I'm just old? At 31? Is it really so serious?
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What could possibly be the harm in allowing people to harass others based on posts they made decades ago? What could possibly be harmful in making a person who for whatever reason has changed their online identity easier to track? What could be remotely harmful about allowing Marlboro to find the accounts of ex-smokers? What could be the harm in tracking underaged users site by site?
I'm sure this is completely harmless and will not harm society.
I think this might be old age creeping up on me but I find it harder and harder to work backwards through "argument by sarcasm" to arrive at what you meant. I think clearly you are heartfelt in your views that having your identity online be a real one is bad - but I am not sure if that is because of posts you made years ago being linked back to you or nefarious advertising ?
The old posts issue is interesting- do you mean that there are posts from years ago you would find upsetting to be linked to you? Is this because you have chnaged your mind (a normal process society needs to understand) or because you said things thinking yiunweee anonymous that you would not have said under your real name? Far less of a social issue I think.
It does make for some interesting thoughts if we made everyone post under their real name.
My view isn't that accounts tied to real people are bad. It's that your lack of ability to think of cases where what you propose could be harmful points to a total lack of critical thought on your part.
The point that I am making is that it's incredibly easy to decipher why "track everyone under every identity they choose" can go wrong and lower the quality of discussion, and specifically, that it's so easy the fact you can't think of a single reason why it's a bad idea to completely eradicate privacy.
If I can find an alt of yours saying that you've quit smoking and then push tantalizing ads to you, you're going to bring me a better return than blind-firing into the American public.
If someone is looking for people who are easy to manipulate in borderline-illegal fashion (let's say, sex crimes), it's a cheat code if they see some throwaway account on HN comment on a post about the treatment of youth, "As a present high school student, I disagree with your statement because..." and track it back to a minor.
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