Comment by teddyh
6 months ago
> But nowhere does it seem to consider that many of the bullies and harassers would only dare do so with an anonymous identity.
Have you seen Facebook? Anonymity does not, in any way, preclude horrible behavior and harassment.
Also, reducing the problem to “bullying and harassment” is frankly laughable, and gives rise to the suspicion that you at most only skimmed the page.
I'm sure you can find cherry-picked pages of Facebook people acting out. Likewise, you can browse /r/LinkedInLunatics. But the vast majority of interactions on these platforms are better than on anonymous and pseudonymous platforms.
Anonymity and pseudonymity are big enablers of bad behavior, since it shields reputational harm that would normally be incurred by engaging in that behavior.
I mean, public flogging also (arguably) reduces crime, but we don’t want to have it, for good reasons. Disallowing anonymity has a lot of negative effects for all but a select privileged few, as documented by the link I gave.
And again, I've read your link and found the arguments lacking. It doesn't consider the fact that much of the bad behavior it identifies is enabled by anonymity. I'm not sure how public flogging relates to anonymity. There are alternatives to public flogging, like incarceration. By comparison, the lack of accountability and lack of disincentive to engage in anti-social afforded by anonymity is inherent to anonymity. There's no way to get the same level of social responsibility in an anonymous space.
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