Comment by Manuel_D
6 months ago
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.
> By comparison, the lack of accountability and lack of disincentive to engage in anti-social afforded by anonymity is inherent to anonymity.
Possibly. One could argue that the problem is not nearly as closely linked to anonymity as you argue it is, but even if it was, we would still need to have anonymity, including all its drawbacks, in order to make participating in the public sphere possible to all, instead of being restricted to a privileged few.
> There's no way to get the same level of social responsibility in an anonymous space.
You do know that this very forum qualifies an an anonymous space, right?
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