Comment by freakynit
4 days ago
Why does there seem to be a growing push to tie real-world identity to nearly everything we do online? The justification is almost always "safety". I know this trend has been developing for years, but over the past couple of years it feels like it's accelerated globally.
There's strong political backing for it now.
Online anonymity makes it harder for TPTB to punish dissidents.
Before we had mainly one excuse: to protect the kids
Later we got a new one: to reveal Russian shills/propaganda bots
Now we also have: to filter out AI slop
Any problem the internet experiences will eventually become an excuse to eliminate online anonymity.
I think people in power have realized the impact of misinformation campaigns. And to be fair, western countries have proved to have the resilience of a wet paper bag against foreign influence and private interests.
I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here. A move back to the early 2000s internet would be the ideal middle ground, which requires separating social stuff from informational stuff, and both from engagement algorithms. I have no idea how we’re supposed to put that genie back in the bottle.
And to be clear I’m not saying this as vouching for the current push, I hate it as well.
Yeah, propaganda works, and the US wants to stop foreign propaganda, but the problem is they still want to push their own brand of US biased propaganda so they can't put in any sort of useful journalistic standards requirements upon media conglomerates or it will tie their own efforts up in court and lawsuits.
> I honestly can’t imagine a good solution here.
"just stop" is a good solution. Stop asking for ID, stop pushing for apps, just stop the general trend towards https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification .
Yes, misinformation is a problem. Deanonymization is a bigger problem. If you can't say anything anonymously, it becomes much more difficult to fight entities bigger and more powerful than you.
I agree, but that isn’t a good argument to offer to the entities bigger and more powerful than me.
Governments and companies feel a pressing threat of a trump-like populist overtake in each country. They need the bots, fake socials and slop stopped yesterday. An abstract degradation of freedom of speech isn’t going to cause pause.
There is a national security argument that I think is more likely to help, at least for non Americans. Do you want a foreign power to have control over your citizens phones being functional?
2 replies →
I think one major issue is the shortening of people's attention spans. People consume snippets of information that show a tiny fraction of the full story. They don't spend 10 minutes reading an article or watching a video, with a few exceptions. More people probably watch clips of Jon Stewart than actually watch his show. I think we ought to start addressing that issue, and see how it affects the efficacy of misinformation campaigns.
"Misinformation" usually meaning information the people in power would rather you don't get to see and make up your own mind about.