And I _can_ climb to the top of Mount Everest theoretically but it’s highly unlikely given the real world constraints.
I’d prefer a pragmatic solution and there is no pragmatic solution that gives us privacy back given the government and megacorps ability to pierce the vast majority of forms of privacy. The only thing anonymous speech is getting us currently is being manipulated by bad actors who are lying about their position.
I fundamentally do not want a world where I get the bad ends of both sides of semi anonymous speech where the government and megacorps know everything about me, but I just have to trust the account I am speaking to isn’t a bot or a worker in some foreign psyop shop, or even domestic psyop shop, lying to me.
I do not value free speech if it functionally disabled via the amount of lies permeating it. Free speech is useless if it’s nothing but a sea of “flood the zone” lies with the intent to make the truth unknowable, like how Russia or actors like Steve Bannon have manipulated the public square to be.
So much bad speech / misinformation is not anonymous, look at the kind of stuff the US President, Admin, and Gov't are proud posting, or the left/right-wing influencers. Forcing "papers please" on everyone is not going to meaningfully change the situation (imo). It will give the autocrats an inch and then they will take more. Eventually they will be able to police online speech.
---
From: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, Chapter 1 title & intro
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
I am not obeying in advance. My privacy was obliterated with the government before I could even vote, with the data science of mega corps, and with the double digit number of times companies leaked my data based on have I been pwned numbers.
I am not under the impression I have any sort of privacy on the internet anymore, other than from other regular civilians.
What I have to deal with is bots, foreign actors, and domestic actors all flooding the zone with lies that I cannot discern from the truth but that companies and the government can.
Making posting a non anonymous activity equalizes the playing field between me and governments/corporations.
If you are arguing that we should keep this thin skin of anonymity that doesn’t stop the bad actors, then I assume you just want them to keep power or that you don’t actually believe that they have managed to track our behavior.
And I _can_ climb to the top of Mount Everest theoretically but it’s highly unlikely given the real world constraints.
I’d prefer a pragmatic solution and there is no pragmatic solution that gives us privacy back given the government and megacorps ability to pierce the vast majority of forms of privacy. The only thing anonymous speech is getting us currently is being manipulated by bad actors who are lying about their position.
I fundamentally do not want a world where I get the bad ends of both sides of semi anonymous speech where the government and megacorps know everything about me, but I just have to trust the account I am speaking to isn’t a bot or a worker in some foreign psyop shop, or even domestic psyop shop, lying to me.
I do not value free speech if it functionally disabled via the amount of lies permeating it. Free speech is useless if it’s nothing but a sea of “flood the zone” lies with the intent to make the truth unknowable, like how Russia or actors like Steve Bannon have manipulated the public square to be.
So much bad speech / misinformation is not anonymous, look at the kind of stuff the US President, Admin, and Gov't are proud posting, or the left/right-wing influencers. Forcing "papers please" on everyone is not going to meaningfully change the situation (imo). It will give the autocrats an inch and then they will take more. Eventually they will be able to police online speech.
---
From: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, Chapter 1 title & intro
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
https://ia801505.us.archive.org/11/items/on-tyranny-twenty-l...
I am not obeying in advance. My privacy was obliterated with the government before I could even vote, with the data science of mega corps, and with the double digit number of times companies leaked my data based on have I been pwned numbers.
I am not under the impression I have any sort of privacy on the internet anymore, other than from other regular civilians.
What I have to deal with is bots, foreign actors, and domestic actors all flooding the zone with lies that I cannot discern from the truth but that companies and the government can.
Making posting a non anonymous activity equalizes the playing field between me and governments/corporations.
If you are arguing that we should keep this thin skin of anonymity that doesn’t stop the bad actors, then I assume you just want them to keep power or that you don’t actually believe that they have managed to track our behavior.