Comment by defmacr0
8 hours ago
> Real life is not anonymous and consequence free either, why should online life be?
In real life you are largely anonymous if you go to any place that is not in your social circle. If I go to any physical store under the sun and pay in cash I remain completely anonymous. The only exception is staff checking your ID for alcohol etc. if you look underage, but that datum is only stored in one persons brain for as long as they bother to remember. Many people would take issue if the clerk noted every persons name when getting carded.
> what's so great about having complete online anonymity anyway?
Because liberal governments can always become repressive governments. Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future. Infrastructure that has a minor benefit under a "good" government, but would serve as a major tool of repression under a tyrannical regime should not be built out of principle.
As a thought experiment, ignoring issues with technical feasibility, would you approve if every person is only allowed to leave the house, under a stiff prison sentence for violation, if they wear a shock collar that can be activated remotely by a law enforcement official? That way, if police want to arrest you, they don't need to use violence and they don't have to chase you if you tried to run. It would make the police's job a lot easier, would it not?
> If we can make sure that every real person can only have 1 social media account per platform, and if we can check that someone is an adult, and if (and only if) we can do that in a privacy preserving manner... then honestly, I don't see why I would be against that. I'm ok with being held accountable for what I do online
To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing, realistically it'll just give a monopoly of influence to whoever controls/bribes the company or entity doing the verification. There certainly would be technical/cryptographic solutions where there isn't some central entity with a master key, but I doubt that it'll work like that anywhere, especially if it requires a citizen safeguarding his own keys.
> I want to pay that price to prevent the severe outside interference we've seen in elections and in our politics.
Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.
> You and many others might not be, but it seems like you've lost the argument.
It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.
> Unless you have absolute faith that your government will never do something you have a moral objection to, you can never be sure that anything you are, believe or do will not be censored or land you in jail in the future.
Any solution that can convince the Germans, the most privacy obsessed sticklers on the whole planet, has my support by proxy. If they think it's safe enough, it most likely is. Almost no other country has seen the dark side of what you're saying here as much as Germany, first with the Nazis and then in East Germany.
> To the extent that political discourse is shaped by astroturfing
Both Brexit and the Trump election have been significantly impacted by this, and it's not even controversial to observe that.
> Outside interference in the form of legal bribes (lobbying) and sometimes less legal forms of corruption has orders of magnitude more sway over politics than whatever the public may effect in elections.
Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.
> It's ridiculous to imply that there was any serious public debate on this.
There was no debate because almost no one in (for example) tech circles is even acknowledging the problem, let alone coming up with a solution. Give me a better solution and I would argue for that instead. The status quo is unacceptable.
https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/eu-age-ver...
> Perhaps, but that doesn't mean that we should not address the elephant in the room - the seriously degrading impact that social media has on our society.
I would argue that those crafting our policies are destabilizing society far more than social media, and that they, rather than social media, should be “regulated” (perhaps into a small cell).