Ask HN: Throwaway accounts and comments

4 points by atarian ↗ HN
I notice a lot of topics tend to have people who create throwaway comments to post something anonymously.

What if people above a certain point threshold (like 700) were allowed to post anonymous comments?

4 comments

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Nah, you should always be punished for telling people what you really think.
Throwaway is for when I have something that I feel is important, that I just have to say, but I am afraid to risk the fake internet points that I worked so hard for.
This was my impression too. I think if there was anonymous commenting with a high point threshold, most people would consider it more seriously knowing it was by a top contributor. It would also weed out most of the trolls.
To me, throwaway has nothing to do with the fake internet points. It's for keeping my main account anonymous if I want to post a question or answer that could easily be used to identify me or link my primary account to one of my other pseudonymous Internet identities.