The proposal seems like it would do a lot more harm than good. Users who live in a dictatorship would have one of the biggest channels to tell their story stripped from them.
Problems sure are easy to solve when you look at them through a toilet-paper tube, in isolation from everything else the solution might affect.
If they can be stripped of anonymity, they did not have anonymity in the first place. But it is telling that she notes "Workers are far less likely to sexually harass fellow employees", but does not connect it to how workers might get retaliated against for trying to unionize, when every union advocate online can be identified. To say nothing of whistle-blowers. Want to publicize the abusive conditions in a prison? Be prepared to "own your own words" and expose your relatives incarcerated there to retaliation.
Of course, this solution fails to pass even the toilet-paper tube standard - what about (potential) harassment victims that use anonymity as a shield? Are they to trust in the benevolence and competence of whatever multinational corporation they will hand their real identity to, to be allowed to participate in the online public sphere? When every month we learn of some new giant hack, and who knows how many happen that we don't learn about?
I cannot begin to express my disgust for an 'expert genius' that fails to consider even such elementary consequences.
> In 2007, numerous bloggers were censored and their posts deleted by police for expressing criticism of, or even support for, presidential candidates. This even led to some bloggers being arrested by the police. Subsequently, in 2008, just before a new presidential election, new legislation that required all major Internet portal sites to require identity verification of their users was put into effect.
I think this legislation may have been overturned by their Supreme Court, but there's shockingly little reporting of this in western media. So of course it would be too much to ask of an 'expert genius' to be aware of how such things turn out in practice.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 26.5 ms ] threadFighting a dictatorship is just a matter of making the public lies so absurd that support is lost for their propaganda.
Cyberbullies only use believable common lies and rumor.
Taking away anonymity from platforms always governments to target any individual that steps out of line.
If they can be stripped of anonymity, they did not have anonymity in the first place. But it is telling that she notes "Workers are far less likely to sexually harass fellow employees", but does not connect it to how workers might get retaliated against for trying to unionize, when every union advocate online can be identified. To say nothing of whistle-blowers. Want to publicize the abusive conditions in a prison? Be prepared to "own your own words" and expose your relatives incarcerated there to retaliation.
Of course, this solution fails to pass even the toilet-paper tube standard - what about (potential) harassment victims that use anonymity as a shield? Are they to trust in the benevolence and competence of whatever multinational corporation they will hand their real identity to, to be allowed to participate in the online public sphere? When every month we learn of some new giant hack, and who knows how many happen that we don't learn about?
I cannot begin to express my disgust for an 'expert genius' that fails to consider even such elementary consequences.
> In 2007, numerous bloggers were censored and their posts deleted by police for expressing criticism of, or even support for, presidential candidates. This even led to some bloggers being arrested by the police. Subsequently, in 2008, just before a new presidential election, new legislation that required all major Internet portal sites to require identity verification of their users was put into effect.
I think this legislation may have been overturned by their Supreme Court, but there's shockingly little reporting of this in western media. So of course it would be too much to ask of an 'expert genius' to be aware of how such things turn out in practice.