The title is accurate though. It has more than 100,000 signatures so will be "debated" (given a few words in small irrelevant parliament committee) and given a dismissive stock reply
It's a petition which Parliament is bound to consider, having passed the magic 100,000-signature threshold.
Petitions like this are usually a waste of time for everyone concerned, but the UK's record on digital rights is pretty dire so there's always a danger. The petition itself is the usual ill-thought-out think-of-the-children kneejerk, damaging and useless. (Besides throwing away the obvious benefits of anonymity, I can't see anything that would prevent UK-based trolls from opening an account via another jurisdiction.)
Hopefully there's enough backlash here to encourage people not to try anything like this. Sadly, I think it's very possible to legislature enforcing something along these lines in the next 5 years. Social media is culpable for a lot of the social pressure teens are under, and the obvious (albeit flawed) solution is to stop minors from using it. If we ever do reach such a dystopian reality, I hope teens can educate themselves on chat protocols like Matrix that can't be forced to add something like this.
> To make the law work needs the removal of anonymity to ensure that users cannot cause harm by using online platforms to abuse others. Where an offence has taken place they ought to be easily identified and reported to the police and punished.
Being mean isn’t a crime and it doesn’t stop just because a person is identifiable. Have you ever seen a Facebook comment section?
It's not exactly "in Parliament", either. "The Petitions Committee is set up by the House of Commons. It comprises up to 11 backbench Members of Parliament from Government and Opposition parties."
There have been 57 petitions debated so far and as far as I am aware, none have resulted in legislation.
This petition was created by a z list celeb in the UK who lived their entire life like an open wound. Not saying I disagree with the idea of real identities online (maybe one social network could make it mandatory to ID and others could focus on privacy). She’s not an impartial voice though (I do feel bad for the sh*t her family gets). Plus, I doubt it’ll go anywhere, the debates are largely pointless from these public petitions.
The absurdity of this debate is highlighted in the comments section of any newspaper article on Facebook. In them, you'll find real people using their real names, happily displaying to their local community what dreadful people they really are.
Real name policies do not stop abuse. But many voters will be swayed by their basest and most authoritarian instincts, and bring themselves to support yet another example of internet salami slicing by tech-illiterate governments who know all too well themselves that this has nothing to do with ending online abuse.
And why wouldn't they? The horror stories of online abuse are very real! But the consequences of trying to bubblewrap the internet have led to a place now where here in Australia a single un-elected bureaucrat is about to be given the power to scrub whatever she pleases from the internet with no recourse to users whatsoever.
I understand of course that this is just a petition that must be given lip service, but the tech community has got to realise that this sort of nonsense is not just going to go away. "Just use Matrix/Tor/I2P/IPFS/crypto-soup-du-jour" is really not a good enough response, unless we want an internet for crypto nerds (quickly banned in Australia, under penalty of secret trial and imprisonment, of course) and a separate normie-net for Netflix and state-approved cat pictures. What to do about it (above whinging about it on HN), I have no idea.
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[ 5.3 ms ] story [ 936 ms ] threadPetitions like this are usually a waste of time for everyone concerned, but the UK's record on digital rights is pretty dire so there's always a danger. The petition itself is the usual ill-thought-out think-of-the-children kneejerk, damaging and useless. (Besides throwing away the obvious benefits of anonymity, I can't see anything that would prevent UK-based trolls from opening an account via another jurisdiction.)
> To make the law work needs the removal of anonymity to ensure that users cannot cause harm by using online platforms to abuse others. Where an offence has taken place they ought to be easily identified and reported to the police and punished.
Being mean isn’t a crime and it doesn’t stop just because a person is identifiable. Have you ever seen a Facebook comment section?
This is not the UK government wanting to debate this, but they will debate it as it has reached 100,000 signers.
It's not exactly "in Parliament", either. "The Petitions Committee is set up by the House of Commons. It comprises up to 11 backbench Members of Parliament from Government and Opposition parties."
There have been 57 petitions debated so far and as far as I am aware, none have resulted in legislation.
I already pulled out of most social networks. If they asked for ID, maybe more people would get off facebook and twitter and instagram.
Real name policies do not stop abuse. But many voters will be swayed by their basest and most authoritarian instincts, and bring themselves to support yet another example of internet salami slicing by tech-illiterate governments who know all too well themselves that this has nothing to do with ending online abuse.
And why wouldn't they? The horror stories of online abuse are very real! But the consequences of trying to bubblewrap the internet have led to a place now where here in Australia a single un-elected bureaucrat is about to be given the power to scrub whatever she pleases from the internet with no recourse to users whatsoever.
I understand of course that this is just a petition that must be given lip service, but the tech community has got to realise that this sort of nonsense is not just going to go away. "Just use Matrix/Tor/I2P/IPFS/crypto-soup-du-jour" is really not a good enough response, unless we want an internet for crypto nerds (quickly banned in Australia, under penalty of secret trial and imprisonment, of course) and a separate normie-net for Netflix and state-approved cat pictures. What to do about it (above whinging about it on HN), I have no idea.
number of users perhaps; geographic distribution of users?
monetization, or for profit operation?