There are similar moves to "make people accountable" for their online actions in the west as well; only the details differ, the motivation is the same -- structural control of online activities and content.
people are and always have been accountable for their actions both online and offline, that's how things are done in any country with the rule of law. The issue is of course what activities and what content and whether lawmakers are accountable to the people. The internet is not a magical land of anarchy.
The Internet has magical lands of anarchy like the dark web, but the fact that the security and anonymity are fairly symmetrical adds a layer of protection for the one visiting these lands. There's also an awareness that the information in these regions is even less trustworthy than random stuff from the clearnet since you know literally nothing about it.
To me "post publicly" has to be contextually understood. The set of people who need to be psueodonymous is certainly non-zero, but even as a small cohort represent an exception to the norm. The set of people who need to be anonymous is highly specific, to me. It's people with legal obligations to them or from them, people at risk of harm. It's not "I feel like my free speech demands this" -note the use of "need" above. "want" is fine. I get that many people want things.
Most normal discourse, in the wider space, I believe even if you have a self chosen tag, your identity should be knowable, if some things arise. I can handle that its a high barrier to entry (to uncover it), but the supposition all posts all the time have complete anonymity, simply because you assert you want it, that the supposition fails for me.
This causes free-speechers a lot of grief. My personal view is informed by many many years participating in national and international forums discussing what hate speech does, and what free speech means. Inside any cohort who are typified as "wanting anonymity" you find people who also suffer the consequences of being targetted by anonymous hate. I don't see how to reconcile speech rights, with harm minimisation except by requiring identity, even if hidden behind a veil.
I appreciate this has chilling effects. I kind-of go to that if it chills the "shout fire in crowded theatre" thing, its done it's job.
I also appreciate its not free speech in the wider sense, and it may not even be capable of being free speech in the narrower senses for a lot of people. I think reductionism over free speech is one of those things which really falls down a hole. Almost all 'there is no constraint on my speech' claims fall over when it comes to national security (for instance)
I'm pretty sure the EFF people won't agree with me, and I mean them no disrespect. Or a lot of the IETF human rights and privacy people: likewise, I mean them no disrespect. I just come to a different conclusion from free speech reductionists, when it comes to societal/wider harms, from the lack of functional constraint on online speech, and identity issues relating to online speech.
The chinese social credit scheme is horrid. The consequences for chinese citizens of unconstrained speech, and identity is also awful. So I know there are strong counter cases to what I say.
Anonymous speech is important for anti-corruption. The Washington Post's Watergate investigation would not have taken place without the anonymous sourcing by "Deep Throat."
I'm not an expert on the matter, its a little before my time, but I think a journalist went on the record and reported than an anonymous source told him of X, Y, and Z.
I don't know about the US, but I believe in some jurisdictions the newspaper and the journalist risk lawsuits if the information they report is a lie.
Other than a direct threat or call to action that involves direct threats, how is speech "harmful" - sure, sometimes I get my own tyrranical bents and wish that certain things would be better left unsaid, but realistically, what is "harmful speech" besides someone with particular foul breath?
This is probably not the worst idea. Would mean a lot of sites go invite only though. Which might be an improvement but it does lower accessibility though.
And I don’t think it would be enough for the modern wave of political censorship. It isn’t enough to just not look at content you don’t like, you have to ensure others can’t see it either.
Stuff like semi private discord servers for example are being targeted.
Then why are you on HN? HN is a great example of where people can speak honestly and respectfully without worry of recrimination from companies or governments.
The greatest damage ever done by speech (i.e. motivation to start wars, genocides) has been done by fully identifiable people. Anonymous online speech is a total red herring. All current major threats are due to fully non-anonymous people doing bad things (e.g. Putin, heads of cartels, the current head of $terrorist_group), not anonymous online commenters.
Conversely, one of the greatest threat to authoritarians is speech that cannot be easily traced. Hard to put you in prison (or cross international borders to kill or capture or threaten you) if you're anonymous.
What if your online comment is discussing the latest example of police corruption you've seen in your local PD? That would be a very local example of where not being anonymous may easily threaten you, but being anonymous can still let others start investigating.
You could tell the "investigators" directly and anonymously. That way if your comment about police corruption was not true, nobody would be fired for no reason. That is precisely the point.
No point discussing the speech of criminals like Putin, lies are just the tip of the iceberg.
> The greatest damage ever done by speech (i.e. motivation to start wars, genocides) has been done by fully identifiable people
I think your information might be out of date. The Rohingya genocide is a good example of a modern genocide incited on Facebook by regular humans and bots.
In modern cases such as Brexit, Trump, various far right candidates (Zemmour, Bolsonaro), a massive amount of people/fake people on social media talking about them, their talking points (ludicrous and false as they are) have brought them their success, despite the obvious massive red flags.
Was the harm "being fired" or was the harm the "false accusation"?
Because I can think of plenty of things others do that get people fired, without any falsity to it. Should we prosecute calling up someone's employer and urging them to fire them?
Yeah, I was thinking about this when writing a comment above. If somebody outted you as Gay and you were fired from your job in a Catholic School, I would say the speech has harmed you. It might be true, but still harmful.
I guess it gets a little muddy because the speaker could claim they made the world a better place by revealing your secretes, that the lie told to the school in the first place makes revealing the lie justified.
I care more what happens to me, than what I care what happens in a random part of the world. You may not like it, and it may not suit your agenda, but it do be like that.
Clueless people will happily trod down this path and not see where it leads. People who’ll say things like “people should use their real names online and be held accountable!” go silent when the places mandating this are the ones killing people for saying the leader is a flawed human or because someone didn’t properly cover their hair.
VPN bans make the oppression inescapable. You see who the real dangerous people are when those who’ll still defend it come out.
It’s easy to think these dangers are just “over there.” It’s important to remember these things will happen here if we’re not careful.
The point is that if we don't resist internet censorship here in the west, for which the pressure is building up, there won't be a free internet Iranians could connect to using a VPN.
5 days ago, HN admins have removed a post about the desastrous effects of liberal policies (shock doctrine) on Kirghistan economy and societal fabric adopted after the collapse of Soviet Block.
I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.
Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.
Political articles that are very likely to devolve into mudsling fests are regularly nuked from hn, as I'm sure you and everyone who uses the rss feed knows. I'm frankly fine with that. It's not the focus of this site. Occasionally those articles are pretty interesting, and then I'm happy I see them from the rss, but usually I can see why they were removed.
Posts about divisive ideological topics are often (in fact usually) low-quality and lame, so it's natural for them to be downvoted or flagged. That's to be expected on a site that is trying to hover at least a little above internet default, with its flames and its rages and its repetitions.
People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.
I know my position on the topic is a little controversial, but I wasn't deliberately trolling, I do genuinely believe what is wrong with today's internet is a lack of accountability.
TV, newspapers, books, magazines were all held accountable for spreading disinformation and harmful speech. I think we need the same protections on the public facing internet.
When I was reading about Internet censorship in Iran and what they have done in recent years, it made me think of WhatsApp.
They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp.
Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, discussing and sharing in groups. Basically everything is blocked now and this new development is most likely a temporary thing until they can handle the protests.
But isn't the fact that they haven't blocked WhatsApp in these years suspicious? Maybe they have access to NSO's Pegasus spyware or something similar. I don't think NSO would sell it to Iran considering NSO is an Israeli company, but they could still do it by using a middleman and not letting NSO know who the real customer is. Or maybe they developed a similar tool themselves because they have the motivation and the money to buy the information even if they are not capable to find it themselves.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] threadMost normal discourse, in the wider space, I believe even if you have a self chosen tag, your identity should be knowable, if some things arise. I can handle that its a high barrier to entry (to uncover it), but the supposition all posts all the time have complete anonymity, simply because you assert you want it, that the supposition fails for me.
This causes free-speechers a lot of grief. My personal view is informed by many many years participating in national and international forums discussing what hate speech does, and what free speech means. Inside any cohort who are typified as "wanting anonymity" you find people who also suffer the consequences of being targetted by anonymous hate. I don't see how to reconcile speech rights, with harm minimisation except by requiring identity, even if hidden behind a veil.
I appreciate this has chilling effects. I kind-of go to that if it chills the "shout fire in crowded theatre" thing, its done it's job.
I also appreciate its not free speech in the wider sense, and it may not even be capable of being free speech in the narrower senses for a lot of people. I think reductionism over free speech is one of those things which really falls down a hole. Almost all 'there is no constraint on my speech' claims fall over when it comes to national security (for instance)
I'm pretty sure the EFF people won't agree with me, and I mean them no disrespect. Or a lot of the IETF human rights and privacy people: likewise, I mean them no disrespect. I just come to a different conclusion from free speech reductionists, when it comes to societal/wider harms, from the lack of functional constraint on online speech, and identity issues relating to online speech.
The chinese social credit scheme is horrid. The consequences for chinese citizens of unconstrained speech, and identity is also awful. So I know there are strong counter cases to what I say.
I don't know about the US, but I believe in some jurisdictions the newspaper and the journalist risk lawsuits if the information they report is a lie.
Even a truth that you were not ready to share with the world could be very harmful.
And I don’t think it would be enough for the modern wave of political censorship. It isn’t enough to just not look at content you don’t like, you have to ensure others can’t see it either.
Stuff like semi private discord servers for example are being targeted.
Conversely, one of the greatest threat to authoritarians is speech that cannot be easily traced. Hard to put you in prison (or cross international borders to kill or capture or threaten you) if you're anonymous.
What if your online comment is discussing the latest example of police corruption you've seen in your local PD? That would be a very local example of where not being anonymous may easily threaten you, but being anonymous can still let others start investigating.
No point discussing the speech of criminals like Putin, lies are just the tip of the iceberg.
I think your information might be out of date. The Rohingya genocide is a good example of a modern genocide incited on Facebook by regular humans and bots.
In modern cases such as Brexit, Trump, various far right candidates (Zemmour, Bolsonaro), a massive amount of people/fake people on social media talking about them, their talking points (ludicrous and false as they are) have brought them their success, despite the obvious massive red flags.
Could you define “harm”?
Any place a lie is told, and somebody losses money or is otherwise harmed by that lie.
I'm not talking about peoples feelings being hurt.
Because I can think of plenty of things others do that get people fired, without any falsity to it. Should we prosecute calling up someone's employer and urging them to fire them?
I guess it gets a little muddy because the speaker could claim they made the world a better place by revealing your secretes, that the lie told to the school in the first place makes revealing the lie justified.
VPN bans make the oppression inescapable. You see who the real dangerous people are when those who’ll still defend it come out.
It’s easy to think these dangers are just “over there.” It’s important to remember these things will happen here if we’re not careful.
The point is that if we don't resist internet censorship here in the west, for which the pressure is building up, there won't be a free internet Iranians could connect to using a VPN.
I only had access to it because my rss reader had already saved the link to the blog post in its internal database. But there wasn't any reference of it anymore on HN when I wanted to reach the comment page.
Beside that, the rumors of journalists being fired from english media sphere for their coverage of the recent Nord-stream sabotage and the self-censoring (kind of olympic level mental gymnastic) of some other reporters about the event is mind-bogging.
People don't post about these things out of intellectual curiosity—they mostly just reiterate pre-existing positions and points and agendas. Such comments typically make up for the lack of curiosity or information with rhetoric and indignation. That's what we're trying to avoid on HN.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I know my position on the topic is a little controversial, but I wasn't deliberately trolling, I do genuinely believe what is wrong with today's internet is a lack of accountability.
TV, newspapers, books, magazines were all held accountable for spreading disinformation and harmful speech. I think we need the same protections on the public facing internet.
They have blocked most of the popular messaging platforms including Telegram long time ago but for some reason they have not blocked WhatsApp.
Since the current round of protests in Iran started in mid-September, they also blocked WhatsApp, but only because they don't want people organizing, discussing and sharing in groups. Basically everything is blocked now and this new development is most likely a temporary thing until they can handle the protests.
But isn't the fact that they haven't blocked WhatsApp in these years suspicious? Maybe they have access to NSO's Pegasus spyware or something similar. I don't think NSO would sell it to Iran considering NSO is an Israeli company, but they could still do it by using a middleman and not letting NSO know who the real customer is. Or maybe they developed a similar tool themselves because they have the motivation and the money to buy the information even if they are not capable to find it themselves.