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On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
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On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc.
Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
Source for bolded?
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On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn.
Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes.
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On March 15 2026 17:29 baal wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 13:06 KwarK wrote:
The digital town square only works if it follows the same rough rules as the real town square, you have to show your face, you have to be willing to face the social consequences for your speech, people have to be able to speak back to you.
When Mr Burns shows up at the Springfield town hall to argue against solar power the people of Springfield have the advantage of knowing that he isn't a well meaning concerned citizen, he has a conflicting financial interest. That is necessary for true dialogue to work.
This is all the more important in an era of bots using LLMs to impersonate humans.
In a lot of parts of the world people can be killed by what they say, also in many parts including the 1st world people can go to prison for the wrong opinions etc. Manning and Assange went through hell and countless others would without anonymity.
In the parts of the world you can get killed there is no such thing as anonymous social media either way. Authoritarian states does not like their citizens being able to talk freely and there are already laws against it (see Russia shutting down telegram, China, Turkey etc.)
If they can't shut down or control social media they just shut down the internet (Iran etc).
In democratic countries the amount of people going to jail over "free speech" is so minute and the types of speech regulated so small it's a negligible problem.
But the more important thing is that in a democracy you can rather easily change the laws. And people tend to forget even a functional democracy is the dictatorship of the commons. There are always going to be fringe ideas that the majority finds so offensive that they are banned and it's just how it works.
Meanwhile the problems with bots and false propaganda is huge and growing.
I voted for the pirate party (twice) when I was young. That pretty much sums up my ideas on anonymity and net use. I've been an active internet user all my life and I now think that social media should not be anonymous because the problems are so rampant at this point.
An easy example is the completely fake AFD hit piece article (posted on a cloned website of politico) that even made it to TL.net. A single google search shows how it was posted, amplified by bots on X and twitter until it started to be shared by real users, eventually getting posted here.
Website is offline now but the damage is already done.
If you follow things like the Ukraine war for long enough you can "feel" when the bots get activated to push a certain narrative.
Back in the old days it was citizens/internet users against the big companies/governments/political parties fighting against regulation.
These days it's citizens/internet users who wants regulation and big companies/some governments/some political parties who are against it.
I think the fact that old school "pirates" are now on the other side against the enemy is evidence enough that anonymity on social media is no longer in our interest.
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On March 15 2026 18:18 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On March 15 2026 16:44 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote:On March 15 2026 11:47 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On March 15 2026 10:03 LightSpectra wrote:
There shouldn't be anonymity on social media networks, because that's how bad actors from foreign countries and bots sway public opinion. There should absolutely be anonymity for whistleblowers/journalists, purchasing birth control, reading censored literature, etc. But you don't need to do any of those things over social media. What exactly would you require or not allow, if you're removing anonymity? For example, would you require social media accounts to show first and last names? An accurate, up-to-date profile picture of the person? How would these be verified by the social media platform? And how loose would privacy settings need to be, if a stranger wants to learn more about you and your account? Would stalking or unjustified violence be a concern? I totally agree with you that bots and bad actors need to be addressed; I'm just not sure how to do that while still protecting average users. (Ideally, tech literacy / social media literacy / research literacy would be taught to new generations in middle/high school, so that young adults are less susceptible to bots, bullshit, and bad actors. That'll take a while though, and something should change during the interim.) It's really easy. Just require a login with a digital ID or a google/Facebook account created with a digital ID. We already use it for basically everything, several times per day. Takes social media a few hours to implement. Doesn't even have to show your full name. Just show country and maybe your first name. Removes all bots and obvious trolls and obviously illegal shit like childporn. Ah okay, so you're not talking about removing anonymity between social media posters, but rather simply tying the account to your person behind the scenes.
No real point on complete anonymity, right?
If I want to leave a bad review of my local restaurant I don't want the owner to harass me.
If I want to extort him and other business owners by giving bad reviews the police will find me right away.
The main problem is bots and paid actors pretending to be from other countries, scammers etc. If you can't pretend to be someone completely different, and you have to be a real person that can be tracked down if you commit a crime you solve 99% of the problems and you can still be semi anonymous.
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EPT
