Slashdot Mirror
Anonymous Online Publication - Fad or Trend?
An anonymous reader asks: "Across the web, stories abound regarding censorship and persecution of those who publish content online that may be offensive or conflicting toward certain governments or ideals. It almost seems that you can't attach your name to anything without being heavily scrutinized for the opinions you express. Lately though, I've begun to see several communities that promote an atmosphere of anonymity to protect their users and facilitate open communication on tough subjects. PostSecret is one of the most popular of these sites, allowing a one-way publication medium for visitors to vent their frustrations, similar to Group Hug. However, both of these sites are one-way mediums, and do not provide for anonymous interaction of users. Is anonymous blogging and publication a brief fad, or a serious, growing trend?"
"One rare example I've found that allows a truly open anonymous mode of communication (dissimilar to Slashdot's own automatic demotion of 'Anonymous Cowards'), is the Teen Angst Central, or Tangst. Operated by a group of high schoolers and hosted by Google's Blogger service, its editors publish posts made anonymously by visitors, with comments and discussion made to the site sprouting from a community bonded by anonymity. I think this concept can easily be applied to other aspects of online society, though I have yet to see many examples beyond the simple angst-driven outpouring of feelings."
Oh, wait...
...and you'll find all sorts of interesting stuff there, if you look. It might take a few hours for a new Freenet node to get integrated into the network, at which point response time will improve. Don't ever expect it to have fast interactive-surfing response times, though. Get used to opening a bunch of links in new tabs, and coming back to check them in a few minutes.
Freenet's currently got four "summer of code" projects under way, plus their full-time coder. I'm not sure I like the network changes in 0.7 but I'm trusting that the developers know the critical points better than I do.
The stuff you find on Freenet ranges from the obligatory porn and anarchy junk, to weird conspiracy theory stuff, fairly sane political expression, DeCSS and similar technical content, and lots of "flogs", the name of which is yours to absorb.
Frost is a Usenet-like messaging system that uses Freenet as its back-end message store. It also takes a while to get going; after starting your Frost instance you might want to come back in 20 minutes to get the updated boards list, add a bunch of new boards, and give it another 20 minutes to pull messages in those boards. Once your Frost is up and running, you'll start to appreciate what Freenet's really capable of. Search the available files, or participate in a few discussions. Realize that the message transport latency might be anywhere from a few minutes to many hours, so correspondence will be reminiscent of Fidonet speeds.
Seriously, you owe it to yourself to check this stuff out. Don't claim to know internet anonymity without giving Freenet a few days' effort.
Having blogged for several years, I've come to wish I'd started out and remained anonymous. While I might be willing to expose my own mistakes and foibles, the things I say can unintentionally hurt those I love. As someone who is active in my church, there are certain topics I dare not go near, and other topics I wonder if I'm just asking for trouble. The "Deb Series," while possibly some of my best writing, also caused problems.
I've watched bloggers get serious grief from families, co-workers and other communities they belong to because of what they write. The lessons are painful to watch.
In my own case, in the real world, I've trashed my career multiple times for things like accademic integrity and standing up for a co-worker who's being sexually harassed. I've lost friends for saying the truth, and God help me, it's made me a bit of a coward. I've been burned; I don't like it. I'm willing to be burned again, but it's going to have to be a serious fight. On some issues, I've backed down.
I hate that, but if I don't protect myself, I won't do anyone any good.
There's a book out right now, "Orbit by John J. Nance that speaks of a man alone on a doomed and communicationless 3 hour orbital tour. The man is free to write the truth because he believes he is going to die and the laptop will not be recovered for decades. He doesn't have to worry about what people will think. He also doesn't know there's a one-way connection to Earth, and billions of people are reading his every word.
I wish I could blog like that. I'm not sure why I haven't just scrapped my current blog and started anew, except that I doubt it would stay anonymous very long.
Anonymity provides a freedom that is both precious and necessary for freedom to flourish. Perhaps anonymity will be crushed beneath an over-reaching government. The loss may not be apparent initially, but in the long term, it will be devastating.
Freedom of speech often needs the freedom to be anonymous.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
Most Americans will think of other countries where anonymous speech is required to prevent retaliation by the government - countries like Iran, for instance, where anonymous speech IS thriving.
However, there are plenty of countries in the West - including America - where unpopular minorities require anonymous speech to avoid government retribution.
A friend of mine in Indiana called a conservative radio host (Rick Roberts) in California in April 2005, in order to give a contradicting opinion - and the next day state agents showed up at his house and took away his 2 year old son, causing his son a great deal of anxiety and eventually destroying my friend's marriage. He's still going through the system, trying to recover his son, over a year later.
There are also the death threats, of which I've received a few myself - from so-called Christians, Hippies, and everything in between. Damn straight it's nice to have some anonymity!
And we will continue to need that anonymity as long as a corrupt media continues to perpetuate the lie that anyone who is attracted to children must be a predator, despite an abundance of evidence to the contrary.
In any case, in our community proxies and/or TOR are the norm. We know for a fact that our government IS spying on us and seeking to do us harm.
If something is worth saying, it's worth putting your name on it.
Even if it will cost you your job? your freedom? or your life?
Actually, nowadays, not only do they know that you're a dog, but they know
* What kind of cats you chase
* Where you like to sniff butts
* What kind of dog food you like
* etc...
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The most effective spam fighting effort is totally anonymous; they have to be, because that's the only way they can avoid being sued into oblivion by deep-pocketed croporations (it's outright ironic that in order to protect their freedom of speech - saying that so-and-so is a spammer, they have to register their domain in Siberia, of all places!!!)
Spammers are outright criminals and will stop at nothing to damage antispammers.
Plenty of people had a load of trouble from a spectacularly inept spammer.
For example, the author of this page (a page denouncing the spammer) had the spammer complain to the police which launched a criminal investigation that found nothing. After this failed, he barrages everyone who mirrors the page with complaints to their ISPs (this page get 5 DMCA takedown notices PER DAY).
When the police complaints did lead nowhere, he simply harassed various police departments.
Finally, seeing that the takedown notice make the mirrorers rotating the hosting of the relevant parts complained about, thus rendering it totally ineffective, he started to try to DDOs the sites hosting the pages.
Many of the mirrorers would never had been able to denounce that particular spammer if they had been doing so under their real identities; anonymity is particularly vital when dealing with criminals, or lawsuit-happy individuals.
Another example is this well-known spammer, threatening legal action against antispam fighters. If you follow the thread, you will find a frothing lunatic that demands the identity of several spamfighters who have to work anonymously in order to avoid the hassle of lawsuits from spammers.
In 2003, the same antispam outfit was sued by spammers. Even though the lawsuit was thrown out of court, it was not without considerable annoyance and expense to the antispammers involved.
Only absolutely positive anonymity can help protect antispammers against the spammers.
. . . you still wouldn't be able to tell whether I was reading the Anarchist's Cookbook or the Betty Crocker Cookbook via Freenet.
Dude, you should read the Betty Crocker Anarchist's Cookbook. The exploding cupcakes on page 42 are to die for!!
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.