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Anonymous Online Publication - Fad or Trend?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the freely-speak-your-mind dept.

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."

3 of 222 comments (clear)

  1. Who needs to be anonymous? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, wait...

  2. Freenet is really made for this... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.

  3. Anonymous speech thriving by Baldur_of_Asgard · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.