Can Internet Pseudonymity Be Saved?

jfruh writes "Imagine that you're a lawyer who also runs a popular sexual fetish podcast. Or that you're a blogger on political issues and you want to determine for yourself who you're going to get into political arguments with. Or you're a transgender woman who isn't out to your real-life associates but you want to explore your gender identity online. Or that you're a female gamer who wants to play World of Warcraft without being hit on or harassed. All of these people have perfectly good reasons for wanting to use a pseudonym online. And yet more and more websites are making it difficult or impossible to do so, often for perfectly legitimate reasons of improving civility and stopping anonymous abuse. How can pseudonymity — one of the key foundations of early internet communities — be saved?"

Comments

All?

[craznar]

Are you sure all of these people have perfectly good reasons ?

Absolutely sure ?

Re:All?

[therealkevinkretz]

Are you implying that you're sure one isn't? If it's necessary to err either on the side of protecting anonymity or the side of sacrificing privacy unnecessarily, it should be the former.

Re:All?

[epyT-R]

Who are you to say what those reasons should be?

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[DexterIsADog]

Do all of "these people" cited as examples in TFS have good reasons? I think nearly anyone would say yes, they do, since they have an obvious motivation, and no attributes of these hypothetical people were identified that would make them undeserving of privacy.

Are we having reading comprehension troubles cause by firstpostitis?

Re:All?

[Penguinisto]

Are you sure all of these people have perfectly good reasons ?

Absolutely sure ?

Who cares if they do or not? The point is that one should not be *forced* to carry one's real name everywhere they go (as if that wasn't easy to fake online, but I digress...)

Re:All?

[P-niiice]

If I choose to, that's reason enough. No need to go any further anto it.

Re:All?

[gstoddart]

Every single person doesn't need a solid defensible reason in order to be able to conclude there are, in fact, plenty of good reasons why you would like to have pseudonymous use of the internet.

That there are people who will be doing it for shady purposes doesn't invalidate that not everything everybody does do they want tied to their real world names and published for the world to see.

You can be not breaking any laws and still want some privacy.

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[betterprimate]

They aren't. Pseudonymity/anonymity exists in the real world. I can observe or participate in a political rally without being personally identifiable. I can travel the world with only the customs officer knowing who I am.

Ideas and dialog are fostered by pseudonymity/anonymity without stigma or fear of being ostracized.

Re:All?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

If its not up to anyone what the reasons should be, don't present a list of reasons that people will disagree with.

Re:All?

[thej1nx]

Think of it this way. Let us take the number two reason for such breaches of personal privacy(money being the number one reason), i.e. terrorism.

If you were actually a foreign terrorist, and for some insane reason you did decide to discuss your "super secret plans" in email or over phone, unless you are completely retarded as well, you will use your local dialect instead of English. And you will use common words or phrase *in your own dialect* as previously agreed codewords. You will NOT communicate in English. So NSA might flag the foreign language conversation as suspicious, but I doubt there will be a perfect automatic speech translation in place that can immediately translate. And even if you had someone translate ever single piece of foreign language conversation, you still will have to deal with guessing what the code words mean.

In other words, a sweeping eavesdropping program will get you zilch unless you even for a second believe the other guys to be total morons. They might be insane, but they are not at least that. Only time you will have results by eavesdropping is if you already knew someone to be a terrorist, and were monitoring all their calls and tried to assume everything to be a terrorist communication.

The other situation where you will have results is, if we change the definition of results to "eavesdrop on our own troublemaker citizens and political opponents and have blackmail material on them to ensure we stay in power". Now *those* are the guys who will communicate in a language your eavesdropper program can listen to and collect material on. Think of collecting bits and pieces of info on every time someone mentions your political opponent's name and sifting through that to see if you can find anything on him to ensure his complete submission.

And unless you want to have a de facto dictatorship cemented even further and no chances of having even a semblance of democracy, feel free to sacrifice privacy. You will eventually sacrificing your freedom or liberty too.

Re:All?

[jedidiah]

The internet is a dangerous place. People have been lulled into believing that this is not the case. Protecting your identity is your first line of defense against crazies and anyone else that wants to do you harm.

Allowing net.crazies as a tradeoff for enabling everyone to avoid the real ones.

A lot of the "OMG Privacy!" complaints fall away if you allow people to disassociate from their real identity.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm not sure. But who is better at determining whether or not their reasons are good? Them, or someone else (e.g. you, me)? It seems like the expertise is going to always be with the person who wants to be anonymous. By the time someone else is able to judge them, the anonymity would be lost.

What really sucks, though, is that anonymity is kind in direct conflict with doing PK crypto right. Either you know who you're talking to and have authenticated key exchange, or you don't know, and therefore don't know if you're being MitMed. That doesn't mean anonymous people shouldn't encrypt, just that they can't do it with the same assurances as everyone else.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not that I disagree with you, but I hate this argument on an intellectual level. Not everything works well when a choice is given individual actors vs some policy or regulation making the choice for you (indeed that is why sometimes policies and regulations are needed). Just saying that there shouldn't be a policy or regulation isn't really making a case for why it should be that way.

In particular,

That there are people who will be doing it for shady purposes doesn't invalidate that not everything everybody does do they want tied to their real world names and published for the world to see.

is a form of argument that applies to any individual choice vs policy style argument, and it is very weak unless supported by an argument that shows that negative uses are rare and or are overcome by beneficial uses. i.e. that eliminating negative uses would also more greatly harm positive uses.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

The assumed principle is that each of these people has the right to interact with others while hiding their real life identity. And to a certain extent I agree that one has the right to present oneself however one chooses.

But, what about my right to only interact with people who are willing to put their real life identity behind their words and actions? Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.

If this means that we can't come to an agreement on how we will communicate, then that is the price to be paid for our mutual decisions.

There has never been any society in which an individual got to have full participation while simultaneously defining their own norms. Social norms are defined by the group and if you can't abide by those norms then you will have to pay the price that comes from your choice. And that is not unfair or an injustice.

Re:All?

[Archangel Michael]

"I can observe or participate in a political rally without being personally identifiable."

If you are in public, you are identifiable. This doesn't mean you have been, it just means it is possible. Remember the Boston Bombing? Those guys were "anonymous" but quickly found out that they weren't really "unknown". Pictures surfaced, faces were identified, and the search was quickly started.

You are delusional if you think that you can be anonymous in public. Unidentified is not the same thing as "not being identifiable".

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[PPH]

Actually, its the real world that is dangerous. The Internet is pretty harmless until it leaks into my real life.

A pseudonym is my way of being a member of a community without linking that membership to my real life. It differs from pure anonymity in that I can still damage my on-line reputation by being a jerk-wad.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, what about my right to only interact with people who are willing to put their real life identity behind their words and actions? Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.

Is that a new right? I don't remember anyone ever saying that it was a right.

Privacy has traditionally been held up as a right.
Courage by someone with something to lose? Not so much.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

I'm not sure I understand your post. However to clarify the bit of my post that you quoted, I mean that we all have a right to set the terms on how we will interact with people. There is no obligation, in our roles as individuals, to interact with anyone. Just as much as Judge Posner has the right to host fetish pornography on his personal website, I have the right not to visit his website or think of him as some paragon of virtue. If Carlos Danger wants to discuss the merits of monetarism there is no law or social norm that requires that I engage in conversation with him.

If all you are merely asking is whether we have the right to decide who we associate with, well yes it's a basic human right and is formalized in the legal systems of many countries. The First Amendment to the US Constitution and the European Convention are two examples.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's a black and white perspective if I ever saw one. Do you think we could have more than one venue? One for those who wish to reveal all, and another for those who do not? At present there are few for the latter remaining, and everyone seems to feel they have the right to track you down regardless of your preferences. Some may be fine living in a world like that. It would be like--like living in the US right now.

Re:All?

[poetmatt]

I don't understand how people call "improving civility" legitimate. It's literally the exact opposite. The first amendment exists because you can offend people and/or not be civil. If you disallow that, you're saying people don't have a right to speak freely. Yet, we here we have craznar trolling. go figure.

Re:All?

[omnichad]

One for those who wish to reveal all, and another for those who do not?

Sure. It just seems like less people are willing to host the latter. Why don't you? Nobody else should be forced to accommodate your preference.

Re:All?

[cayenne8]

I don't understand how people call "improving civility" legitimate. It's literally the exact opposite. The first amendment exists because you can offend people and/or not be civil. If you disallow that, you're saying people don't have a right to speak freely.

Yep, pretty much by definition, the right to "free speech" negates the ability to have the right to "not be offended". It pretty much *has* to trump it.

Sadly, with all the political correctness....which seems to now be being somewhat enforced by force of law, words are quickly becoming almost criminal.

Unpleasant things must be said...or the world grows quickly silent.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

I just thought that you might be interested in knowing that tranny when used in reference to transgender people is considered pejorative by a large number of people. If you're looking for an abbreviation of transgender please consider trans as it is widely accepted.
Thank you

Re:All?

[Oligonicella]

If you start verbally berating someone at my house, I will eject you. No censorship involved. Censorship is about government suppressing freedom of expression. Same goes for blogs and gaming sites.

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[epyT-R]

What are they misrepresenting exactly? Their names? So what? Their arguments stand or fall on their own merit. Someone saying stuff that you or someone else disagrees with strongly, endangers who exactly? You might say legally, but those laws are part of the problem and need changing. The people who drafted and passed them used the same shitty reasoning you have. It's time to remove the power to switch the truth off and on from thin skinned, passive aggressive cultural elements. If you don't want yourself or others to see what others have to say about your site's content, turn them off. Done. ..and no one said you should be forced to do anything. This subject is about the wane of anonymity in internet culture, something that used to be at the forefront.

Re:All?

[Oligonicella]

"At present there are few for the latter remaining..."

That is utterly untrue. I have many sites I visit where I use my moniker.

Re:All?

[Oligonicella]

When you post anonymously or with a moniker THIS ^^^ is how you do it with civility, not using flameboi tactics.

Re:All?

[madro]

There are exceptions to first amendment protections. Speech that incites imminent lawless action, or "fighting words" (speech that leads to immediate physical retaliation) are not protected, at least in the US.

The purpose of letting people speak freely is to allow venting of grievances as an alternative to violent confrontation. But when those words in fact degrade civility to the point that violence increases, then we've reached diminishing returns for the first amendment. When individuals or groups can bully with impunity and induce violence against a person (sometimes by suicide), then I can start to see the problems with unfettered free speech rights.

It's not enough to justify the banning of anonymity, but civilization needs at least a little civility.

Re:All?

[invid]

How about if the elimination of anonymity also eliminates the possibility of individual liberty? If the government has sufficient knowledge of any individual, they will be able to control that individuals life to the point where they can find something to charge against them and arrest them at will. And don't tell me you won't have anything to worry about if you obey the law, if all of your actions are scrutinized they will find something. The lack of anonymity tips power so much into the government's hands that privacy is now necessary for freedom, and we need to find a way to guarantee it for ourselves or we are condemning humanity to perpetual servitude.

Re:All?

[_xeno_]

Remember the Boston Bombing? Those guys were "anonymous" but quickly found out that they weren't really "unknown". Pictures surfaced, faces were identified, and the search was quickly started.

Well... maybe.

What you need to remember is that the only reason the Boston Marathon bombers were caught as quickly as they were was because the bombers decided to kill a police officer and hijack a car. They were not caught because of pictures - they were caught because the guy who they hijacked escaped without his smartphone, which the police were then able to track.

They were only definitively identified when the first bomber was in the morgue.

Because of this, it's impossible to say whether or not they ever would have been identified by the pictures taken at the marathon itself. Had they instead just gone into hiding without killing a police officer and without hijacking a car - who knows how long it would have taken to identify them, let alone catch them?

Re:All?

[Salgak1]

Actually, Censorship is about GOVERNMENT suppressing freedom of expression. Privately-owned sites are free to set their own terms. As you are in your own house.

And when sites do restrict anonymity, it happens in the marketplace of ideas. So if people are accepting the non-anonymity policy on a given site, they're the ones at fault, not the site.

Not that it's HARD to create a sock-puppet account. . .

Re:All?

[bhagwad]

The concept of "rights" is not to benefit society. It's to benefit individuals. So the idea of "diminishing returns" is absurd. If people don't have the control to keep their hands in their pockets, it's jail time and bye bye. The first person to throw a punch gets punished. This whole "induce to violence" is bullshit.

Re:All?

[bhagwad]

I challenge you to "induce me to violence". Go ahead. I give you the freedom to say whatever you want and I can guarantee you that no mere words and pixels on a screen are going to drive me to hit you or anyone else.

I'm waiting for your "inducements to violence".

Re:All?

[epyT-R]

You're welcome to ignore anonymous posters, or ban them from your site, but this topic was about the wane of anonymity in a culture that used to hold it as one of its most important characteristics.

But, what about my right to only interact with people who are willing to put their real life identity behind their words and actions?

Conviction of one's beliefs is not proof of their veracity. So while you can accept/ignore on this basis, it's not a good way to determine truthfulness. My point was that identity is not important unless the goal is to hold the speaker to your personal ideals via implied threats (public shaming, legal action, character assassination etc) should he go where you don't want him to. Why is it so important that you know for sure who it is that you're communicating with? If the argument is sound, accept that you've learned something from someone you'll never know, alter your content to acknowledge it publicly if applicable, and move on. If it's garbage, refute it to strengthen your position in the eyes of your readership who haven't made up their minds yet. Without this discipline, it's too easy to flip the switch at posts you don't agree with for emotional reasons, creating a nice shiny beacon of false consensus for your opinions. Of course, the kind of people who build these beacons usually aren't in it for telling the truth about much of anything. They have political angles or products to sell you for their own emotional or fiscal benefit.

Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.

That can't be true. The two positions are mutually exclusive. Demanding that others identify themselves so that you can 'feel safe' isn't compatible with respecting those others' rights to anonymity, whatever they may be.

There has never been any society in which an individual got to have full participation while simultaneously defining their own norms. Social norms are defined by the group and if you can't abide by those norms then you will have to pay the price that comes from your choice. And that is not unfair or an injustice.

Yes, and those consensus driven, emotionally justified rationales were the driving forces behind most of the negative events in our history. They are a part of human nature, yes, but they shouldn't be encouraged, or lauded as honorable, because consensus is a poor way of gaining wisdom. Allowing anonymity allows people to stir up the mud, but denying it allows those in control of communications outlets to lie without challenge. That is far worse for a free society.

Re:All?

[epyT-R]

..or you could simply stop changing the terms used to describe your status whenever you feel like you want to be offended when someone uses the 'outdated' term. If term after term starts to make you feel dirty, then maybe you should look elsewhere for the source of those feelings.

Re:All?

[dargaud]

At least it's a choice that's implementable in software. For instance in /. you can set up Anonymous cowards with a negative offset and basically never see them.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. This argument comes up a lot from the government alone is the source of all evil crowd. Look up the definition of censorship in any dictionary, not one of them states that government action is required to constitute censorship. Censorship is any action by any entity intended to suppress or conceal information. ClearChannel Communications is every bit as capable of censoring things as the FCC.

From Merriam Webster: "censorship noun \sen(t)-sr-ship\ : the system or practice of censoring books, movies, letters, etc."

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

The first amendment exists because you can offend people and/or not be civil. If you disallow that, you're saying people don't have a right to speak freely.

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. The first amendment exists to protect people from being punished by the government for having a dissenting view. It prevents those in power from using force to silence those whose only power is their speech. It's to prevent the U.S. from becoming Russia. Individual people, businesses, and non-government organizations are free to retaliate.

If you don't like the things that Orson Scott Card has to say about marriage, then you are free to boycott his books/movies, write angry letters to his publishers, and do many other things to tear down his livelihood and discredit his name. What the first amendment does is prevent some sheriff/judge/politician from having him imprisoned, and his possessions confiscated.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

In the US, and I'd assume almost everywhere because the alternative would be impossible, there's no right to be listened to. You have the right to speak but no one has an obligation to listen and consider your words.

In the US the right to free association is bound up in the first amendment and is as strong as any free speech or privacy right you would care to mention.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

Other than the fact that I can use any information I can glean without breaking the law to make my decision, I agree 100%. I have the right to ask "who are you?" and require that they prove their identity to me and if they choose not to I don't have to associate with them. Your argument that I don't have the right to ask this is absurd.

My right not to associate with them flows directly to my website/blog/forum -- I can make it real names and actual selfies as avaters only if I so desire.

Re:All?

[odie5533]

Censorship is not just about "GOVERNMENT suppressing freedom of expression". Terms on privately-owned sites is still a form of censorship—the legal kind. Only government censorship is illegal in the U.S.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

Clearly in at least one part of my post I was unclear:

Any right that assures fetishists, trannys and political radicals a sense of anonymity also assures the rest of society the option to require a lack of anonymity.

I don't mean a single rule for all of society. I mean that each individual that makes up the rest of society also gets the right to decide whether they want to associate with anonymous individuals or not.

Your last paragraph I generally disagree with because the issues as you present them are more complex than can be adequately described in a few sentences. That is the social norm that results oppression of women in many cultures is bad, but the social norm of private property and equal rights in other cultures is source of almost all that is good in the world. Simply saying social norms are bad is too brief a statement to carry much meaning.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

That is not my problem with the whole argument, its that it makes no damned sense! I mean lets take /. for an example where I personally think ACs should be banned since they have become nothing more than trolls these past few years, no different than those little punks that scream racist slurs all over console shooters....why would making everyone have an account be a bad thing, as long as you can put whatever you want as a UID? Its not like my business cards have "Hairyfeet" on them yet there are several sites that know me as such, this way a user actually has to stand by their words (or be willing to waste a lot of time replacing accounts as they burn through the karma) but at the same time can keep their privacy intact.

Frankly the whole argument is probably moot anyway as folks have their own distinct style of writing which is no different than a fingerprint and is easy enough to catch on to if you pay a little attention. To use myself as an example there is a couple of old sites that i still use that I used my old gamertag instead of the Hairyfeet tag which came later but I ended up having to put in the bio part "yes its me Hairyfeet" because it never failed that I'd post and I'd get a half a dozen "Are you Hairyfeet? because you sure as hell sound like him" posts. while I can change my UID changing my manner of speech would be a HELL of a lot more difficult and anybody who had read a few of my posts wouldn't have any trouble spotting any post written by me.

So I see no reason why one can't have their cake and eat it too in this case, no reason they can't make up a UID and spend the whole 3 minutes to register on a site while at the same time not be forced to put in their real name and ID.

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

I fully support your decision to ignore my posts or disagree with my positions.

As I mentioned in another post, when I said "the rest of society" I meant as individuals each making their own decisions. Not as a single rule that all have to abide by.

There's a serious disconnect between "I'm free to be anonymous and express opinions but everyone else has to provide me the soapboxes to stand on and an audience to hear me." Someone who believes in liberty and freedom would see that to begin with.

The rest of your post I'll skip commenting on because mostly I agree with you and I think you are assuming I hold positions that I don't.

Here's my position wrt this story:

Everybody is free to associate with who they please. This includes people who run online forums and services. In the marketplace of ideas either anonymity or known identity will become dominant because the supporters of those ideas will successfully convince the rest of society of the value of their position. Personally I will decide on a case by case basis whether the service I want to use is worth whatever conditions they put on that service. If most people agree with me then I will find that I can use most services I desire to use without compromising my beliefs. If most people don't agree with me then I may find that I cannot use most services, but I have no right to force the service providers to bend to my position.

Re:All?

[mhotchin]

The 'Fighting words' doctrine has essentially been repudiated by the Supreme Court:
http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1999/1999ATX.html

Re:All?

[Score Whore]

Assuming your description of me as open-minded and non-bigoted is not literal -- a safe assumption I think based on your closing sentence -- that's some sweet political correctness you have there. I said nothing derogatory about any of the hypothetical people from the post. The words I used are the exact right words to describe the subjects of the story.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

I'll never forget what my grandfather taught me about free speech, after he helped liberate one of the camps he spent nearly 2 years in a full body cast thanks to one of the rag tag "werewulf" squads at the end of WWII dropping a wall upon him so if there was ANYBODY that had the right to hate Nazis it was him...yet he supported the right of the Nazis to march in Illinois. He said "that is what made us better than them, we let anybody speak, even though we don't agree with them".

I took his words to heart several years after he was gone when I was living in Dallas and saw skinheads recruiting, trying to feed on anti-Mexican sentiment. I just went to a store down the street and made up my own little sign, it said "ask me about the camps" and told those who stopped and asked what my grandfather had saw, the bodies piled up like cordwood, traincars overflowing with broken bodies, people so starved you couldn't tell male from female. needless to say the skinheads weren't too happy about that but one of the cops sent to keep an eye on the skinheads just parked his butt right next to me and said "he has as much right to speak as you do" and that ended that.

This is why I have fought against so called "hate speech" and "hate crime" laws as they aren't only trying to make some speech verbotten but they also seem to be designed around the concept of "protected classes" such as how they say nothing if you burn a bible but will throw you in jail if you burn a Koran. in America you should not be able to EVER ban speech, if you don't like what they are saying? Make your own sign and come up with a legitimate counter-argument,freedom of speech is too important to allow the politically correct to decide what is and is not acceptable.

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[reboot246]

You make far too much sense to be posting on slashdot. Maybe you should run for office; we need people like you in leadership positions.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

Exactly, if I used my real name instead of Hairyfeet what EXACTLY would change? I'd still hold the opinions I do now, still stand by my words, the ONLY difference is it would not only make it easier for the government to track everything i say but it would also making stalking much easier to do.

As someone who was stalked by a crazy woman for nearly 2 years IRL and have had bouts of cyberstalking by what I call the "FOSSie faction", with one even spending over a year just following me on every place he could find and making account after account just so he could post "Die you fat fucker, die" excuse me if I don't want those same members of the batshit brigade to follow me around IRL, thanks ever so. If anything I'd say using real names makes stalking more likely as stalkers? Really don't care if you know who they are, as i found out with the crazy bitch that followed me across 3 states. She never once tried disguising her voice, or even pretending it wasn't her,and as i found out from the cops this is all too common, the unbalanced frankly don't give a shit whether they are known or not as they will keep right on doing what they are doing.

Oh and before anybody says "You were just having trouble with an ex" nope, had never even slept with the woman, i simply gave her a drink (as the band had a generous bar tab and I don't drink) and played a song for her as she looked depressed and apparently that was enough in her damaged mind to "have us in a relationship". you don't realize how many truly fucking mental people are out there until you run into one of them and I pray nobody here ever does because...damn. I had to file restraining orders, hide my truck, finally some dumbass guitarist was stupid enough to sleep with her...poor bastard, I bet she is STILL stalking his ass across hell's half acre even to this very day. But if you ever end up in a situation like that you'll find out just how fucking useless the law really is, she had done that to a half a dozen guys over the years yet because the stalking laws are so weak, at least when this was going on, she never got more than a slap on the wrist and a "don't do that" from a judge, fucking worthless.

Re:All?

[latead0pter]

But hairyfeet is a functioning human, I am sure the poster has made mistakes in their life.

Why would they want to go through the very public proctological exam?

Re:All?

[betterprimate]

"I can observe or participate in a political rally without being personally identifiable."

If you are in public, you are identifiable. This doesn't mean you have been, it just means it is possible. Remember the Boston Bombing? Those guys were "anonymous" but quickly found out that they weren't really "unknown". Pictures surfaced, faces were identified, and the search was quickly started.

You are delusional if you think that you can be anonymous in public. Unidentified is not the same thing as "not being identifiable".

Extremes. Obviously, if you live in an Orwellian state, surveillance can identify you. That wasn't the premise of my post nor TFA.

The point you missed is that one can very much participate in society with a degree of anonymity/pseudonymity without being demonized by a particular unpopular point of view. This push for "civility" online isn't consistent to the real world, nay, to democracy itself. Just like I can publish a controversial work of art without fear of prosecution or to not have it attached to my name just because I fucking feel like it.

And, yes, I can be in public without being identifiable. The simple trick is to avoid traveling to Orwellian states where people still value their privacy. The good side is that there's absolutely no reason to visit those places; a state without privacy is a state devoid of creative thought or pursuits.

Re:All?

[dunng808]

Also seen today on /.

"As part of a broader, chilling Chinese crackdown on Internet dissent, Chinese blogger Charles Xue appeared on Chinese state television in handcuffs on Sunday, denouncing his blog and praising government censorship."

Doubleclick Cofounder Responds to Patent Troll by Filing Extortion Lawsuit ... "The patent troll's attorney also made the claim that calling someone a 'patent troll' was actually a 'hate crime' under 'Ninth Circuit precedent' and threatened to file criminal charges"

Freedom of speech is constantly under attack, especially by those who want their freedom at the expense of yours.

Re:All?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

" then the need for privacy becomes obvious."

No it doesn't. It still assumes a set of morals which are supposed to be universally upheld and a specific way of upholding them.

Some might see your list and think " don't have an affair, be honest with your lovers" or " lobby for better anti stalking rules, your sister has a right to not have a stalker". There are always alternative actions that can be taken.

  Plus, this is the internet, people will disagree and argue anything to death.

Re:All?

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

There are exceptions to first amendment protections.

Wrong. Those exceptions do not exist in the first amendment; some judges simply wrote those in with invisible ink.

Re:All?

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Also, if you resort to violence because someone said something that you don't care for, that is your problem and no one else's.

Re:All?

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Sure it is. It infringes upon fundamental rights, so I don't think any such policy (that is, if the government is trying to implement it) should ever be allowed.

and how it may or may not be beneficial to society as a whole.

Irrelevant. Individual liberties are not necessarily for the convenience of society as a whole, but for the individual. I'm none too fond of tyranny of the majority.

Re:All?

[Dcnjoe60]

I don't understand how people call "improving civility" legitimate. It's literally the exact opposite. The first amendment exists because you can offend people and/or not be civil. If you disallow that, you're saying people don't have a right to speak freely. Yet, we here we have craznar trolling. go figure.

Free speech is freedom to express one's ideas and opinions, it does not include all the different ways those ideas and opinions can be communicated, unless the form of the communication is part of the idea itself (as is often the case with works of art). As such, uttering profanity is not considered free speech and is why decency laws do not infringe on one's free speech rights. Profanity, for example, is not an idea or an opinion, it may be used to express an idea or an opinion, but there is no right to allow all forms of expression. So, improving civility, does not limit one's right to express one's ideas or opinions, it only limits the form of expression that may be used.

Re:All?

[Dcnjoe60]

Freedom of speech is about being free to express ideas and opinions, it is not about being free to express those ideas and opinions in whatever manner one chooses. Hate speech is not about express ideas and opinions but instead about intimidating and threatening others. You don't like blacks or Jews, fine, that is an idea or opinion you are free to express. Doing it in a manner that borders on inciting violence or is threatening or is an excercise of speech, but instead is one of power.

Either your grandfather fought to stop leaders of the Nazi party from excercising their right to free speech or he fought to stop the tyranny brought on by the leaders of the Nazi party. You can't have it both ways. Likewise, if hate speech is just another example of free speech to be protected, then so is child pornography, snuff films, and all sorts of other things. Maybe the Boston marathon bombers were simplly using an extreme method to excercise their free speech?

No, all the right enshrined in the notion of freedom of speech means is that one is free to express one's ideas and opinions. It does not protect all the means of that expression my take.

Re: All?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. I am a liberal and I am an American. Free speech is essential, every view must be allowed to be heard, including the views of the ignorant. If liberals no longer agree with that, then I am neither liberal or conservative. (To my observation, conservatives are no better.)

People should be able to say racist things and not be imprisoned. We are not here to make a society of imprisonment. We are here to make a society of changed hearts.

Re:All?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Yes, but constitutional protections against censorship only apply to government entities and commercial entities that use public resources like broadcast radio and television. Purely private entities can censor anything they like and the government doesn't prevent it, nor has standing to do so. So yes, it IS censorship if Facebook deletes your post, but it's their server. They can do what they like with it. They can demand you agree to a terms of service that allows them to delete your posts and it's perfectly legal and constitutional.

(And we're going to go on pretending that FCC censorship is legal, because that's what "decent" people do.)

Re:All?

[Areyoukiddingme]

Look again. There's an Anonymous Coward sitting at +4 adjacent to you in this very thread. They're not all trolls. And yes, people are identifiable by their writing patterns. I know I am. And so what. Sometimes you want to say something without undoing moderation. AC is good for that. Meanwhile, moderation does a fair job of taking care of the trolls. To the point where there really aren't very many of them. There are enough mod points and people willing to curb stomp anonymous trolls that they very quickly vanish into -1 territory.

Re: All?

[jxander]

Meatspace freedom of speech is balanced against lack of anonymity.

Being a troll out in public will get you ignored at very least, or punched in the face if you're aggravating enough. And once you've been ignored, punched or otherwise labeled as a troll, you can't just change your name and start back up again.

That's not to say the the Internet should lose its anonymity. Just that it has to be balanced somehow. The moderation system here seems to work pretty well, though it's hardly the only potential solution.

Re:All?

[chrismcb]

It isn't so much as forcing you to attacking the speaker. It is about inciting a mob to violence. According to Mr Wiki: "Under the imminent lawless action test, speech is not protected by the First Amendment if the speaker intends to incite a violation of the law that is both imminent and likely" If you have an unruly mob next to a bonfire and you shout "lets burn the courthouse to the ground" you can be arrested. But saying "let us join together and burn the government down" is probably protected.

Re:All?

[betterprimate]

Unfortunately, you can't teach critical thinking to those who are unwilling to learn.

AM, the GP, just equated freedom of speech to terrorist bombing.
 

Re: All?

[poetmatt]

there is no balance, and there never will be. It's a different medium, and you're trying to apply the rules of one medium to another. That entire logic is a complete fallacy.

Re:All?

[Archangel Michael]

I did not equate Freedom of Speech with Bombing. I equated being in public (Freedom of Speech) with being in public (Terrorist Bombing) using two different scenarios (mentioned), showing that being unidentified is not the same as being anonymous. Being in public isn't anonymous and you are not "Not Identifiable". Being in public you can only be "unidentified". Critical Thinking indeed.

Re:All?

[Archangel Michael]

"surveillance can identify you"

Indeed, that is my point. We live in a surveillance society. Everyone with their cell phones, security cameras everywhere. Short of wilderness, you are being watched, either intentionally or collaterally.

"The simple trick is to avoid traveling to Orwellian states where people still value their privacy"

You must mean third world nations. Most Western Countries are "surveillance societies", where you are under the ever watchful electronic eye. Here is a quick test, take out your smartphone (if you have one), make 100 photos today of every day items, and one video of something interesting, and try not to have any person in any of them. Which means, you've likely captured someone unwittingly.

Re:All?

[Anonymous Coward]

The chance of snuff films or child pornography being protected by free speech laws is zero, they're both specifically illegal by other laws and have clear victims.

The problem when you move to any censored version of free speech is that someone will come along and try to force a think-of-the-children argument as to why they should be given the moral authority / power to decide which speech is acceptable, and which is not.

As you do here.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall on Voltaire

Re:All?

[Gallomimia]

You have the right to "not be offended" It's protected along with your freedom of choice: Choose not to be offended by all the stupid shit I just called you, and your wish has been granted!

Re:All?

[Gallomimia]

Absolutely not. Too much free thought and self-determined action. Not suitable for the puppet squad, I mean political team, at all.

Re:All?

[Gallomimia]

Censorship is the act of governing the entire set of public information out there, so that not only does it avoid topics you don't like, but it sticks to topics you do like, and dumbs them down to the level you dictate as well. It is more simply "to control the information supply" so strictly that your thoughts are not your own.

Re:All?

[kermidge]

Amen, and thank you.

When I was in school, many of my teachers were veterans, not a few combat. The guy who taught high school civics was adamant about the right to speak and the right to vote. He offered some examples from his life, though none quite as stark as your grandfather's.

Circa '52 I spent a morning walking around Dachau. The gallows, ovens, and human-skin lampshade made a lasting impression that got only reinforced as I got older and learned more of what happened there and, by extension, the kinds of thinking that led to such places.

Fear may be the mind killer, but to be unable to speak freely is a soul killer and of benefit only to the tyrant.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

Straw man as both child porn and snuff films require victims to be created, whereas expressing one's ideas require only the words to express them. BTW for the record I believe the so called "simulated" child porn like Manga and shock films like Serbian Film should NOT be in any way banned as those did not require any victims to be created, they can express their ideas without requiring harm to anybody to do so. I have also donated to the fund to free the guy that wrote the so called "pro pedo" book as he likewise merely expressed his ideas on the subject,he wasn't accused of harming anybody, just putting his thoughts into book form, which to me is the classic definition of thoughtcrime.

And as for your straw man with the Nazis? Look up Dec 1941 and you will see that Germany declared war upon the USA and was sinking American boats in the Atlantic. It had nothing to do with free speech, it had to do with a hostile power declaring war upon the USA and the USA having the right to fight back. BTW in 1944 a German 4 engine bomber made it to within 8 miles of NYC, if the USA wouldn't have opened up a western front the "Amerika Bomber" would have been operational by 1945 and the east coast of the USA would have been the target, including DC, NYC, and every port along the eastern seaboard. This again had nothing to do with the right of the Nazis to express their views, it had to do with the Nazis forcing those views upon the world through subjugation.

Re:All?

[DMUTPeregrine]

Posting as AC silently undoes moderations to the same discussion made from the same IP.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

Uhhh...might want to read up about posting again, as AC posting DOES undo karma, its based on IP address not whether you are logged in or not.

And I dare you to count the number of AC posts in a thread and then compare how many are modded up versus how many are at zero or below, just because a few people are too lazy to log in and post insightful comments as AC does NOT change the fact that the vast majority are trolls, for every insightful post you'll get a good half dozen of the "nigger faggot shill" type. finally I would point out as the number of AC posts go up the quality of the thread GOES DOWN as it really isn't hard for a troll to derail a thread. You go to the wayback machine and look up threads from /. from 5 years ago? You'd find threads that go as high as 200+ posts talking thoughtfully about various subjects, everything from FTL travel to filesystems, we used to get some really meaty threads here and even when you didn't agree with the sentiment you'd learn something, now? if a threads makes a dozen its a miracle and in damned near EVERY case it gets derailed by an AC troll.

So I think getting rid of AC would be a real boon here. this of course would only be beneficial if the mods stay the fuck out of it and let metamodding and user modding take care of things, for an example of why we need the forum mods to stay out just look at Ars where anybody who doesn't sing the praises of Google and Apple end up banned by mods, probably from their fricking iPhones. But at the end of the day it takes...what? 3 minutes to make an account? and /. already has a setting for public places and supports HTTPS log ins so there really isn't a point in keeping ACs unless you think "nigger faggot shill" posts are worth having. Personally I'd be happy to give up the 3% of insightful ACs if that meant getting rid of the 97% of the crapfloods.

Re:All?

[masterjames]

here here!

Re:All?

[Dcnjoe60]

I think you misunderstand. I am not saying your grandfather was wrong. I am simply saying that free speech takes all sorts of forms other than just speaking words. Actions are very much a form of expression and therefore protected speech (the courts have even said so). So, yes, Germany may have declared war on the US, but from their leader's perspective, they probably felt justified in doing so. That would be their opinion, which again is protected under free speech.

As for child porn, etc., by our western morals, yes there is a victim. In parts of the world where it is normal to be married at the age of 13, they would probably see that differently. Again, many would argue that pornography, child or otherwise, is merely an expression of an idea and is protected.

The right we call freedom of speech is the right to express an opinion or an idea, it does not give one the right to express it in whatever way they want. Hitler's freedom of speech led to WWII. Obviously, he had the right to his opinions and ideas, but the US and allies felt the method of expressing them was not acceptable. There is no strawman here. Saying that hate speech is acceptable is like saying that Hitler's approach was acceptable. Society begs to differ and has said so. Society has also said the same thing about child porn, bullying and even yelling fire in a crowded theater. Freedom of speech means you have the right to express your opinion and ideas, no more, no less. It does not mean you have the right to do so any way you please. Society gets to dictate what is acceptable or not.

Re:All?

[hairyfeet]

Well that is where you and I differ, as I go by the "right to swing your fist ends at my nose" school of thought. If the German people, who elected the Nazis by a landslide, wanted to go along with their insane ideas? A country should have the right to choose its leaders, but Germany's rights ended when they began subjugating the neighbors.

As for child porn? just because BF Afghanistan allows raping kids don't make it right but if they want to allow that in their country that is their right, just as we have the right to not allow it in our country. Where I think the laws have gone astray is for manga and other drawings which to me is classic thoughtcrime to ban those, and i think its stupid that I can marry a 16 year old but can't take a pic of my wife naked, that is fucked up. But I think we can both agree there is a pretty big difference between some 16 year old flashing her tits and sexting it to her BF and somebody raping a kid and filming it. Again if it requires someone else to be victimized to create it? NOT free speech IMHO but at the same time you go get some legal age girl to act out a rape fantasy? Should be protected speech as nobody is being victimized to create it.

Ultimately as my grandfather taught me you HAVE to protect the speech you can't stomach as it is that speech which is always used as a justification for curbing free speech. After all no reason to protect popular speech,nobody is gonna be arrested or banned for saying the populist tact, its always the scumbags, the Nazis, pedos, terrorists, etc that are used as an excuse and it NEVER ends, the same law they say will "only target terrorists" as we have seen quickly targets everybody, so no matter what your view on the subject we MUST remain vigilant or lose what rights we have.

Can't Stop Won't Stop

[Anonymous Coward]

I have maintained a pseudonym online as much as possible, and will continue to do so. The guy out in Colorado or somewheresville who has the actual name probably is none too pleased

Re:Can't Stop Won't Stop

[Dunbal]

I happen to be a character in a book - well a series of books, actually :)

Re:Can't Stop Won't Stop

[omnichad]

Anonymous Coward is not a pseudonym.

Re:Can't Stop Won't Stop

[Nefarious Wheel]

Anonymous Coward is not a pseudonym.

Yes it is.

Re:Can't Stop Won't Stop

[Pseudonym]

But it is not a unique pseudonym [...]

No, it's not.

Use one anyway.

[bobbutts]

It's not a perfect solution, but most of these real name policies have no actual way to vet the users.

Re:Use one anyway.

[Frigga's Ring]

Even then, you're often given an choice to have your billing information different than your account information. If you don't want the transactions on your credit card tied to your purchases, there are ways around that as well.

Identify it

[Anonymous Coward]

Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.

Re:Identify it

[Joce640k]

Oh, for mod points.

Re:Identify it

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like an attempt to appease everyone without actually understanding the issue.

To the extent "banning" pseudonyms pleases some people, it does so by letting them retaliate. After you say something that displeases anyone in a position of power---an employer, a bitchy parent of a child in school, a litigious person, a government spook---they can use your non-pseudonymous name to find you in another area and retaliate. It's possible to retaliate across time as well as forum: when you seek employment, your employer in the position of power can Google your name and look for distant past speech. And the proportion of retaliation is entirely up to the person in the position of power.

If only we could enable this retaliation for things "everyone" agrees are bad, like "trolling," and not for being gay or having a political view that some people don't like.

We can't do that. What we can do is have a class of people who's much less vulnerable to retaliation than everyone else. Surprise: these people think you're "hiding behind" your pseudonym. This is the chief effect at work here, and your plan makes it worse, not better.

If you are going to make a prescription it should be the opposite one: revealing your "real name" should be forbidden on the forum because even when only some people do it, it increases the power imbalance. proposed rule: If you use a name intended to look real, or claim that something is your real name, or reveal your real name in the text of your comment, you're banned.

Re:Identify it

[Zero__Kelvin]

On some sites we could even give people the option of creating a pseudonym or posting without one. The only question left to answer is: what would we call the non-pseudonymous cowards?

Re:Identify it

[girlintraining]

Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.

One of the big reasons for anonymity is protection of free speech. If you haven't noticed, anyone can be silenced with a threat of a lawsuit for slander, libel, terroristic threats, trade secrets, and the list goes on. Giving a website "proof" just makes it that much easier to silence someone regardless of whether they're operating under a pseudonym or not; The website is the first thing targeted by the anti-free speech crowd's lawyers.

The only way for free speech to survive is to rebalance the power imbalance between the people who have lots of money and can simply threaten someone and drag them into court, sucking their life savings away... and the poor people who want to express an opinion, but lack advanced technical tools to obscure their true identity. And the first step in doing that, is something like Tor where an IP address or e-mail address can't be matched to a realworld identity. mailinator and Tor are a powerful combination for normalizing those relationships to an equal footing.

That's precisely why the wealthy are trying so hard to destroy them: It allows democratic discourse, the ability for people to organize anonymously against them and their corrupted interests and greed.

Re:Identify it

[Anonymous Coward]

But I am Spartacus!

Re:Identify it

[contrapunctus]

I made the mistake of using my real name on hulu, then I found out my activity was searchable on google. so then I had to change my name to something else then cancel account and create a new account with a fake name just so people can't see what/how many shows I've watched.

Needless to say I will never get a hulu plus account.

And more importantly, I never use my real name unless I absolutely have to. I wasn't so careful in the 90s, so my name still shows up next to posts I have made back then.

I have a rare name.

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

"To the extent "banning" pseudonyms pleases some people, it does so by letting them retaliate."

Precisely. It puzzles me why many people don't understand this.

Our Founders (and for that matter, the Supreme Court) acknowledged that a Democratic form of government is not possible without free and anonymous speech, and anonymous voting. And anonymity requires pseudonymity.

And this is so precisely because without anonymous speech, it becomes possible to retaliate against people for their speech. An employer can retaliate if an employee supports politics he doesn't like, for example. Or the government can retaliate if certain speech is not appreciated.

Think that's stretching things? Nonsense. Look at the flap about the IRS just this year.

Re:Identify it

[sqrt(2)]

A potential employer is in no more powerful a position as you are. They need workers, you need a job.

Bull. Fucking. Shit. Please read section 2.5 for a succinct explanation of why this is patent nonsense. This argument has been closed. Your position is simply erroneous. You are deluded, or being intentionally misleading when you repeat this piffle.

Re:Identify it

[Obfuscant]

... a Democratic form of government is not possible without free and anonymous speech, and anonymous voting.

A democracy is impossible with anonymous voting. If you can't determine that the person who is voting has a right to vote, then anyone can walk in and vote. If you can't determine that someone has already voted, then they can vote a dozen or more times. You can't have the concept of "one person one vote" if you can't determine when that one person has cast his one vote.

What you are thinking of is secret ballots, not anonymous voting. It is absolutely imperative that you identify the person who is doing the voting and his right to be there, and only at that point should the origin and content of the actual vote become unidentifiable.

Re: Identify it

[sqrt(2)]

I totally believe you. I bet your boss hides in fear when you swagger passed in Ron Paul 2008 campaign T-shirt. Fuckin' OG.

Re: Identify it

[Burz]

Yes, it sucks to be virtually anyone other than you.

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

"A democracy is impossible with anonymous voting. If you can't determine that the person who is voting has a right to vote, then anyone can walk in and vote. "

You misunderstood me. We do have "anonymous voting", but not in the sense you mean.

You go to the voting center. You show your I.D. so they know you voted. But it's anonymous in the sense that the ballot does not have your name on it, so HOW you voted, that is, what or who you voted for, is still anonymous.

Re:Identify it

[Obfuscant]

You go to the voting center. You show your I.D. so they know you voted.

Which is pretty much how you define "not anonymous". It's public record.

But it's anonymous in the sense that the ballot does not have your name on it,

That's not anonymous, that's secret. There is a difference. We can all find out if you voted or not. We can't find out how you voted.

Anonymous voting means nobody knows who you are when you vote. Secret ballot means they know who you are but not how you voted. I'd try to come up with a car analogy but it's not worth it.

Re:Identify it

[Anonymous Coward]

"the worker needs money"

With fewer taxes, mandates, and fees, this would be far less true. Reducing the workers' needs in this instance, will up negotating power. Consider owning a car. Mimimum sticker/registration fees are typically 3 figures and insurance alone can be $100/month. Eliminate these and a regressive mandate is lost.

"the worker can work for a different company"

Actually, he can't so much. Government has elminiated so many businesses (drugs and prostitution are just the tip of the iceberg), that there may not be a "different company" and starting one by the worker would face the same obstacles.

"acting as if bosses have the better end of the deal"
Mostly, but we have a commisioned sales rep who routinely earns more than all the top management and the owner(s). How? He's worth it. End of fucking story.

"During interviews, the prospective employee is often nervous; the boss rarely is."
A stereotype at best except that this is often the same situtation with a desperate seller and a relaxed buyer with options. When it is 11PM on a Sunday evening, the guy who can fix the sprinkler system isn't nervous, the building owner is.

"the boss can test the urine for drugs;"
The employee can demand his boss' urine too. The difference is in likilhood of success. Regardless, in a bitchfest to defend losing more freedoms, please don't use lost freedoms as a primary motivation.

"the boss may ask on a moment's notice that she work a half hour longer or else she's fired"
Depends on the employment contract if any. If not, the worker has agreed to be an 'employee at will'. Bosses that abuse this will find themselves unable to marshall a successful team. They'll create profit opportunities for everybody else.

"A boss may, and very often does, yell at an employee who has made a minor mistake, telling her how stupid and worthless she is, but rarely could an employee get away with even politely mentioning the mistake of a boss, even if it is many times as unforgivable."
In my experience they can and will. Are they disrespectful? No. But neither are we.

"We previously proposed a symmetry between a boss firing a worker and a worker quitting a boss,"
We previously constructed a strawman...

"On the other hand, a prospective employee who asked her prospective boss to produce letters of recommendation from her previous workers would be politely shown the door;"
It is routine for companies to be ranked by work environment. Regardless, you can question or ask to question current employees. You have no evidence that the request for "previous workers" would end an interview. As a "boss" type, I find it to be a fascinating question and look forward to someone asking it.

"The proper level negotiating partner to a boss is not one worker, but all workers. If the boss lost all workers at once, then she would be at 0% productivity"
Our highly paid workers are not tying their boats to people without GEDs.

"The ability of workers to coordinate action without being threatened or fired for attempting to do so is the only thing that gives them any negotiating power at all, and is necessary for a healthy labor market. Although we can debate the specifics of exactly how much protection should be afforded each kind of coordination, the fundamental principle is sound."
Meh. But you're not really saying anything here beyond "Why I Hate Your Freedom" without lamenting the loss of your own freedoms and the subsequent pain it causes. Not just pain, but you try to repeat that cycle in every otherwise voluntary transaction.

After all, if your town limits liquor licenses, maybe you can demand to be served. Instead you frame this as hating the barkeep's freedom when what you ought to hate is the barkeep's state-granted license (or the artificial need to operate with one).

Re:Identify it

[ultranova]

If only we could enable this retaliation for things "everyone" agrees are bad, like "trolling," and not for being gay or having a political view that some people don't like.

Socrates was a troll. Jesus was a troll. Prometheus was a troll. Gandhi was a troll. ML King was a troll.

Trolling isn't inherently bad, just annoying. Neither in reality nor our wildest daydreams can we advance without someone challenging the status quo. And a living organism that stops advancing dies. And civilization is an organism.

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

"That's not anonymous, that's secret."

You're making a distinction that is not a real difference. Your VOTE is anonymous. WHETHER you voted is not.

Those are two different things.

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

"Anonymous voting means nobody knows who you are when you vote. Secret ballot means they know who you are but not how you voted. I'd try to come up with a car analogy but it's not worth it."

I understand what you are saying but you're splitting hairs at best. Your actual BALLOT (vote) is still anonymous.

Re:Identify it

[Burz]

And the first step in doing that, is something like Tor where an IP address or e-mail address can't be matched to a realworld identity. mailinator and Tor are a powerful combination for normalizing those relationships to an equal footing.

That's precisely why the wealthy are trying so hard to destroy them: It allows democratic discourse, the ability for people to organize anonymously against them and their corrupted interests and greed.

There's more than one way of looking at this. I think its better to have networking that's pseudonymous from top to bottom, using something like onion routing, where addresses are actually cryptographic keys. A person can then associate their address key with other identification, if they choose, and to the extent they choose.

There are a number of reasons why Tor doesn't facilitate this kind of power over one's online identity. One is that Tor users typically look like 'browser session X from exit node Y' and this just inspires services and even P2P users to blacklist your only means of reaching them anonymously. Another is that the anonymity itself is somewhat lacking, between the weak encryption and the tendency toward centralized routing.

Re: Identify it

[ultranova]

Your basic mistake is assuming employees are interchangeable. Likely rooted in your union indoctrination.

I am. Everyone I know are. It's because, at the end of the day, I'm an average person. I have no inherent advantage over another average person. Now, there are schools of economic thought that say that I should thereby starve to death or at the very least live in horrible misery since, after all, I can be easily replaced. And once upon the time, these schools got us the Gilded Era and its robber barons, and people like me got just that. Then we joined together, recognized our common plight, and formed the unions to put a stop to that ruthless exploitation. And now I get paid a decent wage for putting in a reasonable effort.

So I, for one, will continue supporting the unions. And you will undoubtedly continue looking down at them, never understanding that your own economic position depends not on your undoubtedly superhuman abilities but us average people being able to demand a decend wage, thus forcing the choice to be between your elite skills and elite pay and my mediocre skills and mediocre pay rather than my mediocre skills and starvation wage.

But hey, disregard that, it's far more satisfying to keep having delusions of grandieur.

Re:Identify it

[bug1]

revealing your "real name" should be forbidden

For the site to stop people revealing their "real name" they need to know what it is, annonymity gone.

Re:Identify it

[Obfuscant]

I understand what you are saying but you're splitting hairs at best. Your actual BALLOT (vote) is still anonymous.

No, the contents of your ballot are SECRET, but you voting is not an anonymous process, and cannot be for the reasons already outlined. It does make a difference, and being flippant with the terms only confuses the issues involved, which are different.

When I last voted in person, I had to prove who I was and that I had a right to vote there. They marked down the fact that I was voting. This is not "anonymous" in any definition I know of. I filled out the ballot and handed it back to the poll worker. It was in a folder so they could not see what I had put on the ballot ("secret") but they could clearly identify me and that the ballot I handed them was the same one they had given me a few moments before. This is not "anonymous" by any definition. At that point they maintained the secret by removing the identification from the ballot and putting it in a box. But they still knew who I was and that I had voted.

Now when I vote, I must put my ballot in a "secrecy envelope" which has my name and address printed on the outside, and I must sign the envelope attesting to the fact it was my ballot inside. This is not anonymous by ANY definition. They cannot see how I voted, but they certainly know exactly who voted. Secret, yes. Anonymous, no.

If you truly thought you understood what I am saying and that the difference doesn't matter, why are you arguing so much about it?

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

I'm not playing games. YOU are. I suggest you go get a dictionary.

I repeat, and I'm not mincing words or playing semantic games: WHETHER you voted is public. HOW you voted is not. That means that after it is verified WHETHER you voted, your ballot, while surely secret, is also ANONYMOUS.

As the dictionary says:

"1. without any name acknowledged, as that of author, contributor, or the like"

If you knew the [name, author, contributor] of any given ballot, it could not be "secret"! In order to be secret, it HAS TO be anonymous!

Re:Identify it

[Jane Q. Public]

"This is not anonymous by ANY definition."

Yes, it is. It is anonymous according to the DICTIONARY definition.

"Anonymous" does not mean you don't know that somebody wrote. It means you don't know what they wrote. Alternatively, if you have something written, it means you don't know who wrote it. One follows from the other.

In BOTH senses, your vote is anonymous.

Re:Identify it

[Nefarious Wheel]

Our Founders (and for that matter, the Supreme Court) acknowledged that a Democratic form of government is not possible without free and anonymous speech, and anonymous voting. And anonymity requires pseudonymity

And this is so precisely because without anonymous speech, it becomes possible to retaliate against people for their speech. An employer can retaliate if an employee supports politics he doesn't like, for example. Or the government can retaliate if certain speech is not appreciated.

Think that's stretching things? Nonsense. Look at the flap about the IRS just this year.

There was an excellent contemporaneous example during the French Revolution, in how they harried poor old Marat.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Marat

"Poor old Marat - in you we trust;
You work 'till your eyes are as red as rust"

Re:Identify it

[mpe]

Give people the choice of creating a "Real Name" account with proof or a "Pseudonym" account, and make this choice visible to everyone else.

You'd first need a clear definition of what a "real name" actually is. Even when someone uses one name in all contexts this need not be the same as their "birth name" or "legal name". Someone's legal name may in some cases be a "pseudonym" anyway.
It is also a false assumption that everyone has exactly one legal (or even birth) name. IIRC there's a site which debunks a rather large list of common assumptions about names which are simply wrong. Incorrect assumptions about names have been important ever since people started using computers to store names...

Re:Identify it

[mpe]

Our Founders (and for that matter, the Supreme Court) acknowledged that a Democratic form of government is not possible without free and anonymous speech, and anonymous voting.

Democracy, as invented in classical Athens, does not require any kind of voting. Government using elected representatives appears to be a Roman invention.

Re:Identify it

[Altrag]

I'd hazard to say that most people would make a distinction between standing up to a massive power imbalance and being successful compared to "ur m0m sux d0nk3y c0x!"

Even pretending to compare someone like Ghandi to your average internet troll is just a troll in itself I'm guessing!

Re:Identify it

[ToddInSF]

It isn't just the wealthy that don't want anonymity though.

People vest a great deal int heir worldviews and opinions, as well as in their own self-deceptions

People, as a group, will fight tooth and nail against any insight or truth they do not have the capacity to understand. People as a group, will shout-down anything that makes them uncomfortable.

The real chilling effect of removing anonymity is that people increasingly self-censor. You end up with extremes of opinion that are both equally false, and both nearly identically conformist.

The internet has become remarkably banal in it's extremes, the spectrum of expressed opinions predictably so.

I suppose it's a good thing, in a way. The people with the common names are essentially more anonymous, and increasingly ineffectual. The people with names that are more rare end up faced with a dilemma. Do I disconnect, and look elsewhere for human contact, or do I subject myself to the constant scrutiny of people who don't know anything, have done little, yet feel their life experience and knowledge is "equal" to mine ?

"The rich" have a lot of power, sure. And they should be kept in-check. But the common, the banal, the conformists - THEIR power is a far more destructive and malignant crippling influence. They "know" what they know, and "believe" what they believe, and will have their banal way.

What we have is already "anonymous organization" running everything.

Enjoy it, it's what you wanted.

Re:Identify it

[Reziac]

And then there's the poor sucker whose real name is John Doe... and there are real names that sound like constructs or nyms, as well as the reverse. (I mean, if Zappa hadn't named his kids the way he did, would you believe those were their real names?)

Other than that, I agree with you ... it's better when no one can retaliate. 'Too much' anonymity is always better than the reverse.

Re:Identify it

[Pseudonym]

No way I'm making it visible.

Re: Identify it

[ultranova]

The truth is that being paid based on effort, (or worse, TIME), instead of results is killing our economy on a global scale.

Being paid based on time is inevitable if you want control over how I use it. If you want a result-based pay system, fine: just hand me the specification for the desired result and hand me money once I turn it in. But understand that I won't be attending meetings (since I'd be wasting my time, not yours), remaining on-site (since it's my business where I spend my time), allowing you to change the specs halfway through without compensating me (since if I did, you'd be wasting my time already spent on the problem), etc. This, of course, causes problems with coordination and flexibility, not to mention the ridiculous overhead needed to bill every single time I cross a finger for you separately, and the fact that I'l naturally be serving your competitors too, just like contractors do nowadays. It doesn't eliminate inefficiencies, it just shifts them around.

Besides, global economy is not dying, and if it was, it's extremely unlikely that a change in wage accounting practices would stop it.

Re: Identify it

[ultranova]

You want to trim the fat, cut Joe CEO's bonus a few million dollars and watch his bullocks run and find ways to improve profits...

He'll shut down R&D, cash in his bonus for the temporary increase in profits, and be gone before the company folds from having its increasingly outdated products outcompeted. Clearly, the solution is a larger bonus which attracts top talent that does this faster and more thoroughly, thus maximizing economic efficiency by bankrupting every participant in it. No economic activity -> no waste -> 100% efficient economy, the sacred grail of economics. And a lot of starving people, but that's the price of perfection.

Re:Identify it

[ultranova]

I'd hazard to say that most people would make a distinction between standing up to a massive power imbalance and being successful compared to "ur m0m sux d0nk3y c0x!"

And most would also consider the latter sad rather than enraging or even annoying. If trolls sting people with barbs then that one is using a wet noodle.

Even pretending to compare someone like Ghandi to your average internet troll is just a troll in itself I'm guessing!

Well, it did elicit a response now didn't it ?-)

But it's more based on something I've noticed on a number of forums: any post that doesn't agree with the viewpoint of the site (when one exists) gets labeled a troll (and quite rightly; no one posts praises to social democracy on Freerepublic.org and not expect to get shit for that unless they're an idiot). It's become the standard way to defend your worldview from the thought that you could actually be wrong, or even that someone might honestly disagree with you. But any kind of change requires just that - people need to change the way they look at the world - so the archetype of a leader in a revolutionary change in thinking (a prophet, if you will) and the archetype of a troll are by definition the same.

The "you momma" troll you quoted above fails at precisely this: he doesn't challenge anyone's worldview in any way, so he's just background noise. But the intermittant articles about atheists that or evangelists what do, thus they generate absurd shitstorms of people yelling insults and threats to random strangers they've never met and likely never will. That is what a succesful troll is like, not a sad copypasta. And it's what Ghandi did to the British.

So no, the average Internet troll is not Ghandi, any more than the average emo teen writing terrible fanfiction is Homeros. But the difference is in their ability in their chosen activity, not its category. Even Tara Gillesbie herself is still a writer, just a very bad one (or a very succesful troll, making this a very meta example).

improving "civility"?

[Anonymous Coward]

citation needed: what kind of pseudonym restriction actually does improve civility?

You can't just speculate that it does. You can't even play games of association that don't prove causality. You need to actually show it. I understand it matches your intuition, but I think your intuition is wrong.

Re:improving "civility"?

[zidium]

It removes the ability to **easily** create dozens (or even hundreds) of sockpuppet accounts.

Especially on reddit, dozens of pseudonymous accounts will stalk me and attack me at a moment's notice, even after I've been away for a year or more. I have no idea if this cabal is made up of 12 people or just 1 deranged lunatic, or any combination thereof. I just know that they know my real name, address, etc. and I know NOTHING about them.

Real names (at least tied to facebook) would greatly increase their initial efforts AND would feasibly provide their victims with more intel on how to track them down and publicly shame them.

I've never been the target of sockpuppet accounts on ANY real-id type site.

Re:improving "civility"?

[Score Whore]

It improves civility by attaching a sense of responsibility and engages the normal social filters. Honestly it would work best if, in addition to a person's real name, it also presented their home town.

There's been plenty of social science research on human behavior when insulated from responsibility.

Re:improving "civility"?

[Known Nutter]

Real names (at least tied to facebook) would greatly increase their initial efforts...

I can obviously speak only for myself (but can safely assume on behalf of others) that if anyone tries to tie anything about me to Facebook, I'm out. That goes for the internet as a whole for me. Require FB, I'm gone. I am not alone.

I don't mind considering the idea of establishing a real-name type situation for some aspects of the internet (my bank knows who the hell I am), but Facebook should definitely become the "ID card" of the internet. People smarter than me can explain better why this is so, so wrong.

Logging into sites with facebook credentials is all over the place already and as soon as I see it... bye!

Re:improving "civility"?

[Known Nutter]

* not become...

Re:improving "civility"?

[zidium]

The account is 8 years old. If we trashed our identities with rich histories and comments and all that whenever assholes came attacking us, what type of world would we be in? Right now, we only do so when sociopaths are after us.

Re:improving "civility"?

[Mashiki]

It removes the ability to **easily** create dozens (or even hundreds) of sockpuppet accounts.

Really? It's nice thinking, but it doesn't work. It didn't work when Blizzard tried it on their forums, and nothing stops people from making "fake real-id" types on *insert site xyz* if anything, the people are assholes with or without pseudonyms. And in some cases, when using a real-ID they're even worse than without.

Re:improving "civility"?

[pantaril]

Real names (at least tied to facebook) would greatly increase their initial efforts AND would feasibly provide their victims with more intel on how to track them down and publicly shame them.

Are you aware that you can register as many fake facebook accounts as you like? You just need e-mail address and fake name.

Also, i'd be very careful with the tracking and publicly shaming of some internet troll. He can easily pretend to be someone else end you end up tracking and shaming innocent person.

Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[crow]

Our local newspaper publishes almost everything online. It also allows people to make comments. A few years ago, they decided to deal with the level of uncivil comments by requiring everyone to establish an account before posting. After a few months, it was mostly back to normal, but marginally better. Then this summer, they switched to requiring a Facebook or Linked-In login, and almost all commenting stopped--not just the problem comments, all comments.

They killed the commenting system by trying to force real identities.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been numerous studies about the behavior of people with and without a means of positive identification. Unfortunately I can't find the references (at work, ya know...), but two distinct studies come to mind. The first was people in cars and the cognitive disassociation we have with other drivers, we don't often see faces or make eye contact, so other people just become cars, inanimate objects we cannot empathise with. As a result, we have no issues screaming at that mother of 3 who's trying to keep her kids calm, all because she switched lanes without using her signal. The other study had to do with online interactions, individuals who were able to use pseudonyms routinely did not feel any remorse or regret with their online interactions and forum posts, why? Because of the same sort of disassociation. Since our actions are not tied to ourselves and we do not get an immediate response from whomever complete with facial expressions, we have no problems acting like total assholes.

Both cases have to do with the disassociation we have with others who we do not make eye contact with, we do not know, and we do not see what else they may be dealing with. Also in both cases, the problem is remedied by bringing the human social interaction back into play. There is a city in Europe (saw it on Discovery channel) that completely did away with stoplights, instead forcing people to look at other cars, make eye contact with other drivers, and invoke some communication. Accidents dropped significantly, gridlock was reduced, and the town overall was easier to navigate, even as a pedestrian or bicyclist.

So yes, your newspaper may have killed the commenting system by using real identities, but they also did a service to their public image by annihalating the individuals that hide behind anonymity to pick fights and generally act like jerks because now there is an individual that fingers can be pointed at.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[Dunbal]

Facebook = real identities? Don't tell my dog, she has an account.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[Stormy Dragon]

Same thing happened on ESPN.com recently when they went to requiring a facebook log in. Where before you frequently got hundreds or thousands of comments on stories, now you rarely see more than a dozen.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[he-sk]

So your dog isn't real?

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[Darinbob]

There's also the issue that I won't even make a comment if there's even remotely a chance of controversy, and if that's true there's no need to speak up in a forum or letter to the editor anyway. Ie, if I wanted to make some pro or anti gun control statement, I know it would generate controversy no matter what side of the issue it is. Similarly, any statement regarding the Israel/Palestine peace process will generate extremely angry responses (even a middle of the road moderate stances are seen as anathema to both sides). So of course you don't want to stand out in public with your name/address/phone/email for everyone to see if you want to give your opinion on a matter. It can be physically dangerous. Any email adresses made public will be sent death threats.

So you need some small amount of anonymity just to allow people to feel safe to speak up. Even when papers publish real names for the letters to the editor, it's still at least difficult to contact the actual letter writer (at least in cities where unique names are rare). But add a facebook login, given the abysmal lack of security that most web sites have, and there's no assurance that someone disgruntled by your comments won't track you down, or that some Anonymous lulz group hacks the site and all the contact info.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[ShoulderOfOrion]

I'm old enough to remember when Letters to the Editor were actually written on paper and mailed in with a stamp. Even did it myself a few times. Your name and address were required, and your name and city were published. (This was a small county paper that covered about 25,000 folks across a dozen small towns.) There didn't seem to be any shortage of such letters, the tone was generally polite even when the differences of opinion were stark, and the grammar was usually impeccable. About 20-25% of the letters came from the usual 'regulars'; about half of those commented on just about everything, and the other half had strong opinions on certain topics. Everyone knew who they were (sort of like local celebrities.) When you wrote a letter, it wasn't much different than standing up in a town meeting and having your voice heard. It wasn't that hard to correlate who you were with an address in the phone book, but it really wasn't a problem either.

The thing about letters is, they require thought. And time. And effort. Most folks don't mind others with differing opinions. Where they take exception is when idiots fire off spur-of-the-moment personal diatribes against them for their differing opinions. That is what online anonymity allows, and it's a bad thing when it comes to, say, newspaper comment sections. I would argue they didn't kill the commenting system, they fixed it. Newspapers would be better served with a few civil well-though-out comments than the mindless drivel anonymous commenting allows.

OTOH, slashdot isn't really 'News for Nerds', it's 'Entertainment for Nerds'. I expect entertaining mindless drivel, from the Anonymous Coward Microsoft shills defending their crumbling empire, to the Apple fanbois drooling over their latest iShiny while trying to ignore the 'BSD Inside' sticker. I understand it's hard to be civil when the basement is so cold (or hot).

Why must computer nerds always be so 'binary' these days? Back in my day we had analog, and it was OK to use varying levels of anonymity depending on the circumstances. Some web sites work better with it, others without. Nothing to see here. Get off my lawn.

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[FilmedInNoir]

Mine's even worse, it moderates,

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[ryanvanderzanden]

The town that did away with traffic lights was in England, called Poynton. Saw the following Video about it a while back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vzDDMzq7d0

Re:Example: Comments on online local newspaper

[kmoser]

So your dog isn't real?

She sprays a different scent on her butt before going online, just to mask her real identity.

Lie

[Karmashock]

Few social networking sites... almost none... are really able to figure out your real name. They might ask you to give a "real name"... and you can do that... but it doesn't have to be your real name.

You can be Bruce Wayne... Or George Washington... or whatever. How are they going to stop it? Pull a credit card off you? Who is paying for social networking? Exactly.

There are a lot of data bases with a lot of information on everyone. But how much of that information is actually accurate? The dirty little secret is that most of the information in those databases is garbage.

Which is good for us. Keep filling it with garbage. When the data miners open wide, stuff their mouths with trash and keep shoveling until they're full. They'll believe they have some means to filter fact from fiction but they're welcome to try.

This is the price of an automated system. Computers as we all know are stupid. Very easy to lie to them. And are we under any legal obligation to not lie to these people? No we are not. And even if we were, and I'd love to see a lawyer try to get a jury to convict someone of such a thing, then would it be worth the effort even to set an example? Not really.

Lie and keep lying.

Re:Lie

[neminem]

That works, until you actually *do* need them to have your real name for some other reason. My best friend from high school did exactly that for WoW, because he didn't see any reason for them to have his real name, so he just gave them a fake "real name". Then, a couple years later, he sent them money for a renewal and their system was messed up and didn't process it right, and when he went to complain, they had a huge mess trying to fix it because his "real name" wasn't his actual real name.

Re:Lie

[Joce640k]

Few social networking sites... almost none... are really able to figure out your real name. They might ask you to give a "real name"... and you can do that... but it doesn't have to be your real name.

You can be Bruce Wayne... Or George Washington... or whatever. How are they going to stop it?

The latest trend is towards sending a message to your mobile phone with an account creation code.

Why do you ask...?

Re:Lie

[Anon, Not Coward D]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7eIUOUfhoJ8

Re:Lie

[Karmashock]

I've seen gmail doing that... but I'm not sure that gets you to a name. And regardless, you can claim you don't have a cell phone. It tends to be an optional step.

Re:Lie

[macbeth66]

The latest trend is towards sending a message to your mobile phone with an account creation code.

Why do you ask...?

So? I have access to a number of Pre-Paid phones.

Re:Lie

[Karmashock]

Your friend didn't handle it correctly.

In the event that you have to pay, you do not need the payment information to match the account information. For example, if some child sets up an account on one of these systems his parents will ultimately pay for it through their credit card etc. Thus the payment information does not match the account name.

So you say, "yes, my name is Bruce wayne... And this is the payment method"... there is no need for them to match.

Re:Lie

[neminem]

And that matters why? My point wasn't that you should feel sympathy for him, my point was simply that it's not a perfect solution, because it could cause problems later. It could cause problems later anywhere.

Re:Lie

[gsslay]

I would agree with you 100%, but now more and more online setups are getting audacious enough to demand, yes demand proof of your identity. This is where the line is crossed. I can sign up for a power supply, cable, telephone and newspaper delivery. I can enter a shop and buy practically anything I want. All without being obliged to produce a birth certificate, or a governmental identifier. But some crappy website demands a copy of my paperwork, before it'll give me the privilege of viewing their adverts??

Well screw that. I do not want my bank to know what my taste in Youtube videos is. I do not want Facebook to know what newsfeeds I prefer. I do not want things joined up through a real identity because I see no advantage to me whatsoever in joining them, only disadvantages. They are already joined where it matters; in my head.

Re:Lie

[Joce640k]

So? I have access to a number of Pre-Paid phones.

Lucky you. There's no such thing as an anonymous, pre-paid phone in most countries.

Re:Lie

[Dunbal]

Don't have a "mobile phone". Oh the alternative is sending it to a different email address - I think that's what either gmail or hotmail does not. Since I have a few websites, creating a temporary email account is rather simple.

Re:Lie

[Dunbal]

The terms of service do not have the full force of civil or criminal law - despite the providing company wanting them to. You can break the ToS all you want and I promise the SWAT team won't come and break down your door. Unless of course you're breaking the law as well.

Re:Lie

[Anne_Nonymous]

>> You can be Bruce Wayne...

I'm sorry, the user name BruceWayne is allready taken. Would you like to be BruceWayne754?

Re:Lie

[catmistake]

And are we under any legal obligation to not lie to these people? No we are not.

As a matter of fact, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution gives us the right to lie.

I was raised not to lie under any circumstances. It was a long time before I realized that this is impossible. Truth is slippery, and in truth, it cannot be fully known. I trudged through life doing my best to be honest in all but the "white lie" social situations. Over time, I realized how gullible I was, as when one is honest, it is a natural assumption that others are honest with you. Eventually, I became more and more aware of how full of shit everyone was. There were degrees, as I found some individuals beyond reproach in their honesty, and some that I could no longer believe a wors they say, My skepticism even spread to the news I was reading, and was reinforced by a certain news agency winning a court case effectively giving them the right to make up news out of thin air.

I still try to stay honest. In honesty, you don't need to remember any extra annotations to your memory. Every lie will create the need for 10 more, and so on. Who has time for that? Some people are exceptional at lying. Some live in their lies. Some live a lie to protect themselves and their family, but are otherwise decent, honest, psychologiclaly healthy individuals.

It is too late for me, I find I am terrible at creating and casting the intentional lie. I do my best, but my efforts to conceal are easily revealed. I am the opposite of a trained operative... I was trained and it is embedded in me to be as honest as I can. More and more I learn the correct way to live is to not engage in lies, to keep my mouth shut and say nothing rather than lie or tell the truth.

Hopefully, it is not too late for you all reading this. Protect yourself. If you need an ethical reason to behave dishonestly, I recommend studying the excellent philosophical works of Sissela Bok, espescially this. In a nutshell, Bok goes into detail how in a society of liars, one must lie to survive.

I wish you luck. But always remember, no one likes liars, and no one tolerates liars, not even liars. Don't get caught.

Re:Lie

[Darinbob]

What if you don't have a mobile?

Re:Lie

[girlintraining]

First thing any trained interrogator will tell you is, everyone lies. In fact, psychologists expect a certain degree of lying during a forensic psychiatric examination. People who show up as not lying a little, don't sweat a little, are very probably sociopaths. The fact is, some amount of lying is healthy. We lie to protect our egos, our worldview, or the people we love. We lie to protect ourselves. And this isn't a bad thing. Lying, by itself, is just a social behavior. It's the motivation behind it that makes it good or bad.

We don't lie all the time. In fact, we lie very little as a society. But it is essential to our survival that we do. Sun Tzu wrote several thousand years ago that the best way to motivate your soldiers is to put them on what he termed "death ground". That is, intentionally leading them to a place where there can be no retreat from the enemy. They then fight harder and hold nothing back. Sun Tzu knew that all warfare is deception, even to one's own troops. But it saved lives; Those soldiers might have run themselves ragged retreating constantly. By forcing the conflict, choosing the time and place, at a time when the soldiers would have maximum effectiveness against the enemy, casualties on his side were minimized. But you better believe that he didn't tell the soldiers he knew he was setting them up for a situation with no escape. He lied to them. And because of that, they survived.

People lie about their age so they can join the military early. Maybe they come from a broken home, are constantly physically and sexually abused, and it's the only way out. So they lie, and it means they survive, emotionally if not physically as well. Honesty is a virtue, but like any virtue you can take it to excesss -- you can get yourself killed, or hurt, or those you love.

If there's one thing I've learned about morality, it's that it cannot be inflexible. Sometimes you have to sacrifice one ideal to protect an even bigger one. Sometimes, you have to sacrifice a short term set back to achieve a long term success. Lying is directly tied to morality -- you can't talk about one and not the other. So I'm not saying don't try to be honest, but remember it's a virtue... and virtues come before doing the right thing, at the right time, with the right words.

If you lie because it protects a principle of yours, or perhaps if what you do goes beyond principles and into the realm of love, which is perhaps beyond right or wrong, then I will not judge you poorly for it. I only judge liars who are motivated wealth, power, privilege, or advantage over others... I judge them by their vices, not by their virtues. So I guess all I'm saying, if I'm saying anything at all, is not to overburden yourself with guilt if you find you have to lie to do right. But be careful; If you find yourself saying you have to lie to protect others, or are doing something for another's own good then be warned. In all my experience in life, I have yet to find someone who made such an utterance, and good came from it.

Re:Lie

[uninformedLuddite]

The problem with most lies people tell is that they aren't the truth. If you want to lie effectively you tell the truth in such a way that the person lied to processes it to mean exactly what you want them to believe.

Web of trust?

[mlts]

I've always wondered about some web of trust available for this. For example:

I have a website, and want people to comment. Someone decides to authenticate with a keyID. My server checks what certificates are associated with the public key. One cert from a semi-trustworthy source shows the anon ID is actually associated with a live person. Another cert from a decently trustworthy source shows the person is a frequent poster at a website. Still another shows that the ID has been in use on sites on a daily basis without any site bans for a few years.

With this info in mind, even though I have no clue whom the person is, I can reasonably assume that it will be either someone good at ID theft, or someone that likely won't be trolling/spamming.

A reputation based system would be useful. The public key can be anonymous, but with CAs (of varying trust levels), I can find that the person has been proven to be not a bot, has a positive reputation on various sites, is known by friends and people I do trust, etc. Of course, on the other hand, I get a key that has absolutely zero certificates on it, I'd probably not bother to allow it on.

Re: Web of trust?

[Anonymous Coward]

Reputation based is based on the type & reputation of the website. I'm flagged as a troll on a site that I respectfully disagree with, but I'm a stud on a site I agree with and troll the shit out of those who disagree.

Re:Web of trust?

[Dunbal]

If you want to be absolutely sure who the person is, maybe you can ask the NSA - maybe they will provide that government service for you, for a small fee :)

Re:Web of trust?

[mlts]

The trustworthy sources are whom you (as an individual) trust. If you know a site that is shilling, you mark it as not trusted, which can lower the reputation of the shill's signed keys. Of course, if you don't know a site, you can trust a friend and if they consider a CA trustworthy enough to sign a key and mark that CA's key as trustworthy, the target CA's key trust will go up the chain.

A WoT is something one controls, and by extension, their website.

The nice thing about this system is that when trolls/shills get found, their reputation hits the skids as fast as it takes for key certificates to update or a revocation certification to propagate to keyservers. People making shill CAs/introducers will get flagged as distrusted and will pretty much vanish.

Of course, a WoT takes some time because one's reputation is at stake when a key is signed, but one can always sign a key as "not trusted/not distrusted", and edit trust later on.

Re:Web of trust?

[mlts]

If one listens to "trust me" ads, then that is the case. However, when it comes to a web of trust, a key from a Fortune 10 company is just the same as a key from some nobody in Elbonia.

Yes, it does take time to vet people, but that is what "honest" third party CAs are for. If a person doesn't like the CA, they just don't listen to their results.

For example, one "CA" I use is Symantec/PGP's. It provides me with one detail -- that someone cared enough about their key to submit it, then go and click a confirmation button on a website. In the scheme of things, it doesn't mean much, but it means that it wasn't just automatically generated and tossed on a keyserver.

As time goes on, I wouldn't be surprised to find CAs that would offer the service to vet that a key belongs to a certain person, and perhaps other things (over 18, etc.) If the CA was found lacking, one just yanked them off the trust list and moved on.

The small guys would be the people I'd end up explicitly vetting/trusting and anyone that considered my opinion worth anything might consider that positive, so reputation would propagate.

Of course, the perfect is the enemy of the good, but this is something better than what we have now (as we have either 100% trust, no info, or 100% distrust with no way of passing that info on automatically.)

Re:Web of trust?

[IamTheRealMike]

I think there are two technologies coming up that could help this situation somewhat. Although they're both a bit exotic currently.

The first one is Bitcoin proofs of sacrifice. The basic idea here is that you can obtain some Bitcoin via whatever means, and then sacrifice it (to miner fees) in such a way that you can create a data structure containing a public key which also proves that you threw that money away. Poof - you just created an anonymous "identity" that had a specific cost and that you therefore do not wish to lose. By adding this proof (or hash of the proof) to shared blacklists, you can then be banned from various sites. If you really really want to get back in, you can of course make a new sacrifice - but it could get expensive fast. People who behave can re-use their non banned proof at lots of websites and may never need to make a new one.

The second technology is called SCIP/TinyRAM and it allows you to generate a proof that some arbitrary computation was done correctly, where some of the inputs to that computation can be private. For example, you can take some rare and difficult to obtain object - like your NFC enabled passport - and then run a provable computation that verifies the signed cert chain stored inside the chip. The passport data is a private input. The output of the program is a hash of the passport and the fact that it was valid (signature chains were correct). This "proof" is then used as above - you can send it to websites who can then ban you if they wish, but they never learn your real identity. The bans stick because you can't easily obtain a new identity from the passport office.

I prefer the Bitcoin approach because it sets a market for abuse ... if you screw up and get banned in a lot of places, you can get a second chance by spending money. With the passport approach it can theoretically be done using any NFC enabled Android smartphone, so it's more accessible, but you only get once chance unless bans expire after a time period.

Re:Web of trust?

[bingoUV]

I don't understand the second one. The website believes that you ran the computation against a passport, but what if you run it against /dev/random?

Being the real Mike, you must know everything about identifying real people ;)

Barriers between identities

[pellik]

With tracking cookies and javascript hacks being as prevalent as they are I've been using separate sandboxes for browsing profiles for some time now with Sandboxie. I suppose I could go extra paranoid and throw in a proxy, too.

As long as the sites which know your real identity are walled away from the rest of the internet tracking then some level of anonymity can still be expected.

Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[CastrTroy]

Except for that last one ( female gamer who wants to play World of Warcraft without being hit on or harassed), I can see why you might want to be using a pseudonym, but I wouldn't expect it to really cover your identity either. If you have a big online presence, people will be able to figure out who you are.

As far as games go, I like online games using the "Mario Kart" model much better than anything else. When you're playing against the general public, it's more enjoyable to just play. No talking, no messaging, no real names. I actually prefer the private server model, where I only play against people I know, but that sadly seems to be going away.

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[bill_mcgonigle]

If you have a big online presence, people will be able to figure out who you are.

I used to follow a pediatrician who would often rail against the conventional wisdom - he happened to be very science-based and would not put up with patients who demanded scrips for viruses, etc. He would blow off steam on his blog.

Over time he started to leak info about himself - where he went to school, some nearby towns, etc. I left a comment or two advising him to stop doing that.

A bit later he started talking about a court case he was involved in. This was about the time the "hunt was on" for @FakeSteveJobs and I was curious to see what was possible - I did a few google searches and it wasn't too hard to figure out who he was, since court filings are public.

A month or so later, he disclosed that opposing council's staff had done the same, and used his blog posts to force a settlement.

My take away: if you're going to do something like this, never include any personal details and/or never cross paths with the legal system. But if I lived near his town, I'd definitely take my kids there.

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[SuricouRaven]

I work with children in a different capacity, and in a country where the public perception is that every rock hides a pedophile. As someone who works with children, I need to be constantly on my guard and display all the sexuality of a banana. I also need to maintain the most perfect PC image, and never say anything that could insult any ethnic or religious minority. If it became public that the school hired someone who considers religion in general a dangerous delusion, it could expose them to legal action - and they'd fire me in a heartbeat to save themselves.

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[omnichad]

display all the sexuality of a banana

That's quite a lot, really.

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[TangoMargarine]

So what exactly did they use to force the settlement?

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[HornWumpus]

You shouldn't be unemployable for making a stupid joke.

You should be unemployable for calling it 'brilliant'.

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[Darinbob]

How about a two week old banana?

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[Darinbob]

It doesn't matter. Even if he said "all the sexuality of a potato" you still have to assume there's a potato fetish web site on the internet somewhere...

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[Macgrrl]

Rule 34

Re:Don't try to hide behind a pseudonym.

[Pseudonym]

Pseudonyms are great [...]

Awww, thanks!

What a crisis! NOT

[water-and-sewer]

I'm not sure "anybody" has to "do anything" at all - there are many models for communication and people can - for the moment, anyway - use whichever ones they like.

I'm an old Usenet fan, but am perfectly aware the ability to nymshift led to a culture of spamming and verbal harrassment that are basically unacceptable and that helped kill Usenet as a communication platform (not totally; I'm still on it, as are others, but it's a shadow of its former self).

Slashdot allows a pseudonym and if you want to advertise your website or Twitter feed, you can do so. You can also be anonymous if you like.

Reddit allows pseudonyms and even throw-away accounts, and many people think that's been a big part of its success. On the other hand, Facebook requires you to use a real name. At first, that kept people honest, but now we've seen it's not that hard for spammers and scumbags to set up fake accounts and Facebook is somewhat powerless to stop it. So that did or did not work.

My point is just that there are many existing models, and they compete for attention. If your transgendered lawyer wants to run a podcast, s/he'll decide whether to do it under her own name on Facebook or using a pseudnym elsewhere. The platforms compete. Bloggers who want to get name recognition can use their name; bloggers who want anonymity can blog under a fake name.

There's a good debate waiting about the merits of the different platforms. And it's essential Netizens fight against any effort to do away with anonymity at the policy level. But for the moment I'm not convinced there's a crisis of any sort, or any need for people to "act now" to "save the internet."

Legitimate reasons?

[TheRaven64]

They're not doing it to improve civility or stop anonymous abuse. These can both be solved by other, less intrusive mechanisms. Even Slashdot manages it: penalise anonymous users a lot, penalise new members a little bit, and require users to establish a reputation to gain full participation. If they lose that reputation, their ability to participate drops off. The real reason that they want real names is because it makes the information that they harvest and sell to advertisers more valuable if it's tied to a real name and address.

Re:Legitimate reasons?

[inking]

To be fair, if you represent an unpopular opinion and even if you're civil about it, this sort of system isn't really going to work. Slashdot is still a very technology focused site, although you can slowly see technology unrelated political topics seeping through (e.g. Bradley Manning deciding to have a sex change), but this is far from being the case everywhere else.

Re:Legitimate reasons?

[doubletalk]

Not only advertisers, also governments. Governments around the world are pushing hard on this as well, making it easier to persecute people without asking for an IP address to the service provider first.

Re:Legitimate reasons?

[Rhacman]

The whole civility argument is nonsense anyways, I'm just surprised it isn't pointed out more. Who honestly believes that people who use their real names are going to behave in a civil manner? Have the people who believe this argument never encountered a jerk face-to-face? Did the world not have jerks before the Internet? I guess all the radio shock jocks and other media pundits are by definition civil because we know what their names are. /sarcasm

You are spot on using Slashdot as an example of how to achieve the same effect less intrusively.

Persistent Pseudonymous Reputation

[Bob9113]

If your pseudonym is persistent, reputation still matters. It does not matter whether your pseudonym can be connected to your meatspace identity; reputation is still reptuation.

The real problem with online harrassment, trolling, etc is that people lend credence to transient identities. Not a problem here, because we have persistent pseudonyms and transient identities. Transient identities get treated with skepticism and ignored if they're being abusive. Persistent pseudonyms which have earned a reputation are granted wider latitude to make their case.

The problem is not pseudonymity, or even transient identities and anonymity. It is that most public fora do not make it easy to distinguish between a member in good standing and a drive-by-troll.

Re:Persistent Pseudonymous Reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

If reputation is worth something, at some point you can buy accounts with reputations just like those twitter account.
On the other hand if you judge a comment solely based on content and not pseudonym, there is no gaming.

http://xkcd.com/810/

Re:Persistent Pseudonymous Reputation

[Oligonicella]

If and only if you use that moniker for only that account.

Re:Persistent Pseudonymous Reputation

[sharklasers]

I think what you're trying to say is that people who've had an account for a while and posted regularly enough to be seen, and aren't being dicks, are more likely to be able to say something and have people respond to them. I tend to agree - many a forum I'm posted something I thought was a quality post and sometimes insightful, only for everyone to ignore it and quote dickheads with poor language skills and even worse logic skills.

Having said that, I make a new account here every few months for reasons of anonymity, as well as being able to say my mind which can piss off Slashdotters at times, so burning the bridge is a good way to start fresh. :)

Go elsewhere?

[fey000]

How about those who wish for pseudonymity should use websites that allow for pseudonymity? There are some excellent arguments both for and against an anonymous internet, but I have yet to see one that requires *all* of the internet to conform to the desired policy, and I find it highly unlikely that the whole internet will require personal authentication anytime soon.

If you cannot use Facebook for fear of being discovered by your neighbours, why not use something else? I can understand someone wants to use the most popular social network, but it seems a long shot to convince such a large company to provide a service that runs counter to their economic interests.

Or as Bobby pointed out above, do some magic and create a fake persona with noone the wiser.

Re:Go elsewhere?

[BaronM]

The problem with 'go elsewhere' is that there may well be nowhere else to go with anything close to the same functionality or community. If it's a 'free' service, then it most likely means that the business model relies on building profiles of the users as the basis for targeted marketing, which means strongly inhibiting anonymity. If it's a paid-for service, you need to pay, which pretty much kills anonymity (no, payment via bitcoin only is NOT a viable mass-market business strategy).

I suppose a paid-for, non-advertising driven service could support pseudonymity unless required to divulge real identities by law enforcement, but I can't see such services becoming more than niche players.

I use a pseudonym

[Jason Levine]

Not on Slashdot (my account predates getting married and having kids... back in the days when I only had myself to worry about and didn't think anything bad could come of having my real name out there), but on my blog/Twitter/etc. My wife and I use pseudonyms because we often discuss parenting issues and will post photos of our kids. We don't want someone tracking us or our kids down, though, so we don't use real names and obviously don't use our address or name of our kids' school. It's not impossible to track us down, but it makes it hard for some random Internet stalker (yes, I've encountered at least one) to call my work to "report" me to my boss for crimes she imagines I committed. (Said Internet stalker has harassed lots of people online and has contacted at least 1 person's employer because he used his real names/place of business online.)

One of the big reasons why I don't use Facebook or Google+ (besides lack of time to be on a million social networking sites), is that they require that you use (and reveal to the world) your real name. (If they really wanted to require real names but support pseudonyms, it wouldn't be hard to devise a system where your real name was hidden to all and your pseudonym was displayed instead.)

Re:I use a pseudonym

[kwbauer]

Do you really not understand that the primary purpose (or draw) of Facebook from the user's standpoint is to connect with real people that you actually know in real life but maybe don't see every day. You can connect with people you went to High School with and are still interested somewhat in what they are doing. You can connect with parents, children, grandchildren, cousins, etc. Facebook is really a huge microblogging site. All of that really only works well when people use their real names. I am fine if you choose not to participate for whatever reason you choose. I'm just pointing out that the only way to achieve what people are getting out of Facebook is to have people not be anonymous. Some will say that you should be able to choose to hide your real name from everyone except those you allow to be "friends". The problem with that is that you won't be able to find your friends without linking their real name to their pseudonyms.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[bmo]

One of the big reasons why I don't use Facebook or Google+ (besides lack of time to be on a million social networking sites), is that they require that you use (and reveal to the world) your real name.

My reaction to that is... and always shall be, "proven by what?" Do either of them require a faxed photocopy of a government issued ID? No?

So I ignore it. As you should. As everyone should.

For all anyone knows, I'm an owl on both FB and Google as my real name. My real friends know who I am and that's all that counts.

You have the right to call yourself anything you want in real life as long as you're not trying to defraud anyone. Why should we give up this right online? Because some company thinks it can?

Fuck no.

Stop being a pussy and ignore unenforceable TOS/AUP rules.

--
BMO

Re:I use a pseudonym

[Oligonicella]

In my experience, the people using psuedonyms are tinfoil hatters who aren't very tech savvy at all.

Like the thousands of psuedonyms right here on SlashDot? I think your argument fails.

By the way, since Anonymous Coward is a general psuedonym, you just self-identified as a tinfoil hatter and technical illiterate.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[Jason Levine]

Well, Facebook I avoid for reasons other than the real name requirement. (I'd list the reasons, but let's just summarize it as "Every Facebook Story That Appears Here Ever.") In the case of Google, being caught using a fake name can mean getting your Google account axed. As I actually use my Google account for other purposes, that would badly impact me. I could open a new Google account and just use it for Google+, but then I'd have to switch between my real name account and fake name account. That's a lot of effort to go through just to use a social network that I really don't care about. So I simply don't use it.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[Inda]

I used a pseudonym everywhere except Google+. On G+, it's my chance to promote the real me in the one place others are likely to find me (top result on a Google search). I have a dozen favourable post on there, a few +1s, a couple of pictures of my boring hobbies. Perfect, and very misleading.

If I had to give up my pseudonym, I'd give up posting on the internet and join the 80% of lurkers.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[kwbauer]

And that is your experience and your right. Millions of others disagree with you. I know, I know. We are all wrong and dumbshits for disagreeing with you but nevertheless...

"Facebook has changed our definition of 'friend' to include people you barely know, or don't know at all. Which sounds cool if you're a teenager, but pretty much makes no sense anyway." It has changed some people's definition, maybe even mine to some extent. I only friend people I actually know. That is an option. Nobody is forced to accept every friend request that comes through the door.

"While you might feel I'm not getting everything out of Facebook, I'm getting everything I want, and controlling who that includes. And that doesn't include the kid who sat next to me in grammar school and ate paste, the girl I went out with in highschool, or someone I met in an airport a bunch of years ago and have forgotten." I don't care whether you get anything out of Facebook. I believe you should get everything out of any social media that you expect to and nothing more, nothing less. Obviously different people have different expectations.

"If what you want it for anybody to be able to track you down and know every detail of your life ... that's your problem. Expecting the rest of the world to play along just so you can look up someone you've not seen in decades is just stupid." It isn't my problem. You seem to be the one having the problem. I was simply explaining that the purpose of the site as I understand it is to allow that to happen. That is most easily facilitated by not using pseudonyms. I don't expect anybody to play along. I enjoy when some do and get annoyed when others do. I have looked up people I went to school with but haven't seen for a long time. I have requested some as "friends". Others have done the same back to me. Everybody has different experiences and different perspectives.

I'm sorry your experiences have led you to a point where you seem to believe that everyone who does not share your belief system is ignorant, mentally challenged, stupid or whatever other adjectives along those lines you want to use.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[kwbauer]

I never said it requires Facebook. I said that is what many of us are doing on Facebook. People have been doing that since communication was invented. People have been doing it long-distance since written communication was invented. I used to do it via snail-mail and phone calls and the occasional trip back home. I use email to do it. I also use Facebook. It is convenient because of what it is.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[kwbauer]

If my social skills ever develop to the point that I feel like organizing something that large, I may use Facebook as one avenue among others.

Re:I use a pseudonym

[Pseudonym]

In my experience, the people using psuedonyms are tinfoil hatters who aren't very tech savvy at all.

Speak for yourself.

Few suffer for many

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have 10,000 trolls and 10 people with legitimate reasons to stay hidden, you need to pick which is more important to you.

Re:Few suffer for many

[ciderbrew]

The 10 people.
mods deal with trolls posting shit.

Re:Few suffer for many

[jedidiah]

Even the original newsreader had the means to deal with trolls.

It's not any kind of new or difficult problem.

If find the noise pollution on modern websites to be far more of a problem as they often have no facilities to allow the user to filter out nonsense. Or worse, such websites actually thrive off of reducing the S/N ratio to near zero.

Many

[themushroom]

I know quite a few people, myself included, who either have two profiles on Facebook -- the public one and the private one -- or go with a pseudonym because they want to preserve their privacy. And not for nefarious reasons, because they only want to be connected to people significant to them and not to everyone. Like for instance, a lawyer may have a professional presence but keep the family elsewhere, or a teacher keeps everything out of where students and adminstration could see it.

It's been mentioned already that you can be shitcanned for what you put online, even if it's not a picture of your junk or a status update about a party you're at. It has been done for the weakest of reasons because somebody with some power doesn't agree with your private POV. Some people would like to be netizens like everyone else without having to deal with oversensitive vindictive dickheads snooping on them.

I just tell people I don't trust I don't have a Facebook since my username doesn't involve my given name in any form and usually don't friend anyone I work with, and without a lot of work some HR spy isn't going to find how how much I love kittens and midget bowling.

Re:Many

[Zero__Kelvin]

Just for the record, most of us don't want to see The Mushroom ...

Re:Many

[DrGamez]

But aren't you ever tired of being a coward?

Re:Many

[Petron]

If a random stranger stops you in the mall, and asks you for your name, address, phone number, list of hobbies, where you worked, where you went to school, and your religious and political views... would you tell them or say "nuts to that!" and walk past?

I don't see a reason to give people my real name, or any other info. When I'm at Radio Shack, and the employee asks for my phone number... 867-5309. Jenny? Yeah, she's my roommate.

I share my personal life with people I know. Not the world. It has nothing to do with cowardice. More with not liking nosy people.

Re:Many

[DrGamez]

(I was just making fun of the Anonymous Coward moniker).

Re:Many

[GargamelSpaceman]

Ok, I don't use Facebook either, but I do use youtube. I don't have my real name associated with my account, and I only watch, not produce videos, so nobody would see my face. I uploaded a hand drawn face as my avatar.

I do have a real gmail account that I use for official business, but I never log into it with firefox. I keep an instance of chrome for all my real-world/real-name transactions that I don't use for anything else.

But I finally gave in and let google have my real phone number for password verification, both my real name and my pseudonym are now tied together by at least that. ( they probably had me pegged before that dispite polipo etc, but now they do for sure. )

Now youtube keeps asking me if I want to appear as blank picture ( MyUserName ) or my avatar picture ( MyUserName@gmail.com ). Though I would like to appear as my avatar picture ( MyUserName ). That's not a choice. So I choose a blank avatar. It was a cute hand drawn avatar that now nobody will see.. .

I think the thing to worry about is if you've already given your info and your identity is outed by some site you've signed into. If they know your real name, they can out you some day, so don't do anything interesting on their site.

Re:Many

[Darinbob]

I don't have Facebook either, I really don't see the point except maybe to find out what some old high school and college friends are doing. Actually I have some contacts on LinkedIn for some of that...

Generally I dont understand the idea of pseudonymity being saved, as I see no evidence that it's vanishing. Everywhere I know of that is just a forum allows it or at least looks the other way, which is where anonymity is important. In other places though pseudonyms don't make sense; what's the point of being anonymous on LinkedIn or with online banking? Even the "real name" policy of Google+ isn't enforced and has many ways around it.

Though maybe it really is a problem and I'm just not enough of a social networking butterfly to notice.

Re:Many

[Darinbob]

And how do they do this? Do they hire employees to screen accounts by hand (expensive) or have an automated program to figure it out (faulty)?

Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[itsme1234]

Google killed a good part of "pseudonimity" with this crazy move to link your Google+ profile to your play/market reviews (even for just giving X stars without any comment).
WTF? Ok, google knows a lot of stuff about me, where I am, it reads my email, some documents, knows a good chunk of what I browse, etc. WHATEVER. However, I just don't want to have a list of apps and apps rating associated with my name. It just feels wrong.

Answer

[aaaaaaargh!]

How can pseudonymity — one of the key foundations of early internet communities — be saved?

By not using services on the web that don't allow it.

Re:Answer

[SGT CAPSLOCK]

Dunno why that's modded funny. It was my first thought as well.

The problem is probably when governments start trying to enforce it for all communications, but that's such an unrealistic logistics nightmare that it simply isn't a plausible concern.

Re:Answer

[c0lo]

How can pseudonymity — one of the key foundations of early internet communities — be saved?

By not using services on the web that don't allow it.

On long run, may not be enough. Need to add: by creating and maintaining online services/communities which allow pseudonims.

online local newspaper

[themushroom]

I wonder how this will shake out for a major Puget Sound newspaper that a couple days ago they announced they are going that direction, using Facebook logins and dropping the anon/pseud posting ability. But this would be where the nonpersonal/semipersonal throwaway Facebook accounts come in...

But I really am

[SkinnyChick]

a SkinnyChick ...

Re:But I really am

[cellocgw]

,

a SkinnyChick,

So your Real Name is Nick Sky Chin? :-)

Re:But I really am

[Virtucon]

Based on your ID number, your more likely a middle-aged skinny chick.

Re:But I really am

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

I thought everyone used their real name on Slashdot.
I know I do.

Re:But I really am

[gottabeme]

Yeah, me too.

Your sig is interesting. What does it mean?

Re:But I really am

[Capt.DrumkenBum]

Your sig is interesting. What does it mean?

It means whatever you want it to mean.
To me it is an attempt to express my distaste toward organized religion.
I was brought up Catholic, I was an alter boy, and seriously considered becoming a priest. Then I started to read, voraciously, and I could not reconcile what I read, with what I heard in church, or what I read in the bible. At this point I started studying various religions, and came to the conclusion that they are all the same. (Details differ, but only details.)
I then pieced together my own set of beliefs that I am happy with.

Re:But I really am

[gottabeme]

I see. That's very interesting. I also have a distaste toward organized religion.

I'm curious about what qualifies as "organized religion" though. I think that the church that Christ originally established doesn't compare to, for example, what has become the Catholic church. Paul planted churches that simply followed Christ. It wasn't until much later that it became so centralized and authoritative.

Also, do you think Christianity differs from other religions only in mere details? It's the only religion that claims to be founded by a man who was raised from the dead, who was God in human flesh walking among us. That's extremely different from the fundamental concepts behind other religions like Buddism or Hinduism.

Digital Cages: 3 Pre-requisites to Freedom

[ProfessorDork]

There are 3 Pre-req's to real Freedom. The abilities to:

1. learn;
2. speak; and
3. spend...
anonymously.

W/o these, authentic freedom cannot exist. The battle against anonymity is a battle for control. You cannot exact costs on people for their speech or political views if you can't identify them. You can't stop an idea, only the messenger. That's all we are talking about. That's all that matters. That's what's at stake. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The ability to "explore" (aka "learn") and then speak about what you've learned, or, worst yet, put your money where your mouth is (the highest form of speech) threatens business models, governments, etc. Basically, when we learn, we speak, and spend... and cause change. It is perfectly understandable why a company or government would want to have total control over this power... less someone question the foundational assumptions that belie a particular value proposition... of a product, service, institution or governing principle. Increasingly, we will have to figure out how to trust ourselves with authentic freedom... or decide if it is better to eliminate it. The lion used to rule the jungle. Today, it lives in a cage. People may find their way into cages one day as well, but by choice... or the perception of it. The digital cage is already under construction and accepting early applications from interested parties. Now back to a game of Candy Crush...

Let's all change our legal names to F.U. Facebook

[JoeyRox]

And see how long their "real names" policy lasts.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[Anonymous Coward]

They were having problems with fake reviews, and this solved a good chunk of them.

I don't like it either, but I don't have any alternate suggestions, you know?

Simple enough, really.

[seebs]

Admit that the reasons are not "perfectly legitimate", but have no basis in reality. Real names don't make people civil. Communities that are willing to kick out people who are abusive make people civil -- or, at least, omit the people who aren't.

Re:Simple enough, really.

[SuricouRaven]

Real names have some effect, because there is always the possibility that The Boss will google you and discover your politically-incorrect political statements.

Re:Simple enough, really.

[Cro Magnon]

Agreed! I've seen people with real names (at least real sounding names) flame & troll like crazy, and people with handles like "IP Freely" be rational and well-respected members of the community.

Re:Simple enough, really.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Or we could simply... stop caring. It's not that big of a deal that certain people create disposable accounts.

less anonymous early days of internet

[peter303]

'In the olden days", i.e. the 70s and 80s, computer accounts were rationed one per user by a central bureaucracy. It was almost always part or all of your real name. I did not have psuedonomy on uset then. Even though I would make "what if" arguments, people would still infer my known background had something to do with my argument. Many fewer trolls then too. the in 90s it went the other way and you could have as many accounts as you wanted in whatever handle you wanted. This caused account-remembering problems and well as poor troll behavior. Still you are only one level away from having your true identity known, either from clever detective work or a search warrant. I would not be totally boorish online.

Re:less anonymous early days of internet

[Dunbal]

In the 90's it went the other way when the internet suddenly became "popular", flat rate monthly pricing was introduced, and suddenly all the plebs could afford it. Yes I remember things were quite civilized in the CompuServe forums, at $6/hour + connection charges. I used to play a MUD called "Island of Kesmai", and those of us who played it were very friendly and we helped each other out. Then Kesmai corp decided to "upgrade" their game to real graphics and host it on GameStorm for $10 a month. Almost instantly it was filled with trolls, beggars, thieves and other scoundrels who wanted your stuff for free or were prepared to break the rules of the game to get it. Flat rate may be a money-maker, but we went from a 5 star exclusive restaurant to McDonald's.

Re:less anonymous early days of internet

[Oligonicella]

I play online as well and remember clearly that games that went F2P became laden with mental twelve year old brats.

One word: Moderation

[Radtastic]

The problem of abuse on forums and online can be solved with good moderation. Unfortunately, most online sites don't bother to have someone ban users or delete posts based on users abusive behavior.

A properly moderated site enforces civil behavior - psuedonym or not.

Re:One word: Moderation

[Tiger4]

Absolutely. There is no reason to know who I am, just see what I post and elevate it to the clouds or sink it to the bottom with the whale shit. Eventually Trolls only see other trolls. They either have fun together, or they get the message.

Imagine?

[Provocateur]

a lawyer who also runs a popular sexual fetish podcast

OMG! It's like, I have a twin!

Hey Slashdot!

[Deliveranc3]

How about giving us an update on how you protect Anonymous Cowards? Is the web server a ram disk that erases everything when shut down? You guys are pretty technical... let us know!

Re:Hey Slashdot!

[gottabeme]

i don't know why this was modded funny. It's actually a very interesting question that I've always wondered about.

Re:Don't log in

[zidium]

Don't forget about The Panopticlick. Clearing stuff simply isn't enough.

Uh... start an anonymous community?

[Maxo-Texas]

If you can't find a community which supports anonymous users, then you should be able to start one yourself.

As long as your community is small (under 100 users), then the costs should be tiny.

If you get larger than that, it may be harder to get advertising to pay for costs.

But I think you should be able to run a reasonable community for a couple thousand bucks a year (including a business class internet connection so you can run your own server).

Support the EFF

[uCallHimDrJ0NES]

None of these posts have addressed the very real possibility that pseudonyms may be made illegal by various governments. We need vigilant legal defense.

don't use them

[ciderbrew]

I deleted my FB, google+ and twitter accounts in June. Things are better without them.
Websites that want me to login with social and force that will get fake accounts if these things persist. They add nothing.

Re:don't use them

[Rob the Bold]

I deleted my FB, google+ and twitter accounts in June. Things are better without them. Websites that want me to login with social and force that will get fake accounts if these things persist. They add nothing.

I avoided google+ initially because of the "real name unless you're famous" policy, and the fact that they seemed willing to cancel all your google services for a violation of this or other google+ policy. Since that included gmail, and I valued the gmail account I had more than I valued the potential value of google+, the choice was clear.

Well now, they've turned googletalk into googlehangout or something. And googlehangout requires a google+ login, AFAICT. Googletalk was nice, since I could forward googlevoice calls to googletalk on my PC at home (cell service had been pretty poor in my neighborhood for a while). Cell service has gotten better, at least.

From this, I assume that gmail will require google+ sooner or later, so now I'm moving away from that, since the switch could literally happen overnight like with googletalk.

Re:don't use them

[kermidge]

Yeah, I got caught by that. I've got a couple of gmail accounts, one for the real me, a few for throwaway newsletters and such. Initially the real account had a nickname, but somewhere along the way I used my full real meat name and it stuck. (I'm not real swift at all this stuff, obviously, and not immune to mistakes or the carelessness arising from being in a hurry.)

For several reasons I thought I wanted a + account; now I'm doubly stuck, with my real name on + and on my prime gmail.

Mostly it's not a big deal, but I have real reason to prefer pseudonymity to prevent the off-chance of a couple of bad actors from an earlier life tracking me down and causing problems. Too late; even if I canceled and deleted everything and tried to start over, with my luck I'd screw it up anyway.

You young people and your strange ideas

[Solandri]

How can pseudonymity â" one of the key foundations of early internet communities â" be saved?"

No it wasn't one of the key foundations of early internet communities. Quite the opposite in fact - it was seen as a great threat to Internet communities. Lemme cut and paste a post I made last year...

Once upon a time, when I first got on the Internet (late 1980s), there was no anonymity. Sysadmins voluntarily adhered to a policy where each user's online identity and their real identity were linked. If someone ever found a way to break this link, it was considered a bug which needed to be fixed. (Also notice that all the people in those old USENET posts are using their real names.) This system was staunchly enforced by admins who believed the net would devolve into chaos and rampant misbehavior if people were allowed to post anonymously.

There were a few people running their own servers who bucked the trend, but it wasn't until AOL joined USENET that pseudonyms became a fact of life on the Internet. AOL allowed each account to have up to 5 usernames, ostensibly so family members sharing a single AOL account could each have their own ID. Obviously these extra usernames were quickly used to make pseudonyms by people wishing to post things online anonymously, which was good for free speech. But not surprisingly, spam was invented shortly thereafter.

All that's happening now is that the pendulum is starting to swing the away from complete anonymity as netizens struggle to figure out the best balance between real names and pseudonyms. The people at the pro-anonymity extreme won't like it, just like the people at the pro-real-name extreme didn't like it in the early 1990s. But as with most things in life the best balance is probably somewhere in between.

Re:You young people and your strange ideas

[Timothy Chu]

Ditto on the Usenet part. If I ever meet anybody IRL who I corresponded with on Usenet (and it's happened at least once), I'll know who they are immediately, because of real names. That civility and community online is rare in public forums these days, though I'm sure there's something about the type of person who had internet access those days (educated, could afford a $1000 typewriter (ie. computer) that that could also access the internet).

Slashdot was one of my first online accounts (other than email) I had created, and I didn't see any reason to use anything other than my real name. I probably would make a different choice if I could create a new account and weren't so attached to the low user ID.

Re:You young people and your strange ideas

[PhxBlue]

No it wasn't one of the key foundations of early internet communities.

No, but it was one of the key foundations to American society, a la "Common Sense."

Re:You young people and your strange ideas

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

But as with most things in life the best balance is probably somewhere in between.

Who decided that? You can only speak for yourself.

She's the liability

[tommeke100]

Some collegues and friends know about her fetish? The truth is basically already out there since multiple people can already connect the dots.
As for the full story, yes I'm sure you can still maintain your pseudonymity. I don't think many people in the online fetish scene will display their real name, so some service will always cater to that need.
Of course the big data aggregators like google/facebook/ad services and your local ISP will probably be able to connect the dots as well, but that's why it's pseudo-anonymity and not full fledged anonymity.

I never user Faceook Login

[Anonymous Coward]

I never use Facebook or Linked In login, ever.

If a site wants me to, I go elsewhere. No exceptions.

I will also not connect my FB or linked in account to my cell phone, which include installing their amazingly intrusive applications.

Mod Parent up

[coyote_oww]

Handwaving and alarm is unwarranted at this time. If your favorite site switches to a system you don't like, that doesn't mean a national crisis.

And yeah, anonymity killed USENET. It isn't an unmitigated good. There is only so long you can swim in filth before you get out of the pool, or the pool gets drained and it's metaphoric value recycled into cars and Hitler.

Re:Mod Parent up

[Darinbob]

Some parts escaped a lot of that. Many of the technical groups survived quite well as well as some other esoteric groups I used to go to. However the influx of spam did a lot more damage overall I think. So groups that would be left alone by trolls could still be drowning in spam for products or services related to the group's topic.

Never tell the truth about who you are

[Anonymous Coward]

Use different ID's and email addresses wherever possible. That way the likes of Google can't build a real picture of you.

I'm one of the Tranny's who aren't out to their family. I use a number of aliases all over the internet.
I value MY and my families privacy over everything else.
Sadly we live in a community where coming out as a Tranny is as bad as 1st degree murder. I'd be ex-communicated in an instant and I'd lose my job a second later.

Until there is general acceptance that people are different and those who are are not always a threat to Life and Limb we will all have to keep things to ourselves.
It wasn't so long ago that some people 'tarred and feathered' a gay man simply because he'd come out to a friend, in the next county to mine.

Re:Never tell the truth about who you are

[Windwraith]

That's real sad. A friend of mine is in the same situation and I can sympathize with you.
It's probably the best person I know, who cares if trans or not. That should not matter, but alas, people is "kind" like that.

Best regards.

Sure, but it's not a priority anymore

[epyT-R]

Sites who demand real info only want people posting who are politically correct and stay obediently inside the box. The real info requirement forces people into conformance with societal norms under the threat of mass social rejection, which might make it more comfortable for the site admin and/or the kind of user he covets, but it is not necessarily better for open discussion of controversial components of the site's topics (just about everything has its controversy).

The admin can assume "oh well I don't want to hear from those batshit loons anyway", but like I said above, he's not really enabling discussion at that point. He's towing the subject's PC party line, in which case, the honorable thing to do is not allow any 3rd party commentary if he doesn't want his position challenged. A lot of sites allow comments but heavily censor to create a false sense of consensus (see? everyone agrees with me!). Its very misleading for the unsavvy reader. As we know, argument from consensus alone is a fallacy, but peer pressure is quite powerful, falsely projected or not.

How to repair anonymity? Well that's technically easy, but would require politicians and corporate officers to actually work for a living, and have cultures in their organizations that respect personal liberties.

1. Reinstate the US constitution's bill of rights as the preeminent law of the land. Free speech is more important than spurious considerations, like remote threats to 'safety' (terror, pedophiles/rapists, political correctness/identity politics) which are just excuses to force others not to acknowledge the emperor's revealing attire. Retrack the NSA to do its intended job: gather intelligence on the activities of foreign nations who might do us harm. Repeal obviously unconstitutional law, etc. Restrict lobbying to publicly available verbal or written communication. No payoffs, vacations in the tropics, planerides, hookers and blow etc. Violation of this earns the politician a bullet.

2. ISPs cannot be allowed to keep logs. Penalty for doing so is death, or something close to that, for the principals. If the information isn't recorded then it can't be abused. Implement End to end encryption for all networked applications, even mundane ones like games. This crypto standard would have to be open source and easily verifiable. In order to verify security in running code, all source code to routers and operating systems sold to and/or used by the public must be made publicly available and buildable. This wont' make it impossible to snoop, but does make it really hard. Someone will have to be highly motivated to do so. This effectively limits scope of wouldbe government/corporate dragnets due to cost. Obviously, stuff like CALEA ports would have to go.

3. Of course, all of this requires a culture that embraces self reliance, freedom (real freedom, not the current US federal party line), and respect of the individual. What we have now is a soccer mom consensus culture that thinks what the idiot box tells it to think and fears what it is told to fear. Good luck.

Re:Sure, but it's not a priority anymore

[CoolHnd30]

Dang! Where are mod points when I need them?? Good post!

Not the Internet's fault

[orthancstone]

The internet is a dangerous place. People have been lulled into believing that this is not the case.

No lulling involved. Only a massive increase in user base that was not raised on the idea that the Internet is an unknown outside of your normal neighborhood.

People who rode the rising tide of the Internet from early on learned where you could share your identity and where you needed to maintain anonymity. Those who jumped onto the bandwagon in the past decade have failed to recognize that such a distinction was even necessary.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Deep Esophagus]

^This.

TFS (and, if I were to read it, I suppose TFA) make it sound like there's a one-size-fits-all global identity model for all websites. If HuffPo or Facebook or even gmail decide to eliminate trolls by requiring proof of real identity, then it must follow that SecretKinkySex.com must also do the same.

No.

I actually agree that mainstream news sites have good reason for reducing anonymity for exactly the reasons stated -- to eliminate, or at least reduce to a manageable level, trolls. They could even argue that it is in their best interests to do so.

Sites where just your presence on the site may cause irreparable damage to your personal life, your job, etc. -- not so much. It is in THEIR best interests to provide anonymity to the best of their ability.

So, yeah. If you are willing to have your name associated with your inflammatory posts, give your real name to the sites that require it. If not, avoid those sites and stick with places that allow anonimity; they will always do so or they will go out of business (even if "business" is just selling ad space). Problem solved.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[Dunbal]

Tell that to US prosecutors. They're about to throw the book at a teenager who was "virtually" shooting classmates through an app on his phone that superimposed a FPS style "gun" on his camera output. The only thing the prosecution has to go on is "intent", because no one was actually shot, and no one was threatened. There wasn't even the possibility to carry out a threat or shooting, because there was no weapon involved. BUT the kid ends up in jail. So yeah I think the US thinks it CAN regulate or legislate intent. Take care lest you commit a thought crime, citizen.

Saved? Internet cannot exist without it

[sinij]

From the very underlying infrastructure, where you are who you declare you are, to all kinds of social interactions enabled by technology Internet is pseudonymous. 'Real Name' is a very recent fad pushed on us by social sites that are unhappy with limitations imposed on their data mining (and profits) by the very nature of the Internet.
 
  Internet does not forget and you have no control over audience of any of your communications. Considering vast number of people involved, you can't even assume that your audience is reasonable or objective.
 
  As a result using Real Name is not unlike talking to a room of armed schizophrenic psychopaths - no matter what you say you have very little control, regardless of presentation or content, as to if you are going to end up lynched for what you said.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[jeffmflanagan]

Google+ even follows some of us to Slashdot. Fortunately my Google+ name is a pseudonym using the first and last names of two different actors. Real-looking is all they care about, not that you actually use your real name.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[sinij]

Solved, as in destroyed the system where people stopped wriing reviews? I can easily disregard any Google+ comments, because now with certainty I can say that reviewers ether lack clear judgment and penned a review under their real name or are accepting monetary compensation for exposing themselves to a potential harm.

I impersonate nazi officials

[Blaskowicz]

When some web form demands me real name, address or country with no reason I do some Godwin law violation there. Or alternatively Afghanistan is the first country on the list, so there goes some Osama Bin Ladens on the internets. For my google account I put in some guy more creepy than Adolf as my real name (after being nagged for the 126th time), I could then see that changing it was not an option. In the end I deleted my google account since it was tied to my main e-mail address.

About pseudonyms, one mistake is using the same one on many services. Try destroying some old accounts if you can.

I think a better question is:

[bi$hop]

Did Internet pseudonymity ever truly exist? If people want to explore non-public sides of their personality or gender preferences, the Internet is the last place they should be doing it.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Blaskowicz]

99% people don't know Usenet exist, and it is/was behind a paywall if you want to access it. So people used the web instead.

Internet ID

[FishTankX]

Korea has a national internet ID which is used as a verification step in almost all online account creation. You could allow anonymous posting or pseudonym posting if the user is willing to apply for an internet id. And limit it to one account per forum. If that account is doing abusive or illegal things a course of action is available and the identity could be subpeonad. Problem.here is slippery slope. Eventually the government would probably require all internet users to register like south korea.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[Virtucon]

Citation?

Move to Brazil

[gmuslera]

At least they are trying to do something in that (and others) respect.

Troll Control has been done, but not enough

[Tiger4]

Slashdot implemented Karma. Other sites have up votes and down votes. Make those persistent and you have the core of effective Troll Control, and conversely, the basis for a decent reputation online. It can be portable across all the sites operated by a particular owner, but of course it is difficult to be portable across the Net in general without a lot of cooperation between Owners. You don't need to know who I am IRL. You need to know I'm the same person you dealt with yesterday, will deal with tomorrow, who pays his debts with valid plastic, etc. That would be true for both a shining Sir Lancelot and the lowest asshole Troll

What is karma?

Your karma is a reference that primarily represents how your comments have been moderated. Karma is used to determine who moderates and who doesn't. You can improve your karma by posting intelligent, funny, informative or comments generally impressive to your fellow readers.

Karma is structured on the following scale "Terrible, Bad, Neutral, Positive, Good, and Excellent." If a comment you post is moderated up, your karma will rise. Conversely, bad karma usually indicates a user account used to spam or otherwise hurt the discussion.

Factors besides moderation also affect karma. Having a story submission accepted raises your karma. Also, metamoderation can cause your karma to change. This encourages good moderators, and ideally removes moderator access from bad ones. Don't worry too much about it; it's just an integer in a database.
Are there anti-troll filters?

A handful of filters have been put into place to try to make sure that people don't abuse the system. For instance, the same person can't post more than once every 120 seconds. Also, if a single user is moderated down several times in a short span, a temporary ban will be imposed on that user ... a cooling off period, if you will.

Lawyer with sexual fetish podcast

[Culture20]

lawyer who also runs a popular sexual fetish podcast

Really? No "I am not a lawyer" acronym jokes yet?

Re:Don't log in

[rvw]

Don't forget about The Panopticlick. Clearing stuff simply isn't enough.

So we need a custom browser (or Firefox addon) that makes us all use the same browser.

Short answer?

[bogidu]

It can't.

It's like asking, how can politicians have a normal sex life without the media weighing in and the public thinking it's their business? The only difference being, most people believe that politicians should have no private lives while the rest of us schmucks can. The internet is become the great equalizer in many respects, some good, some not so good.

It is used as a tool to investigate prospective students, clients, employees, etc and whatever is found is fair game for using against a person. It was once playground and now, like everything else it has become a weapon.

The old bbs days when everyone had a nick is long gone. Huge databases are busy taking the anonymous and connecting it to real world identities. My nick here started as an anon account back in 97 and I think I managed to keep it separate from my real world identity for about 18 months. The OP is being nostalgic for something that hasn't existed for a long long time.

Re:More sites should go back to allowing anonymity

[PPH]

That differs from pseudonymity. (Is that a word?) With anonymity, there is no reputation at stake even within a community. People can game the system by posing as multiple posters and generally make asses of themselves.

It all depends on the purpose of the forum. Slashdot has pseudonyms and a moderation system to encourage some semblance of civil behavior and to push back on the troll threads. But it isn't intended to allow participants to develop 'fully formed' online reputations. Just cull the real bozos.

There are other sites that are purely anonymous. One in particular has gone back and forth between thread IDs and pure anonymity, presently selecting the latter. In spite of a rash of gaming and abusive nonsense. But then, that appears to be its purpose.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

If it was clear that his intent was for the classmates to see him playing the game, it could easily be determined as a threat or harassment/bullying - and should be. If someone happened to see it and he didn't want them to, he's truly innocent. Without citation I can't say much more. But I don't know how much of a book you can throw for harassment.

Virtual feudalism

[Anonymous Coward]

The main problem is not whether pseudonymity is allowed or not, the main problem is who has the right to decide it. Generally, it should be the decision of a community of people whether they allow pseudonyms or not. So there could be one community (like web forum related to some topic) that allows pseudonyms and asides another community that requires proper names.

But since the advent of centralised social networks like Facebook, communities are often dependent on these networks and do not have independent infrastructure and therefore such communities are not able to independently choose their rules, because it is really an owner/operator of infrastructure who can set rules. So Facebook (and other social networks) sets their rules based on its needs (like legal protection), not based on needs of communities hosted on it.

There is one solution - be independent. Do not host your community on some third-party infrastructure whose owner reserves rights to meddle with your internal affairs just because it is offered to you for free.

Require real names to collect customer info

[guanxi]

A big reason to require real names, which is not covered in the article, is to collect information on users. Tracking "SloppyJoe22" on your website isn't worth much, but data on Joseph Brown, of 1493 Main St in Middleton IL is gold.

I suspect that is behind many businesses decisions to use real names, especially places like Facebook whose whole business model is to collect that data. There are many other ways to have good discussions without requiring real names (such as the discussion we're having now).

Re:They hate us because we're white

[Rob the Bold]

What about the 95% of white people who don't want to live in a 'multi-cultural' society, but can't speak out against it because we'll be sacked from our jobs?

Was stormfront down so you had to vent here, or is this just a clever example of what the "real name" movement is trying to stop? Since you don't devolve into frequent ALLCAPS IN RANDOM PHRASES, and from the lack of misspellings, I'm gonna say it's the latter. Clever, but not clever enough.

You want the Data? You can't handle the Data!

[VortexCortex]

Don't use the services that require linkage of your real life identity with the publicly visible account name. For instance: Even though Amazon arguably needs my real identity to purchase and sell items it lets me use a NickName instead of linking my real world name to my customer reviews.

IMO, we should let folks change their publicly visible user names.

Furthermore: In the real world people have the same names. WTF is wrong with places that make you put a damn number after your user name? This is leaking identity authentication up into the interface layer. If you're going to do that, then provide a UID number or some other uniqueness (image hash for an avatar) in addition to the user name. That way, two folks with the same name can have the same name, and folks can still tell them apart -- Just like in real life. No one mistakes me for a colleague who has the same first name: We look nothing alike. They use further qualifiers when referring to us both to clarify to whom they're speaking. Online, this sort of "who are you talking to" problem is gone, since you can link to or reply under the comment to which you're replying.

I've yet to finalize the online username system for an upcoming game, but I'm experimenting with the identity options. The prime need for uniqueness in my instance is in identifying which user profile you're trying to log into. Trying all the matching usernames is no good, it makes hacking similar accounts easier. So, I'm going with logins that use an email address OR unique username (append numbers or whatever), and publicly you can display a different nickname. Matching identical nicknames can be distinguished by the imagehash icon next to their name, or visiting their profile.

For my purposes I could simply go with the unique username approach, it's not like I expect but a handfull of players anyway (most indie games aren't popular), but with the software and games I develop for fun I always try to experiment with new things. I think what we really need is something like Open ID, or "sign in with facebook" or whatever (I run my own OpenID server), but we need to be able to pick a nickname to display when we're logged in with that system. I have several different accounts on my own Open ID server, and I select which one I want to use for each different service... I'd like it if I didn't have to do this manually, and we just had the login page for Open ID allow multiple names to be associated with one account HOWEVER, it would require the services you're authenticating to by proxy to support the concept of multiple IDs better.

We're almost there with solutions like the 3rd party authenticator, in that multiple folks with the same username can then be displayed on the service, distinguished by the uniqueness of the 3rd party authentication, however, now we need to apply "yet another layer of indirection" to the 3rd party auth systems too -- These have given us abstraction for the account verification, but not abstraction from the username associated with the accounts. It could be an extension to the existing openID system, if open ID were not built with reliance on username as the ID for the third party: eg: URLs such as:
http://yourname.signon.com
or
http://claimid.com/yourname.

Perhaps if the places you're signing into would allow you to associate multiple 3rd party sing-in accounts with one name, AND allow changing the publicly displayed name, it could be a step in the right direction for pseudonymousness. The other prospect of anonymity is harder still to tackle -- A trusted proxy along with a publicly shared OpenID account goes along way, when combined with Tor it's better still, however, the network itself is not built for anonymity (or security), hence both have been difficult to maintain. If the very platform is against you then either your battle is uphill or you're taking it laying down...

I think we're going the wrong way, fundamentally. We need to start with a system that provides

comedy of the hyper-competent

[epine]

but I doubt there will be a perfect automatic speech translation in place that can immediately translate

No, not immediately, unless you count five minutes later and semi-automated as close enough. Man, do you ever underestimate the scope and resources of the surveillance-industrial society.

Not only do they have human ears for every language of the world on tap, but probably also strange fish who speak seven different conlangs, some of whom can place your Klingon dialect to America, central Europe, or Japan. These are the kinds of seriously strange people who inhabit comic book shops.

How quickly your call percolates through this system depends on precisely what shit list you're on. It's nothing more than a routing problem. At the highest level of alert, I would guess an unintelligible fragment is dispatched within fifteen minutes to enough desks to cover 99% of the world's spoken languages. And if that verdict isn't clear, another 30 minutes later they've covered Basque, Sindarin, Klingon, proto-Semitic, Esperanto, and Hungarian pig Latin. Obviously they can't route more than a tiny fraction of what they capture through the cauliflower-ears switchboard. Nevertheless, what gets expedited doesn't stand a chance unless so peculiar that it's permanently archived in the bootstrap corpus of automatic speech decoding. You better hope your off-the-cuff adaptations are incalculably different from your unknown soul-mate of cute obscurity who vanished from the planet five years prior.

At this stage in the process, they don't actually care if you're a terrorist. They care if you cast a large enough footprint of capabilities, connections, and motives to engage in terrorist activities, should you choose to take that path at the next spur-of-the-moment major life setback.

PhD in mathematics or synthetic chemistry? Strike one. Fluent in Farsi? Strike two? Too much money, or too little money? Strike three. Scuba license? Strike four. Longtime Tor user? Strike five. Loss of child custody? Strike six. Attend a Unitarian church? Strike seven. Caught exchanging short messages with another code orange individual, couched in a street slang that not even Henry Higgins crossed with a wind-talking Kimball O'Hara can decipher? Strike fifty-five. Congratulations, you've just a scored yourself a priority routing code on the cauliflower nexus for everything they ever capture that comes out of your mouth, which will be plenty, because you've earned a gold star for that, too.

The exact bumps and gradations within this filter-feeding behemoth have been refined with methodical vigour since about 1940, incorporating in their regression database everything that ever slipped through their fingers, where in retrospect the clue dawned either a little bit or a lot too late. There are small pockets of competence ensconced in these hidebound, dysfunctional organizations that would render Danny Hillis or Craig Venter the dumbest man in the room—or at least put enough fright on them to seriously consider the matter for the first time in their lives (perhaps excluding Danny's private lunches with Richard Feynman, or Craig's lunches near a reflective surface).

For the people who built this system, the Manhattan project was a one-shot dry run. Of course, any program on this scale that runs for sixty years with have more than the normal share of dysfunction, especially at the intake maw concerning the enormous flow of public funds, where the proud bow to the vain. My oh my, that can't be a fun place.

I bet the NSA has some seriously interesting psychological criteria concerning the men who ultimately take on these roles (the highest level of career functionary reporting to anointed bozos). That's one file the bozos will rarely see. The NSA probably has some internal Masonic order to guard over exactly this.

Make no mistake, though, it's a comedy of the hyper-competent.

Re:comedy of the hyper-competent

[Areyoukiddingme]

Oh but they do want it. It's on their Christmas list for sure.

And some day, they WILL have it, if only by accident. Some day, somebody will write the necessary software and somehow slip it past all the incompetent middle managers and yes men and it will work and it will be able to guess to 5 nines of reliability what you had for breakfast just by watching your electronic trail.

So I'd rather they didn't get enough data to feed the thing to that level of reliability.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[itsme1234]

I don't understand how it solved the problem with fake reviews. I think you need a google account to even have google play working at all so if I'm going to write bogus reviews I can still make it a Google+ account and use whatever name, it isn't like they're checking.
Google knows who you are if you're using an android phone (they DO know a lot about you, think, they have your location, your IPs both from inside and outside the network, your IMEI, IMSI, possibly your phone number, your address book, your email, even before you start giving them credit card no, pictures, documents, etc). It's not hard to weed out the non-users.

The only problem they had was that nobody was using Google+. This is why they're pushing it to play store, youtube and who knows where else too.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[itsme1234]

I bet you wouldn't be so happy if you were looking for a job and the first 666 things that appear when somebody searches your not-so-common name are reviews of Angry birds spin-offs. Written on a phone in "SMS-English".

And by the way Amazon does accept reviews under pseudonym.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Anonymous Coward]

Who guarantees you that SecretKinkySex doesn't see your Facebook login? If you want to be pseudonymous online, don't have a "real name" account on known spy sites. And even a pseudonymous Facebook account is a treasure trove for data collectors.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[doubletalk]

They were having problems with fake reviews, and this solved a good chunk of them.

All the reviews are fake anyway, just like comments on Youtube, written by Yes-men. People are usually over-optimistic, blindly liking things without thinking a bit. Real names or not, here come the sheeps.

On the other side of the argument

[Roowark]

I was a hardcore USENET user back in the 80s, as well as a BBS'er back in the days of 300-1200 baud dialup modems. So I've seen quite a bit come down the wires. I've never been comfortable with using my real name on a system, especially these days when everything except your toilet is owned and tracked by Google, Facebook or Microsoft. It's just not needed for most online discussion forums. But let me shine a flashlight on a couple of things: 1. A lot of people here have decried the use of real names by Facebook, and indeed it seems like good cases have been made. However, keep in mind that there are over a billion people out there who do NOT mind using their real names (except for those who use fake IDs) on Facebook. You're talking to something of a choir here. 2. There are some instances where using real names has been extremely beneficial, when the users had a sincere interest in knowing who they were talking to. For example, I'm on a Facebook group consisting of people who grew up in a certain town. We get on there and talk about the good old days. There must have been 15-20 times somebody has posted something like, "I remember being in Ms. Hall's 4th grade class back around 1954...." and his Facebook name is, fictitiously, "Greg Williams." And next thing you know he's getting a response like, "oh, my GOD!!!! Are you the Greg Williams that lived across the street from me in that green house on South 8th? I can't BELIEVE it!! It's been SIXTY YEARS!!!!!" Honestly, more than once I have sat at my keyboard almost in tears from this kind of situation. If we were all using names like "hotdog88," it never would have happened. Other such real-name forums or groups may be those for high school graduating classes, or members of a club. So there is definitely a place for real names on a system, although the concerns about security and privacy are absolutely justified. Roowark (not my real name....)

Re:On the other side of the argument

[Skapare]

Yes, there are some context where real names would be good, like that which you showed. But I think people will normally figure that it in some context when they go to such a place. Most of the rest of the time, people are interacting with the world, which is often dangerous in many ways. People should have this choice. Too bad we cannot trust these companies to have our real name and keep it secret, if they claim they would let us use their service under a nym. If I were putting up a forum, I would not care if one uses a name or a nym. But for some forums, it's necessary to be sure users have only one identity, name or nym. That makes things complicated, too.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Obfuscant]

Technological progress "killed" Usenet as a communications platform, not nymshifting trolls.

Yes, the demonstrated technological superiority of Google Groups was the opening salvo, and the beautifully masterful new Neo interface for Yahoo Groups has been the final nail in the coffin.

I have several nyms

[Skapare]

None of them use Facebook.

HuffPo Seriously?

[g0bshiTe]

Why is this news, it's just Huffington Post!

And to answer authors question, YOU LIE!

FB Snitching

[dcollins]

Regarding the social networks: At least once I've been on Facebook and it threw a popup, one of my contacts' photos, and "Is this person's real name XX YY?". It wouldn't even let me cancel the popup (I just closed the whole browser application instead of answering). So if that tactic is used widely, then you also have to depend on all your contacts to lie for you by default all the time.

Re:FB Snitching

[Karmashock]

Why upload pictures onto such a site?

Seriously... FB is bad medicine. That might be a controversial point because after all it is popular with a lot of clueless people. But FB is one of the worst offenders as regards datamining in the WORLD. So if you put your photos on face book... you deserve what you get.

Re:FB Snitching

[dcollins]

The photo is irrelevant. The point is that one of your linked contacts is pointed out, and you are asked "Is this their real name?". So you're relying on all your contacts to lie for you on the social network. That's one way to confirm your real name with little effort.

Re:FB Snitching

[Karmashock]

A photo is irrelevant?

Well, then exactly what is relevant?

Lets say they say it is a fake name. What then? Do they know your real name? Will they type your real name and other information into the system?

Furthermore, how many people on social networks do you want to know your real name? Forget the company... For example, do you know my real name? Do you want me to know yours?

Obviously not. So how can you rat me out if you don't even know my name?

Precisely.

Now if we're talking about real life friends that you talk to on your social network... why would they rat you out especially if they knew you deliberately were using a false name?

They wouldn't unless they intentionally wanted to slight you. So already we're talking about a somewhat exotic set of conditions on your argument.

Point being, if you are careful about it, you can maintain a fiction easily on the internet.

several pseudonymns

[orgelspieler]

It's trivial to start up an account with Google with reasonable-sounding information. So you can be clever about it and make several such accounts, and even tie them to other services, like AOL or whatever the hell kids are into these days. I think the key is to cultivate these false identities on-line. Visit web pages that persona would visit. Post to forums that person would post on. And if you crank you tinfoil hat on just tight enough, you'll think of other things to do. Only surf as that person with your screen resolution set a certain way. Use a different browser, and never clear its cookies. Misspell the same word all the time.

All joking aside, I actually do have a fake Google + identity that I use to post negative reviews about places. I keep it civil, but you never know what a man might do if you say something negative about his brisket in Texas.

Re:several pseudonymns

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you identify yourself via phone number ? When they have a phone number, they can nail you, as phones are usually registered or you leave tons of voice fingerprints and a contact/call network.

I guess you are very naive. Google is part of the secret police these days - read Mr Schmitt's book. And yeah, Secret police employs the best computer scientists these days. I know, because I have been there, or maybe I am still. Maybe I do the Google Snowden, who knows. Maybe that's all untrue. Let your internal witchhunt start.

Re:several pseudonymns

[orgelspieler]

Nope. That's just an option so they can text you your password. For those of us without texting, that's not an option. It's not like Google wants to alienate old farts who just use a land line.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

If it was clear that his intent was for the classmates to see him playing the game, it could easily be determined as a threat or harassment/bullying

A threat? No. Harassment/bullying? Not really. But even if it were either of those things, if you want someone to be punished for such a thing, you're an oversensitive piece of trash for caring about it, and probably hate freedom.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Also, I know this will confuse your fragile mind, but video games, videos, and the like are, in fact, not reality. Now, vanish.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

If I took a photo of you and photoshopped it to show you dying a gruesome death and taped it to your school locker - would that be harassment? What if I did things like that on a regular basis? If the intent was similar, then this game could be considered harassment.

What do you consider the criteria for harassment?

There's a social-norm problem to hiding pasts

[Phil Urich]

There was a brief period after Google bought DejaNews when you could request and have your Usenet posts deleted from their archive. Thank goodness. I was one of those loud ignorant linux fanboys back in circia 1996. Well before it was as uncool and derpy as today, but its good that I was able to erase the part of that I did under my real name.

The thing that always vaguely bothers me about that, though, is that if everyone can hide or delete their embarrassing activities, then that stuff remains embarrassing, instead of us as a culture growing up and accepting that past behaviours don't damn a person forever. If the majority of us have things we wouldn't want people to judge us on (which I think is a fairly reasonable hypothesis), and then we all knew those things, I'm pretty sure our culture would change to be less judgmental. It's the same principle behind people generally becoming less homophobic once they know that people they love and/or are friends with are gay; in times past, people could be extremely judgmental because it seemed like such an aberration, but once the (relative, compared to how it was once perceived) commonality of non-hetrosexuality is actually out in the open people's views soften.

What I'm saying, in part, is that if most people are able to purge the embarrassing moments from their history, then the few that aren't able will be judged and potentially punished unfairly. So the ironic part of it is, anonymity and/or the deletion of records helps perpetuate the need for that anonymity.

Full disclosure, though: I'm not posting under my real name, so it's not like I'm a fervent Real Name person. I do suspect that radical transparency might be better for humans in the long run, but I'm not going to claim it wouldn't be pretty painful along the way.

Re:There's a social-norm problem to hiding pasts

[Nefarious Wheel]

I like the ability to filter how I'm perceived by people. Maybe I should have been a salesman.

But I definitely want my work persona and my home persona to never, ever meet.

Re:There's a social-norm problem to hiding pasts

[yuhong]

Yea, it reeks of fundamental flaws that needs to be fixed.

Re:There's a social-norm problem to hiding pasts

[Altrag]

Its a nice thought, but history tends to teach us differently. Reveal yourself as gay? Probably 99% of the people you meet will be OK with that or at least mask their dislike. But that other 1% will do everything in their power to make your life miserable just because they can.

As usual, the few ruin good things for the many (especially if "the few" happen to be in a position of power of some sort and there's no shortage of those) so we're stuck living in a world where your choice isn't always between "hiding" and "acceptance," its between "hiding" and "daily abuse" (usually emotional but sometimes even physical abuse.)

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[Darinbob]

The rationale was just weird. They had to take action because if he had actually shot someone later there would have been backlash that no action had been taken.

Now extend that rationale far down the slippery slope. Someone accuses their neighbor of planning to shoot up a school. Thus police have to detain and interrogate him - just in case the accuser is right. To the police the worst possible scenario is the day when the public says "how come you didn't pay attention to the warning signs?"

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

I don't think killing people in a game and making videos about (or what have you) is harassment, but even if it were, people who believe something should be done about it are anti-freedom. Why do you value safety over freedom? Why are you a cheerleader for the government? All valid questions.

Generate a more complex pseudonym

[mysidia]

There's no reason your pseudonym needs to look like an IRC handle. Just start using a new name.... something like "Mark Twain". It's perfectly legal to take an assumed name, and use for any legal purpose.

Obviously, you cannot use a false name with intent to pass as another person/to further a criminal act -- as that would be wire fraud...

But for legal uses, you can take an assumed name as a legal alias. I would use a tool such as notwhoami to help generate this name.

Re:Nay, Google Play reviews Google+

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Well, don't do that then.

Geez, that was easy.

Have fun pointlessly restricting your own activities out of fear that some idiot in a position of power could take offense to just about anything you do.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Darinbob]

Usenet behind a paywall is the anti-usenet. It had been free (of cost) for most of its life, then later most ISPs dropped. Those that kept it around had a lot of people that charged for access (ie, direct Usenet access as opposed to a web interface like Google). That is, you have the order of events backward, as it became a pay service only after it lost popularity.

(it's still free though if you use google groups, some things like comp.lang.c++ seem to be in use)

As for 99% not knowing it existed, I'd say far greater than 99% even knew that the internet/arpanet existed until the twenty years (since this month is the 20th anniversary of Eternal September).

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Miamicanes]

> I'm an old Usenet fan, but am perfectly aware the ability to nymshift led to a culture of spamming and verbal harrassment that are basically unacceptable

No, it was the AOL users. The darkest day in the history of Usenet was the day they started allowing people to post to it from AOL.

Re:professional--recommended skip the internet

[Anonymous Coward]

Google is the new policeman. It started when they demanded a phone number to register an account.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Blaskowicz]

I first used the internet in the lates 90s, early 00s and there was no free usenet already. And I wonder if usenet was ever mostly a US-centric thing, I've never seen a usenet client running, ever (unless you want to count netscape/mozilla and such, but not running the news protocol)
At most some people mentioned it on forums, but only for the warez and porn/etc. on the binary newsgroups.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

You don't think anything qualifies as harassment, do you? Can you give me a definition? Do you equate lawlessness with freedom?

Most people are phonies, how do real names help?

[euneaux]

Pseudonyms are just as good. I'll protect the good name and reputation of this invented persona. Many worry astonishingly little about the reputation of their real life identity.

Re:What a crisis! NOT

[Darinbob]

Ya, that was late stage Usenet. It was definitely world wide (how else would Tanenbaum bicker with Torvalds?).

The height was back before there were web browsers so that text-only interfaces were considered normal, even though graphical readers existed. It was typically store-and-forward, very similar to email, so that you didn't connect to a server for interactive use but instead downloaded all the new messages to a local computer. The early ISPs would download and store locally, providing a Usenet gateway as one of their major features for customers.

There are plenty of trolls who post w/ their real

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of trolls who post w/ their real names.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

You don't think anything qualifies as harassment, do you?

False. But there are certain types of harassment that I believe should be tolerated, and harassment dealing with speech is one of them. It may be harassment of a sort to constantly spew forth verbal abuse directed at a certain person, but I would not want someone to be arrested over that.

Do you equate lawlessness with freedom?

In a way, yes. If you mean the complete absence of any laws whatsoever, then maybe, but that's not what I desire.

Dangerous

[xenobyte]

Revoking pseudonymity retroactively can be dangerous.

A news forum here in Denmark decided to force everyone to use their real names, and as you registered with your real name they simply made a small change in the application so it showed your real name as author instead of the user-chosen username/pseudonym. This had the effect that old posts also suddenly were linked to real names, and those people with unique names were thus easy to track down physically.

Now, this happened around the time with the Muhammad Cartoon controversy, and we all know how crazy certain Muslim people are when it comes to 'insults' against their beloved prophet. Care to guess what happened? - Let's just say that visits by groups of baseball-bat wielding fanatics were involved. No deaths but that was mostly due to luck, not lack of trying. They took offense not only in the cartoons themselves but also that a few people commented on Muhammad's sexuality, specifically on the historical fact that he married a 6-year old (Aisha) and consummated the marriage when she was 9 years old.

The forum is mostly dead now. They still force posters to use their real name and nobody dares say anything, knowing what had happened and what still could happen.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

And I feel more free if my safety is somewhat guaranteed at a good level. And that those restrictions in law aren't really restrictions to decent people.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

And I feel more free if my safety is somewhat guaranteed at a good level

It already is, laws against harassment or no. Killing someone in a video or game harms no one, except perhaps oversensitive egos.

And that those restrictions in law aren't really restrictions to decent people.

"Decent" is subjective, but they're restrictions on everyone.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Anyway, it's clear that you can't handle having freedom, but note that other people can before you go off and try to ruin whatever country you're in even further. It is your attitude that leads to nonsense like the TSA, and not one of the supporters of this sort of nonsense even cares about the constitution.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

Freedom of speech never included harassment. Disagreement, yes. Criticism of public figures, yes. If I'm against outright harassment and bullying, then I'm against the TSA too.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

Freedom of speech never included harassment

Well, I'll just have to reread the first amendment, then.

That said, "harassment," to you, is clearly nothing more than speech you don't like repeated more than you'd like, or just the former. Have your 'safety' (I'm not sure how the government bullying some kid who killed people in a video game will make you safe, but whatever.), but move to a country that doesn't claim to be the land of the free and the home of the brave that's foolish enough to arrest a kid for killing people in a game.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

It wasn't because he killed them in the game. It was because it was all done in such a way to make them see it and the implications that made.

Harassment is - yes - passing a threshold. If you were an ex-boyfriend and you called your ex-girlfriend, that's just a phone call. If you call every night at the same time for weeks, that's harassment.

A boss paying a single sexual compliment to his employee can be considered harassment. Shouldn't always be, but can be.

Physical violence isn't usually OK. At some point, verbal abuse crosses a line and I don't see a problem with having a structure in place to deal with it. There is a line that shouldn't be crossed. Yes, it's true that the line can start to move down a slippery slope - and it's part of our responsibility as citizens to ensure that doesn't happen.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

It was because it was all done in such a way to make them see it and the implications that made.

There was literally nothing. This was a non-issue until the police got involved. The only bullies here were the government thugs, as usual.

Harassment is - yes - passing a threshold. If you were an ex-boyfriend and you called your ex-girlfriend, that's just a phone call. If you call every night at the same time for weeks, that's harassment.

Again, whether or not it's harassment has little to do with whether pieces of garbage from the government should ruin people's lives.

A boss paying a single sexual compliment to his employee can be considered harassment. Shouldn't always be, but can be.

And if that results in the boss being punished by the government, that is absolute garbage.

Physical violence isn't usually OK. At some point, verbal abuse crosses a line and I don't see a problem with having a structure in place to deal with it.

Then you don't really care about freedom of speech. Not a surprise, but don't pretend otherwise.

Yes, it's true that the line can start to move down a slippery slope - and it's part of our responsibility as citizens to ensure that doesn't happen.

There doesn't need to be a slippery slope; the restrictions you suggest are bad enough as it is.

You're becoming an eyesore, you insolent insect.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[omnichad]

Sorry - didn't realize you were an anarchist. You know, you can't have a Constitution with anarchy.

Constitutional policy

[cundare]

First Amendment case law dating back to the 18th Century has consistently defending the right to anonymous speech. The courts have long recognized that being forced to reveal one's identity in order to, say, criticize the government can have a chilling effect on free speech. The Bill of Rights doesn't generally apply to private citizens, of course, but the world doesn't seem to be going in that direction these days. Or even over the last hundred years -- see, e.g., J. Edgar. The problem now, I guess, is that we have the technology to easily make anonymous speech almost impossible -- so why not use it?? I think there's an Oscar Wilde quote about how the need to censor is one of the most powerful of human motivations -- next to it, the sex drive is nothing.

Don't participate

[WOOFYGOOFY]

Yeah don't participate in sites that force you to real your actual identity gender etc. That will solve the problem pretty quickly. Don't see at Huffpo anymore , do ya? Don't see me at Salon anymore , do ya? No, ya don't.

Re:Simply put, it can't.

[AlphaWoIf_HK]

I'm not an anarchist, but the fact remains that the government often acts as nothing more than a group of thugs. From the drug war to the TSA to the NSA, our government is corrupt, and you seem to like it that way, since you don't seem to care about the first amendment in the least (I'm not saying you don't seem to care about what some judge ruled was in the first amendment, but about the first amendment itself.).