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Digital IDs Needed To End 'Mob Rule' Online, Says UK's Security Minister (independent.co.uk)
Digital IDs should be brought in to end online anonymity that permits "mob rule" and lawlessness online, the security minister of United Kingdom has said. From a report: Ben Wallace said authentication used by banks could also by employed by internet firms to crack down on bullying and grooming, as he warned that people had to make a choice between "the wild west or a civilised society" online. He also took aim at the "phoniness" of Silicon Valley billionaires, and called for companies such as WhatsApp to contribute to society over the negative costs of their technology, such as end-to-end encryption. It comes after Theresa May took another step against tech giants, saying they would be ordered to clamp down on vile attacks against women on their platforms. The prime minister will target firms such as Facebook and Twitter as she makes the pitch at the G7 summit this weekend, where she will urge social media firms to treat violent misogyny with the same urgency as they do terror threats. Mr Wallace told The Times: "A lot of the bullying on social media and the grooming is because those people know you cannot identify them. It is mob rule on the internet. You shouldn't be able to hide behind anonymity."
UK's security minister needs to go bugger a diseased goat, says anyone who's not an authoritarian skumbag...
Digital ID's needed for all - so we can arrest Twitter users speaking out against the State.
Sounds farfetched? The UK is doing that today.
I mean, they do that already without digital ID"s, but it would save the police state a lot of time and bother if they could have the address pop up alongside the reported thought crim... er I mean tweet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only way to enforce privacy is by keeping the ability to be anonymous, whether by paying cash or not having an "Internet ID."
Or at least that is what the people on the top want the rest of us to believe. An authoritarian's ideal structure is one with a small number at the top and the rest of the people on the bottom. Online communication is the most profound change to society in the last few centuries, perhaps in all of human history. So of course authoritarian-leaning people want to be the gatekeepers to it.
Fear mongering would be telling you that we'll have a lawless wild west if we don't quickly transfer authority to a central entity. As if this is an either or scenario.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Every few years, someone comes out with a social thing for forum thing or whatever, and they insist that using "real" names will make people better-behaved. Every time they are proven wrong. People we well-behaved in small groups, people are not well-behaved in large groups. Full stop. There's surely a marginal size where knowing who people are will make a difference, like when you grow from 50,000 people to 100,000 people maybe, but "online" or "The Internet" are far far far beyond that region, so it doesn't matter.
This isn't just a problem in online forums. I've seen it in workplaces, a workplace with under a thousand people can feel fairly homey and interconnected and grounded, 5,000 people starts to get a little dicey but workable, but when you get up to like 25,000 people, even with the best intentions things routinely get out of control and mobs are always forming. It's not only that people fell they can get away with stuff, it's that people stop standing up for what's right. In a smaller group, when someone gets drunk at a company event and starts making an ass of themselves, unrelated people step up and usher them out. In a larger group, everyone feels like they aren't responsible for the group, so nobody steps up, and the asshole just keeps on going until something horrible happens.
Except removing anonymity is not really necessary with semi-sensible moderation, white/black lists, and content visibility policies. /. is a really good example of this. Not perfect, but browse at +2 and it's a fairly decent place. Want to dive into the madness of the AC? Change your post level settings or just click "x hidden comments".
I've got in my back pocket a couple of similar but I think better moderation schemes which include shadowbans, reputation, and friends-of-friends and foes-of-friends tweaks. Not likely that I'll ever be in a place to implement them, but if I am, I'll try them out.
Straight up/down votes with no metamoderation are the scourge of the internet. Combined with no sockpuppet policies, you end up with absolutely abusive forums. (Cough reddit, cough.) Websites on the internet are only the wild west if the owners of forums want it to be. Anyone who wants some civility can make that happen, and it doesn't require giving up anonymity.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
His plan to make everyone who uses the Internet "show papers" aside, his commentary about the hypocrisy of Silicon Valley billionaires is to the point.
But the solution to this isn't LESS privacy, it's MORE privacy, if anything.
Firstly , it's "her", not "him". Secondly, I was one of those who repeatedly warned that claiming misogyny and racism where there was none is the thin end of the wedge.
Unfortunately people who challenge unwarranted claims of sexism, racism, etc get called sexists, racists, etc. Pointing out, for example, that the gender pay gap doesn't exist gets you lynched.
The problem the moderate left has is that the moderate left allow the hard left to use shaming language rather than arguments and then fail to distance themselves from that shit. It is far easier to call people who are against affirmative action racists than to find an argument to support it (I haven't seen a good argument yet).
The end result, of course, is this - monitoring everyone for their own good. Because most people are basically good people, calling them misogynists if they don't allow the state to read their private correspondence is probably going to work.
That's also the reason that the hard left uses insults int the first place - calling an actual racist a racist is pointless - why would they care if someone identified them correctly? Same with calling an actual sexist a sexist.
Insults only work on people who aren't correctly identified. Calling a non-racist a racist or calling a non-sexist a sexist "works" because it either aggravates them (shutting down the conversation) or causes them to remain silent about your excesses. Either result is preferable to having facts introduced into a conversation.
The next time someone says trump is racist because he hates immigrants, see what happens you you introduce a fact such as "legal immigrants are different from illegal immigrants". The next time someone says something about a gender pay gap try introducing a fact or two and see what happens. Or even better, when in company of a hard left (or even moderate left these days) point out that Islam is extremely hard right, more to the right than even the KKK - IOW relative to Islam, the KKK is slightly left (how insane is that?)
Everyone must be tracked to prevent misogyny? Sure, why not? We've already given everything else to the alternative-truth brigade and anyway if you object you must be a misogynist!
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
"saying they would be ordered to clamp down on vile attacks against women on their platforms"
The thing with anonymity is that your gender and race do not need to be disclosed, you can claim anything or be anyone. Everyone is equal online and that's the whole point.
As for the word "attack", you can't attack anyone online, you can only throw insults at them, it's only words from random people who you don't know and who don't matter to you. Ignore them, respond in kind or better yet just laugh and ridicule their feeble attempts to insult you.
People need to take the internet for what it is and embrace the anonymity. You can be who you want to be online, if you feel that being a woman online makes you weak and opens you up to "attacks" then pretend to be a man and see what happens. If someone anonymous doesn't like you then so what? You can be just as anonymous as them, they can't do anything to you.
People troll because they get a response, by running away crying about being "attacked" you are giving them a response and making them feel powerful because they had the ability to affect you. If you laugh at them and show them that not only are you suffering no negative effects from their trolling, but you are actually finding their pathetic attempts to insult you amusing then they will soon give up anyway.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So Francisco Franco was a leftist?
What'd be good for you would be a little knowledge of actual history.
Your claims regarding American politics are also highly suspect. The truth of the matter is that US Democrats would be considered "moderate right" in just any other Western country, and Republicans would be considered "far right". NO viable player on the US espouses anything like an actual leftist agenda, because, to begin with, not one of them presents any serious challenge to the 1% or the corporations. When there's a party, represented by candidates on national ballots, that has the balls to espouse things like nationalisation of industry, breakup and redistribution of large estates, universal free education at all levels, and universal free health care, then you'll know that the US has finally grown a left wing.
Placing or keeping the means of production in a few favoured private hands is a hallmark of right-wing régimes.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Tommy Robinson breached a reporting ban (his second offense of this type). This type of ban is typically put in place in order to prevent mob justice and harassment of suspects who are still not convicted, in cases of a sensitive nature.
Would you want your name and face live streamed to Facebook, simply for being the suspect in a trial, where you may or may not be guilty?
Tommy Robinson tried to short-circuit the legal system, including the protections put in place for suspects who are yet to be convicted. In other words he tried to impose his own personal judgment on a case in which he has absolutely no right to interfere. Not to mention that this is the second time he's done so, hence the harsher punishment this time. Tommy Robinson is a radicalized extremist who apparently thinks he is above the law. He is not.
Eat the rich.
As someone who lives in the UK, I take a slightly different view from the somewhat rabid and over-hyped fear-mongers on this site.
Let's have some context:
The UK government is in a mess. The whole Brexit fiasco was poorly thought out and people were asked to vote on little/no information at best and outright lies at worst. This has resulted in many many views on what the result meant and massive in-fighting in the government which is spending so much time on the issue nothing else substantive seems to be happening. Couple this with an election leaving a minority party in power, with little opportunity to make any changes and you have a confused muddle.
So what to do? take decisive action? no too hard!! -- let's have a distraction: royal weddings are good for a couple of months run-up but even they pass. An attack on internet companies is always a short term winner - it panders to the worst elements of the press (who see their business model of peddling hate and discord being threatened) and hits the hot buttons of "terror" and "what of the children/women?".
The level of debate here shows the distraction technique works.
As for implementation -- just look at history: England have more chance of winning the world cup than a UK Government IT system working properly. A few consultancies and IT companies may make some money (but at least nowadays the government does try to claw back overspend on its fiascos)
I seriously doubt that anything will really change and in six months to a year's time things will be just the same.
Erich Roehm, who was killed in the Night of the long Knives, was a socialist with leftie tendencies, being a mamber of the Workers Party before he joined the NSDAP. He wanted the National Socialist party to actually live the socialist part of the name. Roehm had control over the militia at the time, the SA. Hitler was worried he would use his SA thugs to toss him out and live his dreams, and evidence would suggest that the idea did cross Roehm's mind.
Hitler decided to move first so out Roehm went. Since Hitler was going for the kill anyways, so did quite a few others. But the name stayed.
The dangers of excessive individualism are nothing compared to the oppressiveness of excessive collectivism
The US ranks in 18th place on the index of economic freedom, behind many European nations, including the UK. The US spends more per capita on social welfare and spends more per capita on single payer, government healthcare, retirement, and education that many European nations. In what sense is it "very rightwing and right extremist"?
You seem to somehow be under the impression that leftist don't support slave labor. I suggest you take a good look at both the old Soviet Union and China, particularly. That leftist are for 'the people' is a myth. One they've been very good at perpetuating, but then leftist are masters of propaganda, and always have been.