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Social media makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things. Anonymity protects from exactly that. If you think such retaliation
by hirundo 5y ago
Social media makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things. Anonymity protects from exactly that. If you think such retaliation tends to be a positive/negative force in the long run, you probably dislike/like anonymity.
As someone with a wide portfolio of unpopular views who prefers a loosely coupled, bottom up social architecture, I value anonymity as a key value and technology for promoting adaptation. A society with strong anonymity norms can test the fitness of more, and more diverse life algorithms than otherwise. That tends to make it less fragile and more likely to find a variety of local maxima.
- moron4hire 5y ago>> test the fitness of more, and more diverse life algorithms WTF is that even supposed to mean? 4chan commentors aren't some cabal of underground philosophy bad-boys, trying to carve out a New Enlightenment. The only "life algorithm" they seem interested in testing is anti-semetism. They're just assholes.
- bm3719 5y agoI suspect the commenter is borrowing from AI terminology to describe a real life ecology of ideas and solutions to problems. Also this is an incorrect generalization of 4chan. While rare enough that I don't bother going there, thoughtful exchange can and does occur on it. Besides, this is about anonymity in general, not on one specific site. Do we really want an internet where everything you do and interact with is forever attached to your real person?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- throwoutway 5y agoUsing 4chan to argue against what OP stated seems like the weakest form of strawman you could find. Could you choose something else, like Twitter?
- bmarquez 5y ago> The anonymous Twitter account of a citizen holed below the poverty line The article itself uses Twitter as an example, and doesn't even mention 4chan at all.
- mcguire 5y agoAnonymity also makes it cheap and easy to retaliate against speakers who say unpopular things---those who would retaliate face no consequences for such retaliation, and the ease of creating anonymous accounts amplifies the their volume. In practice, anonymity seems to produce a race to the bottom rather than a search for local maxima.
- seoulmetro 5y agoThe bottom is where unpopular opinions need to start, and that's a good thing.
- mcguire 5y agoI feel like the most appropriate response to your comment would be a long stream of profanity, but deng gets mad when I let my irony loose.
- seoulmetro 5y agoHe gets mad at everything that is not agreed upon by the masses, don't feel so bad. He is also trying to race to the bottom rather than starting there. Don't like something but dang does? Do not don't like what Donny dang does.
- nebula8804 5y agoAt the same time it provides power to the previously powerless. Whether it is true power remains to be seen.