5 ms·

Does “anonymous speech is not free speech” work? You can be a shit-posting hate-monger but your full, real identity must be known. Put up or shut up. The anony

• retrac 4y ago
  The ability to organise and publish anonymously is crucial to small groups that are unpopular. Imagine if political campaigners or advocates on something like abortion or LGBT rights, pro- or anti-, or some other controversial issue, could publish whatever fliers or pamphlets they like - just so long as they put their name and address on it to ensure accountability. The chilling effect on perfectly legitimate if unpopular speech would be extreme.
  • Communitivity 4y ago
    The problem here is the effect, not the cause. The cause is abuse by some other group of this controversial minority. If we prosecuted to the fullest extent anyone bullying or discriminating based on such things, then anyone who wished to speak could do so without anonymity. I don't believe we will ever solve the hate speech problem without doing away with anonymity, or at the very least have anonymous speech have much less protections and reach. For example, Twitter might only allow retweets of tweets tweeted by people with verified accounts and their primary identities in the profile. There are people for whom a non-birthname is their primary identity, through role, gender change, etc. So I'm not talking birthname, I'm talking the name you identify yourself to the world with.I