3 ms·

Everyone who's for anonymity or pseudo-anonymity wants an all-or-nothing solution where they are totally hidden. The people who propose making everyone known w

by zedshaw 15y ago

Everyone who's for anonymity or pseudo-anonymity wants an all-or-nothing solution where they are totally hidden. The people who propose making everyone known want everyone to totally put all their information online with no protections. What annoys me is there's a very simple middle solution: You are anonymous to other users, but not the company running the site. If you do something like this, then the company has the right to out you, similar to a DMCA takedown. With that you could have those people who want to stay hidden from others, but you'd prevent idiots like this because it'd be easy for someone to report them and have them outed. It would only take a couple of bad trolls getting their "troll bit flipped" for the behavior to be reduced.

YmMot 15y ago
You use the phrase "outed", which to me implies public exposure, so my post is based mostly on that premise. If that's not the case, please just clarify and ignore the applicable parts. In theory that sounds nice, and to a certain extent there are some similar systems in place already...but I just don't see it working that well overall. We already have a system like this for sex offenders, and it's got some serious issues. In such a system it would either be up to each site to have a public "troll list" or they would have to have some central repository. In the case of the former, anytime you look at a sites list you won't be able to tell which ones are just someone who made an offensive comment or two on a single site and "repeat offenders" who are on many sites lists. You'd have to collate the lists somehow and even then you'd have troubles of differentiating the various "levels", mistaken identity, etc. In the case of a central repository that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Then there's the question of what constitutes an "identity" for the purposes of being able to post. A name? An address? Those don't seem suitable to me for such purposes, they're too fudge-able and temporary. A State ID# or SSN seem too personal and permanent. If the former are compromised, you can limit the damage somewhat, the latter less so. There's the issue of proliferation. Even if you use addresses, every single time you put your info out there is the increased risk of it being compromised. It's not unreasonable to want to limit the amount of times you expose yourself to the risk of security breaches. There's the issue of the practical burden it would place on the sites. This isn't so much of an issue since it would be voluntary, but it's something to consider. I think the ethical issue of whether it's ok to out someone who obviously has enemies on the internet is a tricky one. Again it gets to the issue of what constitutes an "identity" for these purposes. If it's too specific it becomes dangerous to release, or even store...and if it's not specific enough it becomes dangerous due to confusion, or loses it's sting. There's also the question of whether it will really deter anyone. As much as they like to try and evoke the image of a deliberate prankster, I don't think most trolls really think things out that much. It strikes me as impulsive behavior. So they get hit on one site after an impulsive trolling and just move to another one. Assuming that it's specific, I think the possibility of some sort of violent retaliation needs to be considered. You could argue one reaps what one sows, but I don't think that's an attitude that belongs in the consideration of organizing a society. We should value protecting everyone over punishing wrongdoers. A balance needs to be struck between removing the cause of harm from society and not discarding anyone. Overall I wouldn't be surprised if such a system comes into being. Some walled gardens where members are authenticated based on a one way hash of some personally identifiable information, or a cryptographic key-fob or something...and if they cause a ruckus their access will be revoked. However I think such a system would have enough problems that it wouldn't take off except in isolated pockets that highly value having an exclusive discussion among a verified group, and there I think it would be more about that than preventing trolling. For trolls, I think measures similar to what is mostly used now will continue to be the main defense. The ability to moderate, vote, etc.
- roguecoder 15y ago
  Well, Sex Crime Notification laws do appear to have a deterrent effect: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231989.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231989.pdf So it may be that allowing trolls to be traced back to their original communities and their remarks publicized would be effective.
  - YmMot 15y ago
    It has a small deterrent effect on first time offenders. However, the study also notes that it does not significantly affect repeat offenders, there's little difference in how "dangerous" (likely to reoffend) registered offenders are vs ones who forget/refuse to be registered, putting the list online had little effect. It also notes that in terms of community safety, it may be harmful because it encourages offenders to plea to non-sexual charges and the courts to allow them to due to the scarlet letter nature of the registry. Systems like we are discussing can and do exist, I just don't see them as a necessary or particularly effective solution...especially when compared with the necessary trade-offs. Look at AOL, which during it's hey-day was basically this sort of walled garden. You needed a phone #, name, address, payment combination to register. Many chatrooms were patrolled by moderators...there were even investigations and "stings" of trouble-makers. If you got TOS'd too many times you were permanently banned. However trolling, illegal activity, pornography, etc thrived pretty well regardless. It was easy to evade the bans and there was a steady flow of new trolls. I think the best solution in terms of respect for privacy and effectiveness is a combination of crowd-sourced moderation and intelligent detection of likely "trolling" and problem posters by software.
unreal37 15y ago
SecondLife does this. You have to use a real name, address and credit card to register an account. But in-world, no one knows who you are and there is no practical way for anyone to find your real identity. And for misbehavior (griefing or harassment), they can block you (by IP I guess) for days, weeks, or forever.

by zedshaw 15y ago

YmMot 15y ago

You use the phrase "outed", which to me implies public exposure, so my post is based mostly on that premise. If that's not the case, please just clarify and ignore the applicable parts. In theory that sounds nice, and to a certain extent there are some similar systems in place already...but I just don't see it working that well overall. We already have a system like this for sex offenders, and it's got some serious issues. In such a system it would either be up to each site to have a public "troll list" or they would have to have some central repository. In the case of the former, anytime you look at a sites list you won't be able to tell which ones are just someone who made an offensive comment or two on a single site and "repeat offenders" who are on many sites lists. You'd have to collate the lists somehow and even then you'd have troubles of differentiating the various "levels", mistaken identity, etc. In the case of a central repository that's a whole 'nother can of worms. Then there's the question of what constitutes an "identity" for the purposes of being able to post. A name? An address? Those don't seem suitable to me for such purposes, they're too fudge-able and temporary. A State ID# or SSN seem too personal and permanent. If the former are compromised, you can limit the damage somewhat, the latter less so. There's the issue of proliferation. Even if you use addresses, every single time you put your info out there is the increased risk of it being compromised. It's not unreasonable to want to limit the amount of times you expose yourself to the risk of security breaches. There's the issue of the practical burden it would place on the sites. This isn't so much of an issue since it would be voluntary, but it's something to consider. I think the ethical issue of whether it's ok to out someone who obviously has enemies on the internet is a tricky one. Again it gets to the issue of what constitutes an "identity" for these purposes. If it's too specific it becomes dangerous to release, or even store...and if it's not specific enough it becomes dangerous due to confusion, or loses it's sting. There's also the question of whether it will really deter anyone. As much as they like to try and evoke the image of a deliberate prankster, I don't think most trolls really think things out that much. It strikes me as impulsive behavior. So they get hit on one site after an impulsive trolling and just move to another one. Assuming that it's specific, I think the possibility of some sort of violent retaliation needs to be considered. You could argue one reaps what one sows, but I don't think that's an attitude that belongs in the consideration of organizing a society. We should value protecting everyone over punishing wrongdoers. A balance needs to be struck between removing the cause of harm from society and not discarding anyone. Overall I wouldn't be surprised if such a system comes into being. Some walled gardens where members are authenticated based on a one way hash of some personally identifiable information, or a cryptographic key-fob or something...and if they cause a ruckus their access will be revoked. However I think such a system would have enough problems that it wouldn't take off except in isolated pockets that highly value having an exclusive discussion among a verified group, and there I think it would be more about that than preventing trolling. For trolls, I think measures similar to what is mostly used now will continue to be the main defense. The ability to moderate, vote, etc.

roguecoder 15y ago
Well, Sex Crime Notification laws do appear to have a deterrent effect: https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231989.pdf https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/231989.pdf So it may be that allowing trolls to be traced back to their original communities and their remarks publicized would be effective.
- YmMot 15y ago
  It has a small deterrent effect on first time offenders. However, the study also notes that it does not significantly affect repeat offenders, there's little difference in how "dangerous" (likely to reoffend) registered offenders are vs ones who forget/refuse to be registered, putting the list online had little effect. It also notes that in terms of community safety, it may be harmful because it encourages offenders to plea to non-sexual charges and the courts to allow them to due to the scarlet letter nature of the registry. Systems like we are discussing can and do exist, I just don't see them as a necessary or particularly effective solution...especially when compared with the necessary trade-offs. Look at AOL, which during it's hey-day was basically this sort of walled garden. You needed a phone #, name, address, payment combination to register. Many chatrooms were patrolled by moderators...there were even investigations and "stings" of trouble-makers. If you got TOS'd too many times you were permanently banned. However trolling, illegal activity, pornography, etc thrived pretty well regardless. It was easy to evade the bans and there was a steady flow of new trolls. I think the best solution in terms of respect for privacy and effectiveness is a combination of crowd-sourced moderation and intelligent detection of likely "trolling" and problem posters by software.

unreal37 15y ago

SecondLife does this. You have to use a real name, address and credit card to register an account. But in-world, no one knows who you are and there is no practical way for anyone to find your real identity. And for misbehavior (griefing or harassment), they can block you (by IP I guess) for days, weeks, or forever.