3 ms·

Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one, and multiple alts are guaranteed to be extremely costly to create. People are primarily just afraid of

Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one, and multiple alts are guaranteed to be extremely costly to create. People are primarily just afraid of being duped or tricked somehow by someone hiding behind multiple identities, otherwise they don’t treat pseudonyms much differently. Of course there’s a practical difficulty in making sure creating the first pseudonym identity has a low bar but also to make sure that subsequent creations have much higher bars. One way to get around this is to mandate a real identity account but allow it to be private without a public facing component, and allow up to one pseudonym account to be linked to it privately.

Palomides 3y ago
the cost of pseudonym is the amount of work you invest to build a reputation, I don't think there's really a problem here
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  A bonafide genius might be able to build a similar reputation for 3 pseudonyms in as much time and effort as it takes for a more average person to build 1. Obviously most people are not bonafide geniuses and they know it, so there’s always a lingering fear of being taken in somehow.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - fragmede 3y ago
    Throw the resources of an APT at the problem, how many reputationally high pseudonyms could be generated?
Terr_ 3y ago
> Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one What's the problem with real person John Doe also having an account called anon12345? The problem isn't one person having multiple identities, the problem involve mismatches between the quality or qualities of those identities versus particular use cases.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Like I said a limit of one pseudonym on top of the real identity. If everyone knows everyone else is hard limited to a max of 1 pseudonym, then they wouldn’t be afraid any longer.
  - Terr_ 3y ago
    > hard limited to a max of 1 pseudonym A single combined pseudonym that becomes permanently useless for the rest of your life once it eventually accumulates enough little hints and other metadata across all services to get dox-able to your real identity? Hell no! [0] Even if it can be "killed" in favor of a secret successor pseudonym, that's still terrible, because the limited-life and periodic social death aspect is still there, and because humans regularly have different sides in different social contexts. Who wants to screen online dates with the same pseudonym used for asking resume advice? > then [people afraid of sockpuppets and impersonators] wouldn’t be afraid any longer If you're that afraid that a pseudonymous account isn't real, you know what? You just ask them to positively authenticate before extending any trust! Why should everyone else in the world submit to a dystopian panopticon, merely to satisfy your lack of due-diligence and/or anxiety to avoid confrontation? [0] Would you use the same password everywhere on the internet too? Similar risk-management issues arise here.
    - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
      > services to get dox-able to your real identity? Hell no! [0] […] Would you use the same password everywhere on the internet too? Similar risk-management issues arise here. I'm not sure this follows. It's clear that reusing a password is a bad idea, and more importantly a password is supposed to be secret. Identities _usually_ are not. It's clearly different in the context of Open Source but you would not go into many commercial transactions without verifying the person on the other side. In quite a few countries (eg: Germany) cannot even voluntarily change your name and your personal information in many ways is required to be public (Impressumspflicht). Sweden maybe goes even further by making tax records public. If that was the same situation as with passwords then life in those countries would not work.
keybored 3y ago
> Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one, and multiple alts are guaranteed to be extremely costly to create. You’ve invented Real Identity #2. So now you have effectively two real identities, a step up from just one but you don’t have the pseudonym capability of reinventing yourself whenever you want.
- MichaelZuo 3y ago
  Over a long enough time span, assuming anyone else cares, then yes of course the likelihood of being revealed approaches 100%. It’s still better than the alternatives for those afraid of being tricked.

Palomides 3y ago

the cost of pseudonym is the amount of work you invest to build a reputation, I don't think there's really a problem here

MichaelZuo 3y ago
A bonafide genius might be able to build a similar reputation for 3 pseudonyms in as much time and effort as it takes for a more average person to build 1. Obviously most people are not bonafide geniuses and they know it, so there’s always a lingering fear of being taken in somehow.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- fragmede 3y ago
  Throw the resources of an APT at the problem, how many reputationally high pseudonyms could be generated?

Terr_ 3y ago

> Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one What's the problem with real person John Doe also having an account called anon12345? The problem isn't one person having multiple identities, the problem involve mismatches between the quality or qualities of those identities versus particular use cases.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Like I said a limit of one pseudonym on top of the real identity. If everyone knows everyone else is hard limited to a max of 1 pseudonym, then they wouldn’t be afraid any longer.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  > hard limited to a max of 1 pseudonym A single combined pseudonym that becomes permanently useless for the rest of your life once it eventually accumulates enough little hints and other metadata across all services to get dox-able to your real identity? Hell no! [0] Even if it can be "killed" in favor of a secret successor pseudonym, that's still terrible, because the limited-life and periodic social death aspect is still there, and because humans regularly have different sides in different social contexts. Who wants to screen online dates with the same pseudonym used for asking resume advice? > then [people afraid of sockpuppets and impersonators] wouldn’t be afraid any longer If you're that afraid that a pseudonymous account isn't real, you know what? You just ask them to positively authenticate before extending any trust! Why should everyone else in the world submit to a dystopian panopticon, merely to satisfy your lack of due-diligence and/or anxiety to avoid confrontation? [0] Would you use the same password everywhere on the internet too? Similar risk-management issues arise here.
  - the_mitsuhiko 3y ago
    > services to get dox-able to your real identity? Hell no! [0] […] Would you use the same password everywhere on the internet too? Similar risk-management issues arise here. I'm not sure this follows. It's clear that reusing a password is a bad idea, and more importantly a password is supposed to be secret. Identities _usually_ are not. It's clearly different in the context of Open Source but you would not go into many commercial transactions without verifying the person on the other side. In quite a few countries (eg: Germany) cannot even voluntarily change your name and your personal information in many ways is required to be public (Impressumspflicht). Sweden maybe goes even further by making tax records public. If that was the same situation as with passwords then life in those countries would not work.

keybored 3y ago

> Pseudonyms are fine, as long as each person has only one, and multiple alts are guaranteed to be extremely costly to create. You’ve invented Real Identity #2. So now you have effectively two real identities, a step up from just one but you don’t have the pseudonym capability of reinventing yourself whenever you want.

MichaelZuo 3y ago
Over a long enough time span, assuming anyone else cares, then yes of course the likelihood of being revealed approaches 100%. It’s still better than the alternatives for those afraid of being tricked.