I agree with the bulk of your criticism, but this made me think a little: > Of course the current solution, of using anonymous aliases, makes a delete button u

I agree with the bulk of your criticism, but this made me think a little: > Of course the current solution, of using anonymous aliases, makes a delete button unnecessary. I'm not sure it does, at least in practice. People can and will leak information between their aliases, unless they are extremely careful to maintain separation, and if we're operating in a context where everything is recorded, and only the anonymity of the alias attached to that content protects it, then a single leak of information screws things up permanently, at least from the point of view of someone who has a significant interest in having surveillance over (and hence power over) that person. I don't think that it's reasonable to expect everyone, to maintain perfect opsec starting from the first time they turn on their computer -- it's not only unreasonable to demand it, or to think that it's possible, but it's also incredibly destructive psychologically. So under a system where there is some anonymity, but no deletion, there's still the problem of this sort of information being available. To me, the problem seems to be that "anonymous" is a word sort of like "security", in the sense that it doesn't really have meaning without some (perhaps implicitly) attached idea of "to whom". When we say that some information is posted anonymously, do we mean anonymous to someone who does a casual web search, to someone who spends a few hours looking at various sources of information, to an army of internet vigilantes (c.f. reddit and the Boston bombings, or 4chan's harassment), to law enforcement, or to three letter agencies? And is it even possible to post anything substantial anonymously, or will network analysis, or the content itself (eg. writing identification) reveal the author to an adversary? > The delete button is only necessary in a world where anonymity is not permitted. It is useful to understand this is an unspoken premise of his proposal. When the NSA is building a yottabyte-scale data centre in Utah, and carries out data-collection programs beyond the scale of imagination, don't we already live in such a world? Moreover, is it even possible to have a world in which anonymity exists, or does the increase in sophistication of surveillance tools make it impossible? (Note, of course, that Schmidt's proposal doesn't solve this problem at all, because it presumes that there is one authority with the power to enforce deletion orders, and that that authority is trustworthy. Neither of those conditions can be met.)