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That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things relate

That argument, though, makes no sense at all. I'm a homosexual, and living in a very conservative and homophobic part of France. I don't want any things related to homosexuality and the lgbt community posted under my real identity, because then any member of my family or any of my friends could stumble upon it and make problematical deductions. Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever, because it's not something my relatives support? Another fairly easy counter-example would be the one of an anonymous online political activist. I don't get people who support that kind of arguments.

ballard 13y ago
Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause. Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to understand: that what you say, online or offline, can at any point in the future (potentially indefinitely) may arbitrarily be used against you in familial, legal, political, business, personal, romantic or any other context. This amounts to individuals unwittingly manufacturing ammunition and handing it to their enemies.
- yuhong 13y ago
  Agreed, but there is something wrong if people have to use it all the time.
  - ballard 13y ago
    The world is the world. Because there are so many other people out there that might be up to no good, so many laws (US commercial code, anyone) that an individual will create so much digital dirt over their lifetime, it becomes very easy to attack anyone that does not just keep most things private as a best practice. It's nearly impossible to know which digital bits will be at some point in the future X years taken out of context for political, employment, romantic, legal or other purposes. "Three Felonies a Day" https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...
    - yuhong 13y ago
      Of course, how much that matters depends and if you limit to a subset it becomes much easier, but I definitely agree that people should have the right to be anonymous. I just don't like it when people have to do so, and do want to fix the problems if possible.
- cbhl 13y ago
  I think that anonymity is impossible; you could assign a unique number to each individual in something like 33 or 34 bits, which means you could de-anonymize your pseudonym in as few as 33 or 34 bisecting pieces of PII. (Gender identification provides at least one bit, and possibly more for someone who is homosexual; specifying a geographical region provides a few more.) It's a nice ideal, but I think being anonymous is going to die in the next five years -- if it hasn't already.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
nolok 13y ago
I would like to add that while I disagree with the comment you're replying to (reminds me of "why disagree with spying if you have nothing to hide" ...), I understand that nothing forces a particular company to allow anonymous content on their website and that's fine by me. But there is a world between refusing anon, and suddenly and posteriorly displaying the real name of people on top of content they thought was anonymous. I don't claim to be particularly smart but if their popup was unclear for me, I can't imagine how it is for people who are less tech literate.
- cbhl 13y ago
  You shouldn't rely on Mother Google or Daddy Facebook to fight your battles for you, because their interests are not the same as yours. Real Names was protested to death the moment that Google+ came out; my understanding is that their compromise was that your entire Google profile was to use the same name, but that name could be a pseudonym so long as it was realistic. (If your legal name was weird, well, too bad, send in some ID.) There's nothing we can do about this now, whining about it on HN. Choose to stop using YouTube, switch to a new account with a pseudonym, use Vimeo instead, start your own.
  - makomk 13y ago
    There's a huge amount of social pressure against being so paranoid about whether Google or Facebook might hypothetically decide to do something bad in the future. Saying that people should stop whining about it once it actually happens is effectively equivalent to saying that no-one should complain about it at all.
cbhl 13y ago
> Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever What I'm saying is that YouTube is a terrible place to have a lgbt community. Most of the closed-garden Internet is a terrible place to have a lgbt community, because all it takes is Zuck or Brin or some other "benevolent" dictator deciding to reveal all your secrets, and you're dead. Like, there was that girl who was disowned by her parents once Facebook made group memberships public on profiles, because she happened to be part of a lgbt group at her university. You're putting a hell of a lot of trust in Google or Facebook over what is, for you, a life-or-death situation. Choose a community where people only use pseudonyms, and which isn't driven by corporate profits. Edit: Also, a "anonymous" online political activist is going to live a miserable life; look at Snowden and Manning and Assange. You can't even send stuff to the newspapers any more without angry people coming to destroy your hard drives.

ballard 13y ago

Anonimity is a basic human right that one should be free to exercise at any time. Without it, those in power or those crazies out there that have nothing better can easily find something to attack those they don't like. This is not the providence of "something to hide" but that people should be secure with certainty against all forms of intrusion that lacks probable cause. Anonymity is difficult for naïve people to understand: that what you say, online or offline, can at any point in the future (potentially indefinitely) may arbitrarily be used against you in familial, legal, political, business, personal, romantic or any other context. This amounts to individuals unwittingly manufacturing ammunition and handing it to their enemies.

yuhong 13y ago
Agreed, but there is something wrong if people have to use it all the time.
- ballard 13y ago
  The world is the world. Because there are so many other people out there that might be up to no good, so many laws (US commercial code, anyone) that an individual will create so much digital dirt over their lifetime, it becomes very easy to attack anyone that does not just keep most things private as a best practice. It's nearly impossible to know which digital bits will be at some point in the future X years taken out of context for political, employment, romantic, legal or other purposes. "Three Felonies a Day" https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-June/008815.html https://mailman.stanford.edu/pipermail/liberationtech/2013-J...
  - yuhong 13y ago
    Of course, how much that matters depends and if you limit to a subset it becomes much easier, but I definitely agree that people should have the right to be anonymous. I just don't like it when people have to do so, and do want to fix the problems if possible.
cbhl 13y ago
I think that anonymity is impossible; you could assign a unique number to each individual in something like 33 or 34 bits, which means you could de-anonymize your pseudonym in as few as 33 or 34 bisecting pieces of PII. (Gender identification provides at least one bit, and possibly more for someone who is homosexual; specifying a geographical region provides a few more.) It's a nice ideal, but I think being anonymous is going to die in the next five years -- if it hasn't already.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

nolok 13y ago

I would like to add that while I disagree with the comment you're replying to (reminds me of "why disagree with spying if you have nothing to hide" ...), I understand that nothing forces a particular company to allow anonymous content on their website and that's fine by me. But there is a world between refusing anon, and suddenly and posteriorly displaying the real name of people on top of content they thought was anonymous. I don't claim to be particularly smart but if their popup was unclear for me, I can't imagine how it is for people who are less tech literate.

cbhl 13y ago
You shouldn't rely on Mother Google or Daddy Facebook to fight your battles for you, because their interests are not the same as yours. Real Names was protested to death the moment that Google+ came out; my understanding is that their compromise was that your entire Google profile was to use the same name, but that name could be a pseudonym so long as it was realistic. (If your legal name was weird, well, too bad, send in some ID.) There's nothing we can do about this now, whining about it on HN. Choose to stop using YouTube, switch to a new account with a pseudonym, use Vimeo instead, start your own.
- makomk 13y ago
  There's a huge amount of social pressure against being so paranoid about whether Google or Facebook might hypothetically decide to do something bad in the future. Saying that people should stop whining about it once it actually happens is effectively equivalent to saying that no-one should complain about it at all.

cbhl 13y ago

> Does that mean that I shouldn't be involved online in the lgbt community whatsoever What I'm saying is that YouTube is a terrible place to have a lgbt community. Most of the closed-garden Internet is a terrible place to have a lgbt community, because all it takes is Zuck or Brin or some other "benevolent" dictator deciding to reveal all your secrets, and you're dead. Like, there was that girl who was disowned by her parents once Facebook made group memberships public on profiles, because she happened to be part of a lgbt group at her university. You're putting a hell of a lot of trust in Google or Facebook over what is, for you, a life-or-death situation. Choose a community where people only use pseudonyms, and which isn't driven by corporate profits. Edit: Also, a "anonymous" online political activist is going to live a miserable life; look at Snowden and Manning and Assange. You can't even send stuff to the newspapers any more without angry people coming to destroy your hard drives.