6 ms·

Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity

34 points by 001sky 13y ago

GotAnyMegadeth 13y ago
> She said: "Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier and I just came from London where there are rape and death threats." What?
- RougeFemme 13y ago
  Man held after banknote campaigner receives rape threats on Twitter Police say man arrested on suspicion of harassment offences, after shadow minister criticises Twitter's response to abuse http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/28/man-arrested-rape-threats-twitter http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/28/man-arrested-...
patrickg 13y ago
How much effort will they put into assuring you will sign up with your real identity? Any info on that?
- smtddr 13y ago
  It's nonsense. What can she possibly do? Make you create an account with the government, verify your SSN & Tax ID and then you post comments with your legal name? By that point someone else will just make a mirror of Huffpost; scraping the content and allowing anonymous comments... or even more likely people just won't bother with HuffPost anymore.
tbrownaw 13y ago
I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity. Because freedom of expression works so well when you make reprisals easier?
zeteo 13y ago
>I just came from London where there are rape and death threats This is wrong on so many levels. Yes, anonymity gives people a wider range of expression and some use it badly. Did she stop to consider those that use it for good? Say goodbye to comments such as "I work for the government and I see so much waste everyday" or "I'm secretly gay, and here are some reasons why I don't feel safe coming out". We might as well ban driving because there was a horrific accident in London last month.
- king_jester 13y ago
  That anonymity also allows for people to make direct threats against other non-anonymous posters and gives leverage to people who doxx others. Its up to each site to weigh the pros and cons and it is totally legitimate to say that downside outweights the upside.
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    > gives leverage to people who doxx others because of the possibility that personally identifying information might be revealed, anonymity should be forbidden? eh?
  - twodim 13y ago
    Anonymous threats doesn't harm anyone.
    - Karunamon 13y ago
      In the general case, this is true, but in the specific case, not so much. While a threat doesn't actually do any harm to a person, it does ruin discourse. Reason being that some people are more sensitive than others, and will not post things that they feel are controversial or personal since they feel they'll be challenged or threatened for it. Even if those threats are completely bunk and amount to nothing but trolling, the chilling effect on discourse is still there.
      - dfxm12 13y ago
smtddr 13y ago
>"I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity." Only a privileged person can think like this. So what happens to all the people who live in places where sharing a conflicting opinion can get them in trouble? I say that as if USA is not of those places, but lately....
- betterunix 13y ago
  Even a privileged person should not think like that. When you are looking for a job, do you want a controversial political opinion from 10 years ago to get in the way? Ward Churchill learned this lesson the hard way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_September_11_attacks_essay_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_September_11_at...
rtpg 13y ago
I really hope that we can figure out this whole "people being absolutely terrible on the internet" thing. A lot of people say that it's just because this is how people really are, but I'm not convinced. I know for a fact that I'm a lot ruder on the internet than I'd ever want to be in real life, regardless of consequences. I've found that "real name" policies help (not necessarily forcing a real name, but at least trying to encourage it, while still allowing for pseudo-anonymity). The stuff that's happened in the gaming community is disconcerting too
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  It's not just the internet. What's going to happen on HuffPo when the nasty comments don't go away? Use the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers? Where will that end?
  - rtpg 13y ago
    Historically you lose your right to free speech when you start making death threats. If you've read the news recently you'd see a lot of very violent stuff being thrown at people. Internet or not, people are not allowed to say they are going to rape your corpse and harass you over and over. So "using the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers" seems like a reasonable reaction to these people. Some of the stuff (that bomb threat twitter thing) is a bit much, but there's a limit to freedom of speech.
    - betterunix 13y ago
      There are other ways: * Spam filters -- if we can spot viagra ads, we can spot rape threats. A paid moderator can review posts that are flagged by the filter but which are not actually threatening. * Charging people for the privilege to post comments on the site. You are free to make commentary on your blog if you do not want to pay, and a small fee (e.g. $5/yr) creates just enough of a speedbump to keep most trolls off the site. This can also help cover the cost of a paid moderator. * Upvote/downvote systems, though these tend to descend into mob rule / groupthink / downvote-because-I-disagree.
jstalin 13y ago
I think, for the most part, general news sites shouldn't have comment sections.
- TelmoMenezes 13y ago
  I feel the opposite. Nowadays, I can't stand reading general news without a comments section. I think it's one of the areas where "crowd intelligence" actually works amazingly well: in uncovering fallacies, subtle agendas, propaganda, misrepresentation of facts, etc. I feel I might be polluting my mind when I read a piece of general news that is not being subject to commenting.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    It all depends on how things are run. On some sites the comments are written by people who are borderline illiterate. On others the comments are insightful. I am somewhat hesitant to say it, but a good policy might be to charge people a small fee (like $5/yr) to post comments. Much of the trolling and illiterate nonsense would be would be filtered by such a system, at least from what I have seen in places like Metafilter or the WELL. Edit: or we could do things mailing list / Usenet style and just have people run spam filters on their own. Of course, some NGs are overrun with noise that makes them almost unreadable. Also, most computer users are not sophisticated enough to actually set up a killfile or spam filter on their own.
    - simias 13y ago
      I'm not sure having people pay would give good results, in the french newspaper "lemonde.fr" for instance you have to have to be a subscriber to be able to comment. There are less comments than on other big new sites, but I can't say the quality is significantly higher. Better grammar, maybe.
  - runn1ng 13y ago
    If you feel that comment section shows that crowd intelligence works, you have different definition of works than I do.
ebbv 13y ago
I'm sure that this change will mean that HuffPo's comment section will live up to the high quality established by articles such as "Lady Gaga nude video" and "Amanda Bynes tweets something crazy."
hobs 13y ago
Their site, and therefore they can do anything they want with it, but real name policies are like a bur under my saddle. I would never comment on a site that required me to give my identity beyond the ones I expose by choice (and all the ones I expose without, IP etc).
diggan 13y ago
Well, this happened in the biggest media company in Sweden (Aftonbladet) back in 2011 when they required everyone to login and authorize Facebook access to comment. The editor made the choice after the attack in Norway[1] and brought up that the norwegians handled the situation very good with more openness, more conversion and more democracy. He goes on saying that the hate is too much for normal people and if you want to say what you think, you should stand for what you think. Blogpost in swedish from the editor: http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/janhelin/2011/08/sta-for-vad-du-tycker-pa-aftonbladet-1/ http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/janhelin/2011/08/sta-for-vad-d... Same blogpost translated to english: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbloggar.aftonbladet.se%2Fjanhelin%2F2011%2F08%2Fsta-for-vad-du-tycker-pa-aftonbladet-1%2F&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks
- onebaddude 13y ago
  I have a fake Facebook account for this exact reason. In this world of big, perpetually stored data, I don't know why anyone would be interested in having their casual conversations tied to their real identity. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could figure out who I am; I won't deny that. But I'm not going to hand it to you. So many things said, so easy to take them out of context.
drcube 13y ago
The trolls are winning.
thex86 13y ago
"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" Wouldn't it be better if we kept it this way? I agree -- the comments section of some websites is really bad, but anonymity is important. Look at Reddit -- the trolls don't even get a chance because the crowd sourcing works so well that relevant material is pushed to the top, while the hate comments are way at the bottom. Like Schneier said [1], "Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four." Coming soon to the list, internet trolls? [1] - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- Ihmahr 13y ago
  I think such an algorithm would work just like a spam algorithm, or any other classification algorithm. Also you would need examples to train on.
pnathan 13y ago
Huh. Centinel, Federal Farmer, Brutus, and Cato[1] would all have issues with this policy. http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm

34 points by 001sky 13y ago

> She said: "Trolls are just getting more and more aggressive and uglier and I just came from London where there are rape and death threats." What?

RougeFemme 13y ago
Man held after banknote campaigner receives rape threats on Twitter Police say man arrested on suspicion of harassment offences, after shadow minister criticises Twitter's response to abuse http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/28/man-arrested-rape-threats-twitter http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/28/man-arrested-...

patrickg 13y ago

How much effort will they put into assuring you will sign up with your real identity? Any info on that?

smtddr 13y ago
It's nonsense. What can she possibly do? Make you create an account with the government, verify your SSN & Tax ID and then you post comments with your legal name? By that point someone else will just make a mirror of Huffpost; scraping the content and allowing anonymous comments... or even more likely people just won't bother with HuffPost anymore.

tbrownaw 13y ago

I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity. Because freedom of expression works so well when you make reprisals easier?

zeteo 13y ago

>I just came from London where there are rape and death threats This is wrong on so many levels. Yes, anonymity gives people a wider range of expression and some use it badly. Did she stop to consider those that use it for good? Say goodbye to comments such as "I work for the government and I see so much waste everyday" or "I'm secretly gay, and here are some reasons why I don't feel safe coming out". We might as well ban driving because there was a horrific accident in London last month.

king_jester 13y ago
That anonymity also allows for people to make direct threats against other non-anonymous posters and gives leverage to people who doxx others. Its up to each site to weigh the pros and cons and it is totally legitimate to say that downside outweights the upside.
- ronaldx 13y ago
  > gives leverage to people who doxx others because of the possibility that personally identifying information might be revealed, anonymity should be forbidden? eh?
- twodim 13y ago
  Anonymous threats doesn't harm anyone.
  - Karunamon 13y ago
    In the general case, this is true, but in the specific case, not so much. While a threat doesn't actually do any harm to a person, it does ruin discourse. Reason being that some people are more sensitive than others, and will not post things that they feel are controversial or personal since they feel they'll be challenged or threatened for it. Even if those threats are completely bunk and amount to nothing but trolling, the chilling effect on discourse is still there.
    - dfxm12 13y ago

smtddr 13y ago

>"I feel that freedom of expression is given to people who stand up for what they say and not hiding behind anonymity." Only a privileged person can think like this. So what happens to all the people who live in places where sharing a conflicting opinion can get them in trouble? I say that as if USA is not of those places, but lately....

betterunix 13y ago
Even a privileged person should not think like that. When you are looking for a job, do you want a controversial political opinion from 10 years ago to get in the way? Ward Churchill learned this lesson the hard way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_September_11_attacks_essay_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_September_11_at...

rtpg 13y ago

I really hope that we can figure out this whole "people being absolutely terrible on the internet" thing. A lot of people say that it's just because this is how people really are, but I'm not convinced. I know for a fact that I'm a lot ruder on the internet than I'd ever want to be in real life, regardless of consequences. I've found that "real name" policies help (not necessarily forcing a real name, but at least trying to encourage it, while still allowing for pseudo-anonymity). The stuff that's happened in the gaming community is disconcerting too

fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
It's not just the internet. What's going to happen on HuffPo when the nasty comments don't go away? Use the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers? Where will that end?
- rtpg 13y ago
  Historically you lose your right to free speech when you start making death threats. If you've read the news recently you'd see a lot of very violent stuff being thrown at people. Internet or not, people are not allowed to say they are going to rape your corpse and harass you over and over. So "using the State to bludgeon the offensive speakers" seems like a reasonable reaction to these people. Some of the stuff (that bomb threat twitter thing) is a bit much, but there's a limit to freedom of speech.
  - betterunix 13y ago
    There are other ways: * Spam filters -- if we can spot viagra ads, we can spot rape threats. A paid moderator can review posts that are flagged by the filter but which are not actually threatening. * Charging people for the privilege to post comments on the site. You are free to make commentary on your blog if you do not want to pay, and a small fee (e.g. $5/yr) creates just enough of a speedbump to keep most trolls off the site. This can also help cover the cost of a paid moderator. * Upvote/downvote systems, though these tend to descend into mob rule / groupthink / downvote-because-I-disagree.

jstalin 13y ago

I think, for the most part, general news sites shouldn't have comment sections.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago
I feel the opposite. Nowadays, I can't stand reading general news without a comments section. I think it's one of the areas where "crowd intelligence" actually works amazingly well: in uncovering fallacies, subtle agendas, propaganda, misrepresentation of facts, etc. I feel I might be polluting my mind when I read a piece of general news that is not being subject to commenting.
- betterunix 13y ago
  It all depends on how things are run. On some sites the comments are written by people who are borderline illiterate. On others the comments are insightful. I am somewhat hesitant to say it, but a good policy might be to charge people a small fee (like $5/yr) to post comments. Much of the trolling and illiterate nonsense would be would be filtered by such a system, at least from what I have seen in places like Metafilter or the WELL. Edit: or we could do things mailing list / Usenet style and just have people run spam filters on their own. Of course, some NGs are overrun with noise that makes them almost unreadable. Also, most computer users are not sophisticated enough to actually set up a killfile or spam filter on their own.
  - simias 13y ago
    I'm not sure having people pay would give good results, in the french newspaper "lemonde.fr" for instance you have to have to be a subscriber to be able to comment. There are less comments than on other big new sites, but I can't say the quality is significantly higher. Better grammar, maybe.
- runn1ng 13y ago
  If you feel that comment section shows that crowd intelligence works, you have different definition of works than I do.

ebbv 13y ago

I'm sure that this change will mean that HuffPo's comment section will live up to the high quality established by articles such as "Lady Gaga nude video" and "Amanda Bynes tweets something crazy."

hobs 13y ago

Their site, and therefore they can do anything they want with it, but real name policies are like a bur under my saddle. I would never comment on a site that required me to give my identity beyond the ones I expose by choice (and all the ones I expose without, IP etc).

diggan 13y ago

Well, this happened in the biggest media company in Sweden (Aftonbladet) back in 2011 when they required everyone to login and authorize Facebook access to comment. The editor made the choice after the attack in Norway[1] and brought up that the norwegians handled the situation very good with more openness, more conversion and more democracy. He goes on saying that the hate is too much for normal people and if you want to say what you think, you should stand for what you think. Blogpost in swedish from the editor: http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/janhelin/2011/08/sta-for-vad-du-tycker-pa-aftonbladet-1/ http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/janhelin/2011/08/sta-for-vad-d... Same blogpost translated to english: http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=sv&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fbloggar.aftonbladet.se%2Fjanhelin%2F2011%2F08%2Fsta-for-vad-du-tycker-pa-aftonbladet-1%2F&act=url http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks

onebaddude 13y ago
I have a fake Facebook account for this exact reason. In this world of big, perpetually stored data, I don't know why anyone would be interested in having their casual conversations tied to their real identity. I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could figure out who I am; I won't deny that. But I'm not going to hand it to you. So many things said, so easy to take them out of context.

drcube 13y ago

The trolls are winning.

thex86 13y ago

"On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" Wouldn't it be better if we kept it this way? I agree -- the comments section of some websites is really bad, but anonymity is important. Look at Reddit -- the trolls don't even get a chance because the crowd sourcing works so well that relevant material is pushed to the top, while the hate comments are way at the bottom. Like Schneier said [1], "Beware the Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers, and child pornographers. Seems like you can scare any public into allowing the government to do anything with those four." Coming soon to the list, internet trolls? [1] - http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime...

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

Ihmahr 13y ago
I think such an algorithm would work just like a spam algorithm, or any other classification algorithm. Also you would need examples to train on.

pnathan 13y ago

Huh. Centinel, Federal Farmer, Brutus, and Cato[1] would all have issues with this policy. http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm http://www.constitution.org/afp/afp.htm