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I don't think anonymity is the real issue, although it makes trolling easier. Services such as Facebook and Youtube require real names, yet they still have lots

I don't think anonymity is the real issue, although it makes trolling easier. Services such as Facebook and Youtube require real names, yet they still have lots of people trolling each other. I think it is rather the feeling of being able to get away with it which causes people to have an illusion of anonymity, whether or not there name/phone number is actually associated with their account. I'm curious if it isn't feasible to do traffic analysis and nip trollers in the bud when it turns out that one or more twitterers are sending a large number of tweets to a single person without an actual conversation taking place.

masklinn 12y ago
> I don't think anonymity is the real issue, although it makes trolling easier. Anonymity isn't the real issue (though it's a compounding factor), the issue is how easy throwaway accounts are to create: for victims of abuse, it's not possible to "manage" abuse by blocking abuser accounts because within seconds they can be on a new yet-to-be-blocked account. In fact, I'd expect most serial abusers don't even bother waiting, they create an account, throw a salvo of abuse, create a new account, new salvo, and the account creation can be trivially automated. If accounts are either cheap and unique (based on "real-world" identity) or relatively expensive (time-wise) but anonymous, the ability to block people becomes far more useful for the serially abused.