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I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity on

by wxs 11y ago

I just posted this in the earlier submission[1], but I'll put it here too: I really worry that if we don't find a way to fix the abuse problem, pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood. Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Platforms need to take a stand and find a way reduce hate and abuse, or public opinion (and my own) will turn against support of privacy. If it turns out pseudonymity is fundamentally incompatible with safety of the abused online then I'll take the latter, but I'd rather search for a way to have both. Platforms banning abusive subcommunities seems like a good start. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9898366

mahouse 11y ago
That's supposing the public opinion is against the trolls. In my experience, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  That's exactly it. "It's trolling when they do it, it's arguments on their level when we do it". What bothers me is that members of the general population have little self-respect and ridiculously low standards of discussions and reasoning. And sadly, this is as much a problem off-line as it is on-line.
- deathhand 11y ago
  First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
- forgetsusername 11y ago
  >In my opinion, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas Exactly. These communities form because there are people that share the beliefs, for better or worse. And it any online community, a "troll" is someone who goes against the norms. Censorship is a slippery slope. The fact that you have people, like the OP, stating that if bullying doesn't stop he'll turn "against support of privacy" is downright scary.
pc86 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood This may be one of the most hyperbolic things I've read on HN in a very long time.
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- fixermark 11y ago
  I'm not so sure. Looking at the history of the Internet, the communications technology seems to have grown from a system of necessary pseudonymity to increasinglhy-non-pseudonymous interactions (social networks with real names, merchant systems with credit cards, and increasingly initiatives to use one authoritative account system to authenticate with multiple services). A social shift to consider people who don't use their real names online as "creepy" or "with something to hide" may not be as impossible as you want it to be.
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diamonis 11y ago
Why are you posting anonymously? [EDIT: no, I don't go around clicking on profile links so some SJWs can accuse me of stalking.]
- jgrahamc 11y ago
  He's not. Did you click on his username?
- uncoder0 11y ago
  He isn't his contact info is in his profile.
- dsp1234 11y ago
  Clicking on the profile link: "Co-founder and CTO at Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard http://minuum.com http://minuum.com, xavier@whirlscape.com" I'm not sure that's really "posting anonymously"
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DanBC 11y ago
People are just as hateful under their real names. The Facebook ad featuring a Sikh artist got a lot of really unpleasant comments from people using their real identities. I don't think anyone suggests the Youtube comments were any better after real-name policy.
- mahouse 11y ago
  For reference about that ad: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/ http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...
- bkjelden 11y ago
  Facebook's userbase is so large, many users are functionally anonymous. Before online communities, most people interacted in social circles small enough that their identity actually meant something to the other participants. But on widely circulated/public posts on facebook, the audience is so large, that "John Doe from Indiana" might as well be anonymous.
- existencebox 11y ago
  Quite to the contrary, in fact. One of the big learnings from the Google real names policy was that people are JUST as willing to be terrible under their real names. What I think it is, if I may hypothesize, is merely that there is fundamentally no incentive to NOT be however you want on the internet. 9 times out of 10 nothing you say will be traced back to you, or will reflect on any aspect of your day to day life. I consider the internet a window into the uninhibited mindset of the average person, and that although we may find it distasteful, to censor it would be paramount to burying our heads in the sand about our own nature. What's worrying is that rather than find avenues to deal with it in reasonable or moderated fashion, the narratives often seem to shift to the most extreme and often dogmatic-seeming angles, more as talking points than measured response.
  - wxs 11y ago
    These points are all well-taken. Real names don't magically make people good to one another. I don't think the problem will go away with the removal of pseudonymity. I do see cases of people behaving hatefully in a way that is connected to their real identity sometimes having consequences in the real world, for instance this case recently in Toronto: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-off-duty-fhritp-video-reflects-employment-trend-1.3071919 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-o... Of course that case is controversial, but social consequences are one thing that can help protect against this sort of behaviour (note that this is not really a free speech issue in that he was not put in jail). So what are social consequences we can levy online, if we want to support psudonymity and stay disconnected from our meatspace identities? One such consequence is having your hateful platform (the FPH subreddit in the Reddit case) closed. I am fine with this approach.
brock_r 11y ago
I've seen plenty of horrible Facebook posts as well, real names notwithstanding. The problems run deep. Much older than the internet.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  People have lost the fear of being ostracized by their antisocial acts because communities that thrive on such behavior are becoming increasingly easy to find.
kinghajj 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood That's an extremely bad analogy. It's reasonable to expect that anyone wearing a Klan hood has inflicted some kind of harm or pain onto others, but it's not at all reasonable to expect that the typical user of a pseudonymous forum has participated in abuse.
ra1n85 11y ago
>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online I don't feel embarrassed to support free speech when I see it abused. Your line of thought would have us all registered with the state before we could use the internet - a tragic outcome that some on this planet are already subjected to.
pdeuchler 11y ago
So what's your definition of abusive? Who's definition do we pick? Can we vote on it? What happens when a vocal minority disagrees with a consensus? What happens if that consensus harms a non-vocal minority? What happens when no matter your decision, someone will be affected adversely? Which side do you choose?
- wxs 11y ago
  No doubt it will be a constant complicated debate, as social norms tend to be. But we don't throw up our hands and say "we can't have social norms! Who picks them? How do we vote?!" Unfortunately I don't think we'll come up with a simple set of universally applicable rules and move on. I do know that my abuse-free internet experience is very much a bubble, and every time I have been given the opportunity to see the experience of a "woman with an opinion" online I get to realize this. So let's as a society say "this isn't acceptable" and then deal with the much more difficult question of "what to do about it". In any other commercial venue if a patron started shouting racist and sexist epithets, we would be ok with the owner throwing them out. We don't get caught up in slippery slope fallacies. I can't scientifically prove that Fat-people Hate was objectively abusive but that's the beauty of social norms, I can say "I think it's abusive" and put pressure on businesses to remove its platform. Which is what I'm doing :)
istvan__ 11y ago
You are saying we need censorship. Growing up in a country that had very strict censorship rules I can tell you two things: - it never works because people just simply fool the censors with twisting words the right way so the censors don't understand it but the smarter readers do. Entire genre was created for this sort of stuff in my country. - just by trying to censor people you are pushing many different groups to the same platform and they gonna overthrow the ruling class anyways because together they are stronger and they are going to get rid of censorship. Look at the history for some countries with censorship. On the top of that, how will define what safe means? This is really a double edge sword. Please watch this video, this sums up pretty nicely my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ Guys who disagree: I do not care about karma loss because representing a non-popular view on things, but if you take the effort to downvote please have the courage to put a comment in as well.
wcummings 11y ago
>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Sounds like a personal problem.
ashwinaj 11y ago
> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood I don't think we'd like to trivialize online abuse and threats, but comparing it to the klan? Seriously. With Ms. Pao, she's shrewd in trying to get all the sympathy mileage from the Kleiner case to Reddit. Everyone loves a victim. EDIT: Thanks pc86
yellowapple 11y ago
Except that an enforcement of a real-name policy will make it even easier to abuse online users, since now a harasser (or "troll", if you will) has that much more information to go on when doxxing or otherwise imposing offline consequences for online activities. In other words, pseudonymity is, if anything, the one safeguard we have left against the sort of cyberbullying that happens with disturbing regularity. Advocating for its removal for the sake of "online safety" is the textbook definition of "backfire" (and, I'd imagine, would count as tragic irony).

by wxs 11y ago

mahouse 11y ago

That's supposing the public opinion is against the trolls. In my experience, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas.

TeMPOraL 11y ago
That's exactly it. "It's trolling when they do it, it's arguments on their level when we do it". What bothers me is that members of the general population have little self-respect and ridiculously low standards of discussions and reasoning. And sadly, this is as much a problem off-line as it is on-line.
deathhand 11y ago
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
forgetsusername 11y ago
>In my opinion, people support trolls as long as they align with their ideas Exactly. These communities form because there are people that share the beliefs, for better or worse. And it any online community, a "troll" is someone who goes against the norms. Censorship is a slippery slope. The fact that you have people, like the OP, stating that if bullying doesn't stop he'll turn "against support of privacy" is downright scary.

pc86 11y ago

> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood This may be one of the most hyperbolic things I've read on HN in a very long time.

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fixermark 11y ago
I'm not so sure. Looking at the history of the Internet, the communications technology seems to have grown from a system of necessary pseudonymity to increasinglhy-non-pseudonymous interactions (social networks with real names, merchant systems with credit cards, and increasingly initiatives to use one authoritative account system to authenticate with multiple services). A social shift to consider people who don't use their real names online as "creepy" or "with something to hide" may not be as impossible as you want it to be.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

diamonis 11y ago

Why are you posting anonymously? [EDIT: no, I don't go around clicking on profile links so some SJWs can accuse me of stalking.]

jgrahamc 11y ago
He's not. Did you click on his username?
uncoder0 11y ago
He isn't his contact info is in his profile.
dsp1234 11y ago
Clicking on the profile link: "Co-founder and CTO at Whirlscape, makers of the Minuum keyboard http://minuum.com http://minuum.com, xavier@whirlscape.com" I'm not sure that's really "posting anonymously"
deleted 11y ago
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deleted 11y ago
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DanBC 11y ago

People are just as hateful under their real names. The Facebook ad featuring a Sikh artist got a lot of really unpleasant comments from people using their real identities. I don't think anyone suggests the Youtube comments were any better after real-name policy.

mahouse 11y ago
For reference about that ad: http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_when_i_starred_in_a_facebook_ad/ http://www.salon.com/2014/12/10/whats_up_with_the_rag_head_w...
bkjelden 11y ago
Facebook's userbase is so large, many users are functionally anonymous. Before online communities, most people interacted in social circles small enough that their identity actually meant something to the other participants. But on widely circulated/public posts on facebook, the audience is so large, that "John Doe from Indiana" might as well be anonymous.
existencebox 11y ago
Quite to the contrary, in fact. One of the big learnings from the Google real names policy was that people are JUST as willing to be terrible under their real names. What I think it is, if I may hypothesize, is merely that there is fundamentally no incentive to NOT be however you want on the internet. 9 times out of 10 nothing you say will be traced back to you, or will reflect on any aspect of your day to day life. I consider the internet a window into the uninhibited mindset of the average person, and that although we may find it distasteful, to censor it would be paramount to burying our heads in the sand about our own nature. What's worrying is that rather than find avenues to deal with it in reasonable or moderated fashion, the narratives often seem to shift to the most extreme and often dogmatic-seeming angles, more as talking points than measured response.
- wxs 11y ago
  These points are all well-taken. Real names don't magically make people good to one another. I don't think the problem will go away with the removal of pseudonymity. I do see cases of people behaving hatefully in a way that is connected to their real identity sometimes having consequences in the real world, for instance this case recently in Toronto: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-off-duty-fhritp-video-reflects-employment-trend-1.3071919 http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/firing-of-shawn-simoes-for-o... Of course that case is controversial, but social consequences are one thing that can help protect against this sort of behaviour (note that this is not really a free speech issue in that he was not put in jail). So what are social consequences we can levy online, if we want to support psudonymity and stay disconnected from our meatspace identities? One such consequence is having your hateful platform (the FPH subreddit in the Reddit case) closed. I am fine with this approach.

brock_r 11y ago

I've seen plenty of horrible Facebook posts as well, real names notwithstanding. The problems run deep. Much older than the internet.

rbanffy 11y ago
People have lost the fear of being ostracized by their antisocial acts because communities that thrive on such behavior are becoming increasingly easy to find.

kinghajj 11y ago

> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood That's an extremely bad analogy. It's reasonable to expect that anyone wearing a Klan hood has inflicted some kind of harm or pain onto others, but it's not at all reasonable to expect that the typical user of a pseudonymous forum has participated in abuse.

ra1n85 11y ago

>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online I don't feel embarrassed to support free speech when I see it abused. Your line of thought would have us all registered with the state before we could use the internet - a tragic outcome that some on this planet are already subjected to.

pdeuchler 11y ago

So what's your definition of abusive? Who's definition do we pick? Can we vote on it? What happens when a vocal minority disagrees with a consensus? What happens if that consensus harms a non-vocal minority? What happens when no matter your decision, someone will be affected adversely? Which side do you choose?

wxs 11y ago
No doubt it will be a constant complicated debate, as social norms tend to be. But we don't throw up our hands and say "we can't have social norms! Who picks them? How do we vote?!" Unfortunately I don't think we'll come up with a simple set of universally applicable rules and move on. I do know that my abuse-free internet experience is very much a bubble, and every time I have been given the opportunity to see the experience of a "woman with an opinion" online I get to realize this. So let's as a society say "this isn't acceptable" and then deal with the much more difficult question of "what to do about it". In any other commercial venue if a patron started shouting racist and sexist epithets, we would be ok with the owner throwing them out. We don't get caught up in slippery slope fallacies. I can't scientifically prove that Fat-people Hate was objectively abusive but that's the beauty of social norms, I can say "I think it's abusive" and put pressure on businesses to remove its platform. Which is what I'm doing :)

istvan__ 11y ago

You are saying we need censorship. Growing up in a country that had very strict censorship rules I can tell you two things: - it never works because people just simply fool the censors with twisting words the right way so the censors don't understand it but the smarter readers do. Entire genre was created for this sort of stuff in my country. - just by trying to censor people you are pushing many different groups to the same platform and they gonna overthrow the ruling class anyways because together they are stronger and they are going to get rid of censorship. Look at the history for some countries with censorship. On the top of that, how will define what safe means? This is really a double edge sword. Please watch this video, this sums up pretty nicely my opinion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNJyDyCocGQ Guys who disagree: I do not care about karma loss because representing a non-popular view on things, but if you take the effort to downvote please have the courage to put a comment in as well.

wcummings 11y ago

>Abuse stories like these make me embarrassed to support any form of privacy online. Sounds like a personal problem.

ashwinaj 11y ago

> pseudonymity online will be looked back on by future generations as our time's Klan hood I don't think we'd like to trivialize online abuse and threats, but comparing it to the klan? Seriously. With Ms. Pao, she's shrewd in trying to get all the sympathy mileage from the Kleiner case to Reddit. Everyone loves a victim. EDIT: Thanks pc86

yellowapple 11y ago

Except that an enforcement of a real-name policy will make it even easier to abuse online users, since now a harasser (or "troll", if you will) has that much more information to go on when doxxing or otherwise imposing offline consequences for online activities. In other words, pseudonymity is, if anything, the one safeguard we have left against the sort of cyberbullying that happens with disturbing regularity. Advocating for its removal for the sake of "online safety" is the textbook definition of "backfire" (and, I'd imagine, would count as tragic irony).