[onjectic]

We need to have a serious conversation about the pros and cons of anonymity on public online forums. It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication, most of us see the harm, but we also don’t want to swing towards mass surveillance(which is a very real risk).

EDIT: By unnatural I am referring to not knowing who you are talking to, not knowing the slightest thing about them, our brains don’t process this aspect for what it is, instead we fill in this identity with our imaginations. Perhaps there was a better word for this than unnatural, but to me its especially unnatural because it doesn’t really occur in nature(at least not easily), where as communication across long distances or time happens all the time in nature. TLDR: It’s unnatural that we no longer even know if a comment was written by a human.

EDIT2: I am not strongly in favor of removing anonymity from the internet. I don’t know what the answer is.

[krapp]

Any form of communication other than grunting and howling from trees is "objectively an unnatural form of communication."

Attaching your real world identity to every interaction you have on the internet is no more objectively natural than doing otherwise, and more of a burden than we place on interactions in the real world. I don't exchange my drivers license and SSL with everyone I talk to.

We don't need to have the serious conversation, we've had it, and the false dichotomy you're presenting here is invalid. We don't have to choose one or the other. Anonymity has been well established in every free society as legally and morally defensible and a necessity for free speech and a free state for decades, to the point of including some degree of anonymity from one's own government.

Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable. Anonymity is also acceptable. 4chan can be 4chan, and other places can not be 4chan. Free speech does not guarantee you a platform, much less all platforms. It doesn't require me to put a target on my back, either.

[intended]

While the point made on unnatural communication is undefined, these three positions are in conflict.

- The updated visa instructions

- we have had this conversation

- Moderation beyond strictly legal content is acceptable.

I will say this shows the conversation hasn’t been had.

Moderation is most often achieved by the use of censorial powers on private platforms.

That this was private censorship is no longer acceptable to the current regime, and people who were enforcing private rules are now in a category of applicants that I assume includes criminals and enemies of the state.

If it is an acceptable role, then it must be done well.

If it is an unacceptable criminal role, then it must be prohibited well.

Either way - people have to make that call and build a consensus on it.

[pjc50]

Plenty of people are happy to publish calls for war crimes in the newspapers under their own name, or on the Secretary for Defence letterhead.

[onjectic]

I’m not sure how this counter argues my observation. You seem to be implying that the end goal would be to stop people from saying certain things you find abhorrent. Humans won’t ever stop doing that, it’s that it would sometimes be nice to know that the person presenting themselves as a disillusioned American voter is actually on the opposite side of the planet.

[logicchains]

> It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication

Communication with people half the way across the globe at the speed of light is objectively unnatural too, should we ban that? There's no "we" calling for the end of online anonymity excepts for spooks and people who believe people should be identified and punished for expressing opinions they disagree with.

[seanp2k2]

The dystopian surveillance state is already here: https://youtu.be/Pp9MwZkHiMQ

[metadope]

I don't think of myself as anonymous. I am a glittering grain of sand on a beach. I am anonymous only as long as nobody cares to pay attention. If somebody (or some three-letter-agency) decided to focus on me, I'm fairly certain they could decipher my identity and 'de-anonymize' ('demonize') me. But as long as I don't glitter too brightly, don't call too much attention to myself, I can remain safely pseudo-anonymous, just another caw in the cacaphony of the crowded beach.

> It’s objectively an unnatural form of communication

I agree. Short bits quick hits and spunk spits lead to epileptic fits from social halfwits and, that's what we produce and consume. More so, when we imagine we are anonymous. The random emotional inpulse spikes that flit across so many of our untrained anonymized minds leads to a noise floor that threatens to completely obliterate any signal.

There is value in anonymity. But I would love to participate in a smaller subset of the internet, where every participant is known, identified and associated with their real-world self. Such that no one feels so obscured and anonymously free to grafitti; where everyone is careful and concerned with their affect on the environment; where publication is a precise responsibility; where effort must be made or authority is lost.

((Kinda sorta like HN, but with blue checkmarks)/s)