
Blog Anonymously - bradley_taunt
https://uglyduck.ca/blog-anonymously/
======
tristor
I have often considered blogging anonymously because I do not feel free to
write my nuanced philosophical views about the world anymore, as nuance is
mostly dead in the public discourse and anything I write could easily offend
someone and cause me problems. But I decided that if I believed something and
I was willing to say it aloud, I should be willing to write it down with my
name attached. In the end, it has had the effect somewhat of self-censure,
because I know some things I cannot write down, so I won't say them aloud
either, even though they're perfectly reasonable and not prejudicial. The flip
side has been that it's freed me in other ways to be radically honest about
who I am in my writing and has helped me to more carefully identify people who
are worth attempting a rational dialogue with.

To a large degree, I think a lot of the challenges around nuance and offense-
taking online are just a consequence of how communications being mediated by
the Internet dehumanizes people. My experience has been that having a deep
conversation over a drink in person generally leads to more positive outcomes,
even with irreconcilable disagreements, than writing something online which
can be excoriated on social media.

This article seems more focused on situations in which you are concerned about
government action, but I think here in the West we've found that "cancel
culture" and the like is more insidious and far-reaching in its own way.

~~~
hakka-nyu-su
As I understand the term "cancel culture", it mostly relates to celebrities
who were already controversial or polarizing in some way, that were finally
able to be organized against.

And in many cases, the same celebrities are still able to have a career that
is sometimes even boosted by their ability to campaign against "cancel
culture" generally.

Do you have any books/articles/resources for thinking about "cancel culture"
as it would relate to an ordinary person writing an ordinary blog?

~~~
dnissley
Regular folks who were "cancelled":

\- David Shor

\- Justine Sacco

\- James Damore

\- Adria Richards

A full list would be a mile long

~~~
joshuamorton
Of those, the last three didn't suffer any long term consequences (all three
were employed relatively soon after they were fired), and the first happened
too recently to really analyze.

~~~
ThA0x2
FWIR:

Justine Sacco still suffers from severe PTSD and has to attend regular
counselling.

Adria Richards fell off the face of the planet, was chronically unemployed for
a while, then finally ended up at a no name company, probably making peanuts
compared to where she was.

James Damore was also similarly unemployed for a while, was in several
lawsuits with Google, and claims to be working at a start-up, but he may also
just be freelancing since he's effectively unemployable.

Those are all long term consequences, so, you're effectively wrong here.

~~~
crawsome
James Damore threw away an engineering job at Google with a long, generalized,
and internally-shared rant about women, listing off their "Qualities". He then
tried to start a lawsuit making it about his politics, which never went
anywhere.

Why is there sympathy for this man?

~~~
friendlybus
It was scientifically sourced and he did not spread it himself, others did
that on 'his behalf' whilst also stripping out the sources.

~~~
crawsome
He sourced things from scientific journals, but he pieced them together to fit
a narrative that he knows better about what women want. It wasn't a good
argument.

~~~
friendlybus
Uhhh, no? He didn't say that. The comments you're giving are grasping at
straws for a negative interpretation of his memo.

~~~
NotSammyHagar
The facts of his case are he went on bizarre and unsupported rant against
women. Are you going to support the thesis that women are inherently
intellectually inferior and that hiring practices that encourage hiring people
from diverse groups are enforcing intellectual idiocacy?

------
dijit
This goes into the how, but to me the more interesting question is the 'why'.

Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw
his/her/their name into?

I only have one example of why; I'm a genuinely curious and open person and I
like having my beliefs tested, some of my beliefs are nuanced enough that I
sometimes break down my current beliefs and my reasons into blog posts.

Things that I think are dangerous or damaging especially so, and those are
usually the most controversial things so it's more difficult for people to
engage with a nuanced opinion.

In one case in a job interview I had a person bring up a blog post (I believe
it was "On the Merits of Meritocracy" where I actually gave good arguments pro
and against) and he spent the entire time telling me why I was wrong and that
meritocracy was bad, citing Caroline Ada Ehmke's piece(s).[0]

Which, ironically I had cited extensively and was the impetus for the
discussion. Nonetheless the experience left me feeling icky, the interviewer
had ascribed a set of beliefs to me which I did not hold because he disengaged
completely with the article and read only the headline.

This is a good reason to blog anonymously in my limited opinion; you're free
to engage openly.

[0]: [https://postmeritocracy.org/](https://postmeritocracy.org/)

~~~
BorisTheBrave
I think the two most common reasons for anonymity are:

* blogging from an oppressive regime

* to isolate yourself from online mobs

If you write something controversial these days, sometimes it catches a wider
audience and you can find yourself under a lot of attention. A minority of
those poeple will not be nice, and may send death threats or worse. Your
experience is a tiny fraction of what this can be like. Being anonymous takes
out some of the sting.

I can't think of a better illustration of the latter than
[https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/04/last-us-2-voice-actor-
shares-...](https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/04/last-us-2-voice-actor-shares-
horrifying-death-threats-people-dislike-character-12943471/).

~~~
numpad0
Offline mobs too. As a Japanese I completely don’t understand why most English
speakers so casually disclose their identity so publicly.

If you post something in your real name, your colleagues WILL find it out and
your boss WILL read it and your neighbors WILL scrutinize it no matter how
woke your post may read. There WILL be consequences from being pointed at to
losing your job and pension.

People using real names for app reviews, online comments, those are completely
insane to me. Including shorthands like “John D.” Unless you are paid to do so
that is.

~~~
novok
Because there is also professional benefits about writing with your real name.
For example the famous patio11: [https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-
hits/](https://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/)

He also goes into detail in this podcast about the benefits of writing with
your real name too: [https://player.fm/series/north-star-podcast/patrick-
mckenzie...](https://player.fm/series/north-star-podcast/patrick-mckenzie-
internet-famous)

Funnily enough, he also lives in japan!

------
anonymous_cowar
When I taught, I blogged anonymously as did many of the other teachers who
blogged at the same time as I did. It was a means of preserving our jobs and
enabling us to speak candidly about the challenges we faced. Some of us knew
each other's secret identities and I once had someone post a comment on the
blog identifying me based on clues they were able to piece together from my
posts (I immediately deleted the comment). I post this anonymously now because
even though I no longer teach, the blog still exists and I'd still prefer not
to have those posts connected with me.

------
surround
> Feel free to use a VPN, though Tor is more than enough for your needs.

This is a misconception. Using a VPN with TOR makes you _less_ anonymous, not
more.

[https://write.privacytools.io/my-thoughts-on-
security/slicin...](https://write.privacytools.io/my-thoughts-on-
security/slicing-onions-part-2-onion-recipes-vpn-not-required)

~~~
adrusi
ISP -> VPN -> Tor can be a good idea depending on your threat model, but if
you're not completely sure that you need to do so, it's best to avoid it.

ISP -> Tor -> VPN is generally extremely stupid, as tor is doing absolutely
nothing for you if your VPN subscription is tied to your true identity. If, on
the other hand, your VPN subscription is completely isolated from your true
identity, then this can be a good way to bypass restrictions imposed by sites
that block Tor. I'm not aware of tor-friendly VPN services, but I am aware of
at least one tor-friendly VPS provider, which should be just as good given
that your VPS subscription would not be tied to your true identity. Would not
recommend using this method more than absolutely necessary, because although
you can keep your true identity secret if you're very careful, it does become
substantially easier to track you and ultimately unveil you by studying
correlations (for one example, if your VPN is only active on the network while
your home internet is connected to a Tor relay, over time you could be singled
out as the most like source of that traffic).

~~~
notRobot
> If ... your VPN subscription is completely isolated from your true identity

One way to do this is to get a Mullvad subscription, and to pay for it with
bitcoin.

They don't even require an email address.

~~~
celestialcheese
OR, mail cash [https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/1/29/sending-cash-use-
our-n...](https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2019/1/29/sending-cash-use-our-new-
address/)

------
oefrha
For "casual bloggers who wish to keep their identities hidden from the general
public", a good number of suggestions seem totally unnecessary, e.g. using a
burner device, or avoid home/work networks (when you're already using Tor).
What's the attack vector here? Someone hacking into wordpress.com servers and
getting your OS/browser signatures (both pluggable)? Then what? And assuming
they can hack into wordpress.com servers, your email alone would be a lot more
valuable than aforementioned signatures.

Meanwhile, for people worried about nation state actors, using a free blogging
service is probably not enough, since it's damn hard these days to sign up for
popular services that don't eventually link back to you.

~~~
llbeansandrice
Yeah most of this feels like a howitzer for someone just trying to stay away
from directly linking their identity to their personal blog.

I guess it depends on your threat model though.

------
ta262727464648
I ventured into this a while ago. After thinking about it, I decided that if
Google or the Government decided they wanted to know who I was, they'd find me
one way or another. I'd go insane trying to stop them. But they weren't really
my threat model anyway - I just wanted to write political ideas without
strangers tying their perceptions of those ideas to my real self.

I wasn't planning to write anything that could be perceived as illegal or
close (eg, no inciting hate/violence/treason).

So I thought of a pen name, created a Gmail for it, then a Twitter with that,
and a Medium account with that. I blogged on Medium.

I wasn't too worried about pissing off a rogue Medium/Twitter employee enough
for them to try to doxx me, though it was the only thing to give me pause -
and honestly, a run-of-the-mill VPN I only and always use for that probably
would have been enough.

Ultimately, if an internet mob was going to get me, it'd be because of my
writing style or facts of my life I allude to in my posts. But even there,
plausible deniability is likely good enough unless I really piss a lot of
people off and drop a lot of personally identifying hints - which would be my
own damn fault.

------
harias
Related : How to exit the matrix (old - 2006)

[https://stalluminati.neocities.org/matrix/](https://stalluminati.neocities.org/matrix/)

~~~
EForEndeavour
This is an incredible tour de force of rhetoric/writing quality backed up with
concrete, technical information. I've only read a few sections, but so much of
it sounds like it could have been written this week, right down to the first
sentences:

"Privacy and anonymity have been eroded to the point of non-existence in
recent years. Our personal, private information is stockpiled and sold to the
highest bidder like so much inventory at a warehouse."

The fact that such a trove of knowledge is published anonymously makes the
work itself even more mysterious and compelling. This is the kind of WWW
experience I want more of. Imagine all the countless other products of mad
geniuses lurking out there beyond the meticulously maintained facades of
social media and Medium-style blog platforms, styled with base HTML without a
script, ad, or tracker in sight.

------
syshum
Having gotten my start on the internet mid 90's it always amazes me the number
of people that attached their offline identities to their online identies

This was just something that was unheard of back then. It was an extension of
"Stranger Danger" that you did not reveal who you were to the wide internet,
sure some of your close friends may have known your online name but it was not
openly broadcasted

Fast forward to face book and their failed attempt to "Real names" under the
assumption that it would make discourse less extreme we now know that was 100%
wrong, and had the polar opposite effect

I dont know if everyone needs to go to the extreme of protecting their ID from
State Actors, though maybe we do. Everyone however should at minimum end the
concept of "Real names" policy

~~~
Fiveplus
The issue with emerging and easily accessible technology is that in 2020,
especially for the younger folks venturing into their first jobs - at least
some kind of social media presence is a pre-requisite. Our school's career
center gave a presentation where this issue was raised.

What if a student wants to not associate his/her political thoughts lest they
create a hindrance for a future employer digging through the candidate's
social media history. The solution offered was simple - never post anything
remotely political on your 'real' profiles. But, we were asked to create them
regardless and were told to be mildly active. A ghost profile seems a red
flag, as such a non-existent one. Which to many people raises concerns about
an individual.

We were simply asked to bifurcate our online personas into two - one that was
professional and one that was like you mentioned - anonymous.

~~~
syshum
>>A ghost profile seems a red flag, as such a non-existent one

I guess my future is going to be limited then, because I have never, and will
never have a "real" social media presence. Ever.

That is a hard, never going to happen, even if I have live under a bridge

~~~
NineStarPoint
I think the context was of soon to be college graduates trying to get their
first job. Which somewhat makes sense given how little information employers
have to go off for those hires to begin with. Once you have your first job I
can’t imagine most employers caring too much unless you work in a field like
marketing where public perception is part of the job. (And connections to
others in the industry are generally a better way to get good jobs anyway if
you can swing it)

------
vorpalhex
This is very incomplete advice for the given threat scenario of "fearful of
government persecution".

> Snagging a cheap or used device is a good option

Cheap devices may well phone home and a used device may be tampered with. I
was surprised when reflashing a burner Xiaomi device to see the bootloader
contained a nod to the CCP.

> Navigate to WordPress.com and setup a free account with that new email
> address.

Certainly Wordpress is not an ideal platform here from a security standpoint.
You want a blogging platform that is overwhelmingly dumb - raw html files with
minimal formatting would be perfect.

> Feel free to use a VPN

Don't use a VPN without knowing who it is owned by and seeing audit reports
and even then be skeptical.

~~~
vonmoltke
> This is very incomplete advice for the given threat scenario of "fearful of
> government persecution".

That is in the list of things the article is saying it is _not_ for.

------
SAI_Peregrinus
My personal interests are too varied and too niche to have much overlap with
anyone else. The number of people interested in compilers, cryptography, radio
electronics, trad climbing, bouldering, bird watching (I post checklists to
Cornell eBird), marlinespike seamanship, knots in general (I'm in the
International Guild of Knot Tyers), who play the Great Highland bagpipes,
Irish traditional music (tin whistle & bodhran), Scottish Country Dancing (in
the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society), and live near where those birding
checklists get posted is probably 1.

Yet I'm likely to write about all of those interests. De-anonymizing me from
that is probably not terribly difficult. The intersection of the RSCDS, IGKT,
and IEEE member directories probably doesn't contain many people, so even
knowing that is likely enough to narrow it down to a handful, if not be
outright unique.

~~~
asdfman123
I think you need to tone down your highly illegal and risky bird watching blog
posts then.

------
NamykLA3haa
It feels a bit like instructions to operate an anonymous printing press in the
Soviet Union.

Very sad that we have reached that stage.

------
deathwarmedover
When the author started with "this is not fool-proof by any means" the first
thing that came to my mind was linguistic fingerprinting.

~~~
k3liutZu
He does advise to use google translate to move the content from the original
language to a different one and then back to alleviate this.

~~~
dlkf
I think this is a great first stab at the problem, but for two reasons I think
a robust solution needs more work:

\- The first is that, as someone else pointed out, Google is almost certainly
logging your translation queries.

\- Secondly, even if you do it offline (as someone else suggested) the
approach itself might not work. Success in linguistic forensics isn't based
(as we might naively assume) on catching obscure words that a particular
individual has a tendency to overuse. It's based on subtle shifts in the
relative frequency of functional words. Depending on the proximity of the
source and target language, round-trip machine translation might not change
this.

~~~
bborud
In forensic linguistics you typically measure a lot of metrics, not just word
frequencies, use of punctuation and whitespace, sentence lengths and
structures etc. Attribution also isn't the only use of forensic linguistics.
You can also look at influences, deas, people, publications etc. For instance
in order to infer something about the reader, analyze influence networks etc.

I got interested in forensic linguistics many years ago when an article in a
somewhat shady publication mentioned me. I got curious and started reading
anything I could find on the topic. I was eventually able to identify the
author, but mostly by tricking him to admit it after I had a ranked list of
candidates. He was second on a list of about 4-5 people (out of a candidate
set of perhaps 300). Not half bad for the rather crude methods I used. I was
rather pleased with myself.

I've used similar techniques later to look at influence networks in companies.

------
627467
Another way to blog anonymously (depending on how you connect to the service)
is to use telegra.ph: telegram's minimal blogging tool that doesn't require an
account.

------
verytrivial
_Years_ ago I recall something with a name like anonyblog [Edit:
invisiblog.com -- Thanks!] which accepted account creation and posts by--and
only by--pseudonymous email. You remember--that crazy Mixmaster/PGP signed and
forwarded stuff? Seemed really powerful for the 'publication' side, but still
fragile regarding the hosting side. Admittedly 95% of the pages were various
flavors of "OMG IT WORKED!" but that says more about pseudonymous email than
anything.

ps. Regarding censorship resistant hosting, the rabbit hole regarding e.g.
Freenet is very deep and frankly leads to a hive of villainy.

~~~
akaryocyte
invisiblog.com? Explained a bit here:
[https://globalvoices.org/2005/04/13/a-technical-guide-to-
ano...](https://globalvoices.org/2005/04/13/a-technical-guide-to-anonymous-
blogging-a-very-early-draft/)

------
netsharc
Somehow the instruction that "Don't connect to your home/work WiFi" is down 3
lines before the end (Point 8 of "Notes"). I'd expect it to be between points
1 and 2 of Instructions.

Just as a mental exercise, it seems going to a local coffee shop would make me
easily spottable on CCTV, especially if they can correlate visits and posting
times...

~~~
2038AD
> especially if they can correlate visits and posting times...

You could schedule posts so times will not correlate. Tumblr has a queue which
you can use to post at regular intervals throughout the day.

~~~
netsharc
The paranoid would worry that the men in black would ask Tumblr for the server
logs, "When did this blogger insert this post in the queue?".

I guess they could try using a blogging service hosted in a "non-cooperative"
country. E.g. Russia, unless you want to blog about Putin.

~~~
2038AD
VK would probably be your best bet for Russia.

We could keep playing this game forever. Really you'd want a self-hosted site
running from an anonymous VPS paid using a cryptocurrency like Monero (these
exist) and your domain would use a similar service (say Njalla) or be TOR-
exclusive. Alternatively you could go a more classic route and host with SDF
(à la [http://voidnull.sdf.org/](http://voidnull.sdf.org/)).

Or, if you're really paranoid, you'd give up on the whole thing. Maybe you'd
still write but you'd keep it to yourself. As I see it, any interaction is a
risk of exposure even if very small.

------
x1798DE
One thing this doesn't address is how to build an audience anonymously. I have
occasionally considered creating a pseudonymous blog, but I don't know how to
acquire readers without leaking information about my existing social network.
I feel like anonymous submissions to stuff like reddit and HN rarely get
traction.

~~~
dredmorbius
Post reasonably intelligent (or what the hell: insipidly viral) content,
engage with others. Traction builds, though it can be slow-going.

------
type0
> Never use a custom domain name - these require some of your personal
> information when being registered. Even with whois privacy protection,
> certain law enforcement can demand for these credentials.

Not just law enforcement, shady companies like FB all try to get their greasy
hands on that info. Panopticon is one closed circle.

------
hellofunk
> Run your articles through multiple translation converters. Edit minor
> mistakes afterwards. This avoids engines and tools picking up on your
> writing style.

Sounds like a good opportunity for a tool that will do this for you -- send it
through a bunch of different converters in a feed pipeline. Would be fun to
see the results.

~~~
bldavies
Try this: [https://obfuscator.albertnis.com](https://obfuscator.albertnis.com)

------
wakkaflokka
Tangential to the content of the blog, I’m always weary of anything being
labeled “anonymous” if it contains a lot of text that you personally wrote.
Stylometry is a thing and it apparently works (I do need a citation, but on
mobile and don’t have time - a quick Google search will return some results).
I can see a future or even present where all it takes is a snippet of text
that somebody knows is yours, and then a model to provide the probability that
any given text off the internet (comments, blogs, etc) is written by you.
People write and speak in very unique ways. As you increase the amount of your
text, it becomes even more unique, like a blog.

------
jermier
Is it even possible to create a Protonmail account with Tor? I thought it asks
for your phone number if you do that? (And we all know hopefully by now,
handing over your phone number is a big no-no if you want to be anonymous)

------
joubert
Thanks to so many people in this thread for thoughtful discourse and helping
me on my journey to understand the issues better.

I just watched The Outrage Machine, which is a short (12mins) documentary that
can help us learn.

It talks about trolling, the yearning to judge, public shaming, cancel
culture, mob mentality, moral superiority, harassment, abuse.

[https://www.retroreport.org/video/the-outrage-
machine/](https://www.retroreport.org/video/the-outrage-machine/)

------
nephanth
Some time ago, for anonymous blogging there was a pretty good solution called
freenet. Dunno if it is still around but it was really interesting
technologically speaking

------
Google234
Translating back and forth will result in horrible text

~~~
kwhitefoot
Depends on which language pairs you try. Google does a very good job with
several European languages. English to Norwegian and back often returns almost
the same as the original.

For instance the text above became:

Avhenger av hvilke språkpar du prøver. Google gjør en veldig god jobb med
flere europeiske språk. Engelsk til norsk og tilbake returnerer ofte nesten
det samme som originalen.

Which returned this English text:

Depends on which language pair you are trying. Google does a very good job
with several European languages. English to Norwegian and back often returns
almost the same as the original.

------
luord
Or one could post exclusively about one's interests and nothing even remotely
political. That's what I have in my blog.

Of course, not the same applies to my twitter and facebook accounts. I've
never posted anything really controversial, but there are some political
posts. I remain optimistic, though, maybe I won't have to delete them.
Hopefully.

------
michaelt
How would one store the long, random passwords for these e-mail and blogging
accounts, given TAILS is so reluctant to save anything to disk?

~~~
zimpenfish
Use a book? You can probably remember "Page 32, Line 7" is the passphrase for
site N and you've got oodles of data to work with for generating the
passphrase. You can probably even mark the passphrase itself if you have a lot
of other marked passages in the book as if you were doing research. Probably
want to carry 2-3 other marked books as well to avoid highlighting any
specific one as "valuable".

(Disclaimer: I am not a spy, take advice from real spies before me.)

------
zitterbewegung
So why not use pastebin with a burner phone ? Write your blogs air gapped at
home and then upload them using tor or a proxy.

------
bun_at_work
This is a terrible idea. Anonymity online encourages people to be highly
inflammatory, and in the US, this has led to a massive cultural divide (not
the only cause, though).

Human social pattens and behaviors have led humans to correct bad social
behavior through a mechanism based on reputation. If you say/do terrible
things (what the group disagrees with), your reputation suffers, which
discourages saying/doing those things. However, with anonymity, we become
victim to the dopamine feedback loops available in online patterns. In the
case of anonymous blogs, the stronger signal will be traffic on the blog,
regardless of why that traffic is there. Unfortunately, saying inflammatory
(prejudiced) things will generate traffic. Othering will generate traffic.
Being reasonable and nuanced with drive traffic away in an online environment
that provides dopamine hits for much less effort than understanding a complex
topic.

This means online anonymity for the masses is largely a bad thing for society
as a whole, which is evident with a cursory glance at the anonymous parts of
the internet (4chan, for example). It's also evident in less anonymous, but
still anonymous places like Reddit, which sees nearly as much trolling as
4chan, but reputation is part of the Reddit system, and Hacker News system as
well (just the reputation of your account instead of your real identity).

I should qualify my opinion here: I don't think anonymity is always bad, but
in aggregate online, I think it's causing more damage to our society than
good. People in a functional society need to be help accountable to the
society for their actions, and anonymity removes that social accountability.

~~~
vorpalhex
Anonymity is an important part of free speech. That which is unpopular can
still be truthful. Just because an angry mob descends on you doesn't mean your
words are incorrect.

Being inflammatory doesn't mean being prejudiced or wrong. There was a time
when speaking for trans rights was "inflammatory".

------
yhavr
I'm kinda unfamiliar with the real situation on the western internet. What are
top-3 things that could happen if I start writing things that are
uncomfortable to the loud minority?

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
I think Satoshi Nakamoto used double VPN. Haven't been found yet, in spite of
EXTENSIVE search efforts.

------
sitzkrieg
tor AND avoiding posting on home network? thats a lot of FUD

------
wGeF7H8Z59y985y
> Why should someone interact with something that the author doesn't throw
> his/her/their name into?

We currently live in a "there is only one correct opinion, all others must be
canceled" culture. They've already come for anyone who showed even the
faintest trace of dissent from the mindlessly woke mob's narrative. Next
they'll come for those who have stayed silent. Failure to project virtue
signaling will soon be used to deny employment and participation in other
aspects of society. Just you wait.

Anonymity is a risk mitigation technique that speaks to the very real desire
to keep speech free. If speech has consequences that are administered outside
the law, then it's not really free.

~~~
tw04
Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of that speech. What planet
do you live on that you think everyone else should have to both listen to what
you say, and then not "punish" you for it? If you tell your wife she looks
fat, she's probably not having sex with you that evening. If you call someone
a racial slur, they're probably both going to tell everyone they know about
what you said, and refuse to interact with you unless forced to.

What you're talking about isn't freedom of speech, it's freedom FROM
responsibility. I don't think you're going to find very many people that want
to sign up for: HNThrowaway262 can do whatever he wants and you just have to
take it. That's a dictatorship or a monarchy, you might want to live in that
society but I don't.

Your words and actions have consequences and SHOULD.

~~~
zimablue
"Freedom of speech isn't freedom from consequences of that speech"

That's not true, it doesn't even really make sense. Freedom of anything is
freedom from consequences for it. If I say I believe in freedom to have an
abortion, noone would reasonably be said to agree if they said they also
believe in freedom to have an abortion, and then immediate execution by the
state afterwards.

Freedom of speech in the constitution is freedom from reprisal by the
government

Freedom of speech as used idiomatically in speech generally means a certain
level of freedom of reprisals from employers and society.

Directed racial slurs is a straw man, almost noone believes in absolutist
freedom of speech when it comes to directed harrassment, they normally believe
in freedom to discuss topics in the abstract.

It's not a monarchy if someone has the freedom to speak, that doesn't make
them a king just a citizen.

I've noticed a trend with the woke side of the debate to get into like high-
school level semantics - redefining words or misinterpreting statements in a
nakedly disingenuous way - does anyone understand why this seems to be a
trend?

~~~
krapp
>Freedom of speech as used idiomatically in speech generally means a certain
level of freedom of reprisals from employers and society.

"a certain level" implies the existence of an acceptable level of consequence,
unless by that you mean "absolute." If so, why not simply state that?

>Directed racial slurs is a straw man, almost noone believes in absolutist
freedom of speech when it comes to directed harrassment, they normally believe
in freedom to discuss topics in the abstract.

You're just moving the goalposts around the definition of "speech" so that it
conveniently doesn't include the contradictions to your premise. Racial slurs
and directed harassment are obviously speech. If you believe there should be
consequences for that, then you believe freedom of speech does not mean
freedom from consequences.

~~~
zimablue
It's not moving the goal posts, you seem to be creating a false dichotomy
between: "support free speech" -> must support lack of reprisals for all free
speech, including directed racial slurs "do not support free speech" -> must
accept the current level and form of reprisals.

Where most people who say they support free speech are, is this statement:
"support free speech without reprisals, excluding directed harrassment, with
some level of acceptable reprisals in employment and socially, depending on
the context, but at a much lower level than is currently the case, with less
arbitrary application of mob justice and employer discrimination"

It's not catchy but nor is it inherently contradictory. It's what I imagine JK
Rowling, Chomsky et al would say if you spoke to them about their letter.

I really think it would be useful if the anti-free-speech side of the debate
stopped with this semantics and straw men about freedom from reprisals,
monarchies, directed racism. I think that a person should be free to discuss
eg. spaces for trans vs non-trans women and where to draw the line on sports
etc, to what level the BLM is a useful movement, the relative weight of
cultural vs economic vs discrimination in explaining different outcomes across
ethicities and genders, positive discrimination, without being fired,
cancelled or becoming unemployable. That's what most free speech people think,
and all these semantic points, false definitions and straw men are kind of a
waste of time

~~~
krapp
You seem to believe the phrase "freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from
consequences" implicitly justifies all possible consequences. It doesn't, it
merely implies that speech doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that the
consequences of speech often, themselves, are as much a manifestation of free
expression as the original speech.

Your own counterclaim, however, that "freedom from anything means freedom from
the consequences of that thing" does not even allow for the reasonable, non-
arbitrary consequences you're supporting, here.

You, I and tw04 are actually in violent agreement, but it seems your politics
doesn't allow you to concede the possibility that the "other side" can hold a
reasonable opinion.

~~~
lliamander
It's not clear that you and zimablue are in agreement unless you agree that
the level consequences people are currently experiencing is excessive.

For a lot of us here, the phrase "free speech doesn't mean freedom from
consequences" comes across (not unreasonably) as support for firing trump
supporters or people who question system racism (etc.) which is both unjust
and foolish for a number of reasons.

We also need to consider whether it is just to fire someone for something
offensive (but not illegal) they did offline that was surreptitiously recorded
and uploaded to the Internet to feed mob outrage.

~~~
krapp
> It's not clear that you and zimablue are in agreement unless you agree that
> the level consequences people are currently experiencing is excessive.

I actually would agree with that, but I disagree that any consequence is
always excessive.

>For a lot of us here, the phrase "free speech doesn't mean freedom from
consequences" comes across (not unreasonably) as support for firing trump
supporters or people who question system racism (etc.) which is both unjust
and foolish for a number of reasons.

I think it is unreasonable, or at least uncharitable, to assume the most
extreme interpretation possible of a phrase simply because you disagree with
the politics of the people using it.

That's exactly the sort of thing "a lot of us here" accuse progressives or
"the left" of doing to them.

~~~
lliamander
> I actually would agree with that, but I disagree that any consequence is
> always excessive.

Fair enough.

> I think it is unreasonable, or at least uncharitable, to assume the most
> extreme interpretation possible of a phrase simply because you disagree with
> the politics of the people using it.

I disagree that it was unreasonable or extreme. "Free speech doesn't mean
freedom of consequences" is mutually exclusive of the statement "free speech
does mean freedom from at least _some_ consequences". You cannot logically
support both statements.

It's also the slogan that is very commonly used to justify these
cancellations. I think it's worth point out that the initial comment by
wGeF7H8Z59y985y (not zimablue) was clearly framing things in the context of
people losing their jobs over their political opinions.

------
romanovtexas
The irony, coming from a non anonymous blog

------
seaghost
"Anonymity on the internet. People can say whatever they want without
attaching their name, face and self-pride. This creates extremely unproductive
conversations without consequences. Platforms such as Twitter propel this
behavior to new heights. When it was local, you'd lose friends for being
unpleasant, you'd lose credibility in your community for being inflammatory."
[0]

100% agree with the author.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23656750](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23656750)

~~~
tux1968
The problem is that for most of us, we find some actual truths unpleasant and
inflammatory. It's unfortunate that we're not all adept at accepting opposing
ideas with more equanimity. But sometimes hearing difficult or poorly conveyed
ideas can be helpful and healthy.

Think of how many racists didn't want to hear about social justice and would
have gladly used any means possible to ostracize those challenging the status-
quo. Some civil-rights activists lives might have been saved had they been
able to work anonymously.

We should all be talking about how we can better manage our emotions in the
face of trolls and opposing ideas -- rather than how to make all such
discomfort disappear from view.

