

Huffington Post ends commenter anonymity - 001sky
http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2013/aug/22/huffington-post-ariannahuffington

======
zeteo
>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
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.

~~~
twodim
Anonymous threats doesn't harm anyone.

~~~
Karunamon
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
If discourse is the problem, what's wrong with some sort of
HN/Slashdot/Reddit-like crowd sourced moderation?

That's the way to solve that issue.

~~~
Karunamon
Once the post is there, the damage is done. It'll stay in its position for a
while before being modded to invisibility. If it makes our hypothetical user
think twice before posting, game's already over.

And if using a threaded system like HN,/.,Reddit, etc, if the threatening post
is the only response to a comment, downmodding it doesn't accomplish anything.

------
tbrownaw
_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?

------
diggan
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-d...](http://bloggar.aftonbladet.se/janhelin/2011/08/sta-for-vad-du-
tycker-pa-aftonbladet-1/)

Same blogpost translated to english:
[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sv&tl=en&js=n&prev=...](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)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2011_Norway_attacks)

~~~
onebaddude
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.

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

~~~
TelmoMenezes
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
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
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.

------
thex86
"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...](http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/12/computer_crime_1.html)

------
hobs
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).

------
rtpg
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
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
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
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.

~~~
rtpg
ok I don't think that the gov't should be moderating huffpo comments.
Upvote/downvote stuff might be good at least for trolling stuff (but it too
can be abused in the right situations).

However, actions are actions. Just because it's easier to do something on the
internet doesn't make it more legal.

Obviously the seriousness of it all has to be judged , but if you're
harrassing someone constantly on the internet (even if it's "just" making a
bunch of online accounts and commenting extremely viley everywhere), you do
not have my sympathy.

If I were putting hateful messages into your (snail) mail box every day and
sending your friends photoshopped pictures of you in compromising situations,
would I be pardoned? Doing on the internet shouldn't either

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

~~~
smtddr
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.

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GotAnyMegadeth
> 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
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-...](http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/jul/28/man-arrested-
rape-threats-twitter)

------
ebbv
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."

------
pnathan
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)

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smtddr
_> "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
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_at...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Churchill_September_11_attacks_essay_controversy)

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drcube
The trolls are winning.

