
Anonymity on the Internet Must Be Protected (1995) - stareatgoats
http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall95-papers/rigby-anonymity.html
======
malvosenior
> _Freedom of expression must be allowed. With this freedom comes all sorts of
> problems, but these types of problems are not unique to the internet.
> Unpopular speech is a necessary consequence of free speech and it was
> decided long ago, during the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of
> Rights, that the advantages of free speech outweigh the disadvantages._

It seems as if there are a growing number of people that no longer believe
this statement. It's unfortunate and I never thought I would see free speech
be devalued (in the US), but I regularly see calls to restrict speech.

I agree with this paper that anonymity must be protected, but I worry that
current and future generations will continue to move away from these
principles in the name of inclusion.

~~~
duckMuppet
Using any of the big tech firms, they are actively moving against freedom or
anonymity on the net, specifically the web..

[https://thehill.com/policy/technology/411002-leaked-
presenta...](https://thehill.com/policy/technology/411002-leaked-presentation-
shows-googles-struggle-to-juggle-free-speech-with)

~~~
duckMuppet
And a great example..

Look above, comments from Josh Cole... bots control the internet.. only
regulation, govt censorship, and censorship by tech companies can save the
uneducated, unwashed masses which could never understand or be left to make
their own decisions with regard to the web and information contained therein..

I always get a chuckle from those who have such arrogance and avarice, that
only the govt can fix societal ills. It's horrifying. Experts...

~~~
JoshCole
I did not say bots control the internet. I did not say that only regulation
can deal with the problem. I did not say tech censorship is the only way to
save the uneducated. I did not say the unwashed massed could never understand
anything.

Please don't lie about what I said.

I said that the argument against, written in 1995, does not reflect the
reality of the day. A reality which _is_ producing said regulation and policy
change, right now, already, in California. I'm talking about things that
_happened_. I said that this topic wasn't accurate for modern day - that the
speed at which technology has progressed has left this post dramatically out
of date.

Maybe you've forgotten, but Facebook and Twitter didn't even exist in 1995.
Back then the internet was far more decentralized.

------
middleclick
I particularly liked this line:

> React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be
> encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the
> most effective response is silence.

For every case of abuse, there are more cases of good use of a service and we
should focus on those and not let the malicious ones become the loudest.

~~~
jancsika
Got it.

Now your anonymously accessible forum greets newcomers with the most abusive,
disgusting posts imaginable sprinkled with the occasional post of an
idealistic cypherpunk who abides by the dictum, "Don't feed the trolls."

Predictably, the forum is frequented by no one outside of a handful of
idealistic cypherpunks and problem even fewer trolls (because it's cheap to
saturate a forum with the most vile, disgusting content).

~~~
sbarker
4chan does ok

~~~
sleepybrett
no it doesn't.

~~~
thunderbird120
4chan.org is the 212th most popular website in the U.S. at time of writing.
This implies that it is able to attract plenty of different kinds of people
and that the trolls aren't driving the rest away. If you go on most boards
it's pretty easy to find interesting content and it's not particularly
surprising that the site has remained a staple of internet culture for 15
years. I think that one of the main reasons for this is that the design of the
site doesn't inherently require users to think beyond the scope of their
individual posts. In general, there is no persistent identity and the
visibility of posts is not determined by any kind of like/dislike feature.
People post things and there is no kind of long term reward or punishment for
posting "right" and "wrong" things. This kind of structure tends to create a
community which is a lot less prone to group masturbation and smug and self
righteous than certain other internet communities where long term identity and
other people's opinions of your posts actually sort of matter. There is value
in that idea, even if the that community type it's not for everyone.

~~~
leibwiht
It's more than just the absence of a like/dislike system, visibility of posts
is directly determined by how much discussion they generate - for threads this
means its position on the board stays higher for longer, so more people see
it, and for replies the number of replies is visible while scrolling through
the thread. This links agreement/disagreement with actual discourse (or, at
least, communication), unlike e.g. Reddit where agreement and disagreement are
done via voting, which doesn't contain any information other than the
upvote/downvote itself. In systems like this, disagreeing via replying is
actually suboptimal in terms of return on the labor involved with
communicating this disagreement, because downvoted posts (posts people don't
like) are less visible, meaning replies to them are less visible as well, even
if they agree with the majority of the people downvoting their parent post.

------
pjc50
The article is absolutely correct that there are lots of good uses for
protecting anonymity or pseudonmity - that's what we fought the "real names"
war for, after all.

Moderation is also vital to making a space usable. Enforcing real names is not
a moderation policy in and of itself - people are perfectly willing to post
hate speech under their own name, including in national newspapers.

Where these intersect is that it's much easier to moderate if you can ban
someone in a way that they stay banned.

------
jumelles
Wow, over twenty years old. Prescient.

------
JoshCole
> However, a small minority of people who use anonymity servers are sociopaths
> who are attracted by the ease with which they can avoid responsibility and
> accountability for their actions.

Yeah. No.

This argument against is old enough that it is now a straw man.

There are known state-level actors actively pushing propaganda through the
internet. There are companies founded with the express purpose of providing
influence in exchange for money. There are companies founded with the express
purpose of providing bot accounts to make it seem as if a person is more
popular than they are.

There is an industry and state level actors abusing anonymity online to shift
discourse, with real life consequences more severe than death having already
resulted. It isn't unreasonable to suppose that it is possible that millions
of people will die as a consequence of some of the manipulations which has
already occurred, given UN projections regarding the effect of climate change.

We accelerate in progression as we progress. 1995 is a lifetime ago. You might
as well link Plato.

Recent google slides which made it to Hacker News frontpage has a slide that
put the estimate of bot traffic on the internet near 30% of all traffic.

Taxes can be great; taxes without representation aren't. Anonymity can be
great; anonymity for people with hostile motives who influence things which do
not relate to themselves are not.

Have a little subtlety.

Edit:

I'm getting downvoted. Go watch Facebook testimony to congress and similar
things in which their is admission of acts as vile as extremist groups being
intentionally provoked into armed conflict being performed on online platform.
Go read about the IRA and probes into Russian influence on social media. Stop
being so ignorant, Hacker News. I get that you filter bubble out political
talk, but in case you missed it, there is an actual reason behind why
California is moving forward with a law to ban bots which don't confess to
being a bot and similar laws designed to curtail these influence campaigns.
Its not that legislators are insane.

~~~
malvosenior
I am commenting with a pseudonym on this website and I'm sure I hold _many_
views which you would attribute to "bots". I am however a real person and not
even Russian! Most of the people who you disagree with are the same, you must
accept that.

~~~
robotrout
But I was told that anybody that disagreed with the liberal bubble mentality
of silicon valley was either a russian bot or was Brett Kavanaugh on a bender.

