

Naming Names on the Internet - bootload
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/05/technology/naming-names-on-the-internet.html?hpw=&pagewanted=print

======
TomOfTTB
It's only passingly relevant to the story but I hate when people bring up Choi
Jin-Sil in this context (that's the name of the South Korean actress mentioned
in the article). A few facts about that case...

1\. She had a history of battling Depression and at the time was depressed
over the suicide of her close friend.

2\. She didn't leave a suicide note or give any reason for her suicide.

3\. Her brother, who also had a history of depression, also killed himself a
couple years later

4\. Far from being bullied by the Internet trolls she had fought back and
pressed charges. The police had made an arrest at the time of her death (libel
is obviously a much bigger thing in South Korea)

5\. Less than 6 days passed between when she reported the issue to the police
and when they made an arrest. So anonymity didn't pose that big an obstacle

The South Korean policies were really just politicians jumping on the tragic
death of a popular star and trying to make it look like they fixed a problem.

------
hexis
“The Internet would be better if we had an accurate notion that you were a
real person as opposed to a dog, or a fake person, or a spammer.” - Eric
Schmidt

There are no dogs posting on the internet and there's no such thing as a "fake
person". That leaves real people and spammers. There are lots of tools to
filter out spam and you mostly see spam on websites that are just not using
any of them.

So, if that's really the argument Google's chairman has for abandoning
anonymity and pseudonymity on the internet, can't we all just move on now and
not pretend that "real names" policies are anything other than sheer
demonstrations of dominance by these services and politicians?

~~~
Vivtek
Not to mention I'm seeing spam on Google+, while my pseudonymous friends are
very difficult to find and/or recognize. In fact, _because_ they're not
allowed to use their names by which I know them, for _each and every spam_ I
am forced to wonder whether this might not be somebody I actually already know
- clearly the reverse of a sane antispam strategy.

So all in all, this Google policy is wrongheaded and basically we all know it.
I'm with you. It's yet another power grab.

------
_delirium
Also, people should only publish pamphlets under their real names. If you want
to opine on American politics, you should have the guts to put your name on
the front of the pamphlet, like our Founding Fathers did, not hide behind a
cowardly videogame pseudonym like "Publius" or something.

------
robertskmiles
I'll repost something I commented a few months ago about the comparison of
anonymous and real-name or 'transparent' systems:

Ultimately the question is one of freedom vs enforced rules.

If you have a system of anonymity or pseudonymity, it's always possible to
identify yourself by a real identity if you want to. Whether this takes the
form of 4chan's "photo with a shoe on your head" or Reddit's "Post about this
to your twitter account", reliably associating a pseudonym to a meatspace
person is easy. So you can get the advantages of the 'transparent' system in a
pseudonymous system _if you want them_ , but you're never forced to.

The only way to properly run a transparent system is to force everyone to
identify themselves. Then you can't get any of the benefits of anonymity.

The only people pushing for 'transparent systems' are people who have some
material gain from them - advertisers, information miners, law enforcement
etc. I think they have enough power as it is.

So I'm in favour of anonymity by default, keeping the choice to be transparent
in the hands of the individual.

~~~
wnight
Not the only ones. I have no power to leverage or gain via a transparent
society and yet I advocate it. Or, at least, no personal gain that everyone
else would not also share.

To me it merely seems inevitable and if we acknowledge that we can make sure
it's actually a transparent society, instead of just a glass-walled prison.

~~~
robertskmiles
> we can make sure it's actually a transparent society, instead of just a
> glass-walled prison.

I'm not being flippant, but what do you see as the difference?

~~~
wnight
Transparency up versus down. London now has only the wrong sort, for instance.
They can watch you on almost any street but if you tried to record a police
officer they'd arrest or add you to a watch list or something.

Whereas if encryption and hidden cameras go far enough we'll be able to spy on
the authorities as well as them spying on us, thus keeping things in check.

These guys call call it sousveillance <http://wearcam.org/sousveillance.htm>
but I think they overthink the idea a little. Simply put, who watches the
watchers? Unless it's me at some level I'm not funding/legitimizing the
system.

