Will Real Name Policies Improve Comments? 264
TechCrunch has a story about the recent trend of websites wanting users to use their real names in an attempt to make comments better. The story points out that the practice didn't work in South Korea. From the article: "...In 2007, South Korea temporarily mandated that all websites with over 100,000 viewers require real names, but scrapped it after it was found to be ineffective at cleaning up abusive and malicious comments (the policy reduced unwanted comments by an estimated .09%). We don’t know how this hidden gem of evidence skipped the national debate on real identities, but it’s an important lesson for YouTube, Facebook and Google, who have assumed that fear of judgement will change online behavior for the better."
It's a long term policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Eventually people will realise that employers Google these things, and that posting nasty stuff means you can't get work.
But this could take a generation to work through.
Re:It's a long term policy (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, it means you can't post personal stuff, as you'd find that employers would refrain from hiring people for everything from their political view through religion to sexual preferences, medical issues or even hobbies. In fact, a whole lot of things that _shouldn't_ be a problem are far more likely to be a problem than some bad behaviour.
Then one'd try and fail to rectify those issues by a vast and comprehensive anti-discrimination law(book), while internet asshats plead tourettes and keep trolling.
Banning anonymous speech mostly bans speech that shouldn't be banned.
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Companies that hire people on there political views are doing so because it benefits them (so they believe) when it comes to having all employee agreeing on certain views.
The downside is that a group of people how do nothing but agreeing with each other do not make a lot of progress at the same time. This is evident today's world.
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Re:It's a long term policy (Score:5, Insightful)
"But this could take a generation to work through."
It will never get that far.
An awful lot of people understand that freedom of speech requires the ability to speak anonymously (precisely because others will be seeing that speech and judging it). Imagine if the United States were like some countries, in which political dissidence could get you killed or imprisoned for life? Would you dare say anything against the government, using your real name?
This employment situation is merely a small-scale version of the same kind of tyranny.
Several states have already passed laws that prevent employers from using social network content in their hiring practices, or requiring account credentials. I expect soon that will be most states, or even a Federal law.
And then we have a nazi world (Score:2)
Where freedom of speech is long dead. But then you seem to embrace that.
Re:It's a long term policy (Score:4, Insightful)
The only problem is everyone at some point posts nasty stuff, and at many points it is fully justified.
You could get a cooling effect on free speech if all potential employers are going to rate their employees by their non-work related speech. Sure you don't want to hire a KKK clansman but what about an atheist? Does a Libertarian employer have the right to refuse to hire a Communist or Socialist employee? What about one that is merely Liberal? What about someone who argues for pornagraphy and/or erotic art?
There are many decisive issues that we need to be able to freely discuss in online and public forums without fear of those discussions damning our chances at attaining our livelyhoods.
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Try: douchebags that see comments that aren't politically correct will try to find out where you are employed and then complain with your employer "Did you know that your employee so-and-so said this-and-that?"
Can't win online with arguments, then extort the employer. Because if they don't punish you, the employer must agree, no?
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Eventually people will realise that employers Google these things.
I think I was hired because my current employer googled my real name. Being what you are can be as much as an asset as it can be a liability.
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And then another generation for employers to realize they are losing out on talent by applying prejudice and ending up with a specific subset of the population with a specific subset of less-than-ideal attributes.
Everyone knows that the best form of management is management that works -- management that actually makes comprehensive judgement of its human resources and utilizes the individuals as effectively as possible. This means that Billy Bunkins on facebook may be a beer chugging lightly racist redneck
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So if Alan Turing posted about homosexuality which was illegal in his time, he should never have been hired for anything?
Anyway a better answer is a guaranteed basic income. Then people can post freely and employers can discriminate against them, and each individual can still contribute to society by working on their own projects, and/or towards challenges held by govt and biz (bug bounties, netflix prize, darpa challenges, etc.).
Re:It's a long term policy (Score:4)
I see your point. It took years for it to sink down to some people that they should get a separate email from work for personal messages.
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And not posting nasty stuff won't help you either, unless your name is unique in the whole wide world. And this, of course, makes everyone "unhirable", leading this system to its well-deserved collapse. Time will tell if the concept of free speech dies first.
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Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Only if no law exists. (Score:4, Informative)
> I don't see any reason why every site should allow ACs unless they just wants lots of trolls and flames. I mean once in a while we'll see an insightful AC comment but for every one of those we'll see a dozen "nigger faggot shill" comments that just derail conversations.
Confirmation bias much? Just went to a random article [slashdot.org] and searched for pure troll/offtopic/spam anonymous comments. There's 112 anonymous comments (out of 498) and about ten of them are pure offtopic/namecalling and another dozen with flamebaitish content. 6 comments are scored -1, 3 of those are anonymous.
IOW, contents of anonymous comments are mostly the same as for registered, though with 0 starting score you don't notice them so often amongst default 2 starting score for registered posters with good carma, and with ACs being in minority poor behaviour stands out more.
Actually, even on anonymous boards niggerfaggot crowd is pretty much localized and shooed from actual discussions, especially if you go to thematic boards and not /b/.
Re:Only if no law exists. (Score:5, Insightful)
Requiring an account is a good thing because it lets you track reputation, but requiring real names is bad because it has a chilling effect on speech.
Requiring accounts is like requiring a SSL certificate, it doesn't prove who you're talking to but it does give a good indication that you're talking to the same person you were talking to yesterday.
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Right-o, and this is the reason why, for example, pretty much every IRC server includes a nickserv, since IRC by itself doesn't include account registering.
Re:Only if no law exists. (Score:4, Informative)
AC's are necessary for getting some gold nugget bits of information. due to nda's and so forth.
the easiest way to leak stuff is to write it to slashdot as ac, really, and all such information has to be judged by what the information is. it's sort of beautiful in a way, a nugget of information that might be totally false but might be true. if people had to use their real names everywhere then some industry wide problems would never get discussed(typical problems at offices, with projects and so forth).
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Anonymous comments are particularly useful when we're discussing a controversial issue where customers/employees of a particular vendor really doesn't want to be identified. I can think of several inside sources in the past who have commented here under the Anonymous Coward banner and have been extremely insightful. How many of those people are going to bother signing up for a throwaway email account, signing up for a slashdot account, posting, and then cleaning up their browsing history just for our bene
Doesn't matter (Score:2, Offtopic)
I have no doubt some of what is in that linked article is going on, but overall those actions are lost in the noise that is the Real Internet full of real people, including trolls and all...
Also remember that words on forums do not really matter that much in the end, which is why in reality there are not that many resources put forth to control them even though there could be.
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Normally we try not to feed the trolls but since this has started to pop up in comments, here's Soulskills response to this tired accusation when it was brought up on Reddit last week. http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/wzmdu/censored_slashdot_post_describes_in_explicit/c5hzate [reddit.com]. Or you could read the FAQ about why we don't post a story. The relevant part being:
Could you explain why my submission was declined?
This is harder than it sounds. We try to select the most interesting, timely, and relevant
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What an immense waste of a sub-200 UID.
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Most of these "Real Name" schemes are really just "Facebook Auth Mandatory". The idea is that there's a barrier to making and using bogus accounts. Obviously that barrier isn't so terribly high, since you can always just make a bogus FB account for shit-talking.
Now obviously I haven't done any formal studies on the subject, and I don't know about this thing in Korea, but it does appear to have some minor effect on the general civility of conversation on some sites. No practical method is going to eradica
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Someone should just do comments as a service, like Disqus does, but using the same basic system as Slashdot.
It allows for anonymous posts, which can either disappear or be highly visible based on the content of the post, or you can opt to lean on your history of being a decent contributor and post using your name... which lends some very modest bit of credibility and visibility to each post on an individual basis.
Give the site admins using the service the option of considering network-wide "karma" if they w
John Smith (Score:2)
Re:John Smith (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a lot of reasons to be concerned with people's (poor, inappropriate) judgement.
A poster may have perfectly good reasons to be anonymous: they may be subject to various kinds of active hunting, from spouses to creeps to national agencies; there are people who may have made mistakes (or not), have been through the legal system, but have been pilloried on some list somewhere; they may be activists of one sort or another, engaged in illegal activities (and don't even try to tell me that all laws are good just because they are laws... it's just too easy to take your wet-noodle premise and slap you silly with it); there is strong tendency to "attack the messenger" rather than try to respond to the message, and anonymity makes that an empty exercise... it neither hurts the poster or benefits the attacker; anonymity means no one gets to scrape you from some forum and "market" to you (it may not be evil but it surely is annoying.) And so on.
Yes, real name policies let the lowlives run essentially free. But that's what moderation is for, and that's where the most effective energy can be applied. The one thing slashdot does really wrong is start anonymous comments at zero. They should start at one, just like any other comment, and go down only when they're obviously of lower quality. It's a form of prejudice, nothing more. A counter argument is that it is statistically justified, but that's an over-democratic solution that harms the legitimate posters at the same time it addresses whatever problem there is. It's like racial profiling: if most of the crime in an area is from blacks, and then the police start pulling people over because they're black, we have a problem. With an anon post, when you droprate the post because it's anon, you've essentially done the same thing, except the problem area isn't arbitrary search, it is the chilling of speech (because low scores tend to make posts less visible.)
In the end, real name policies are a bad idea, the only people who really benefit from them are corporations.
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The problem with starting AC's at 1 is the number of Off-Topic and Trolls. Keep in mind that /. allows us, when logged in, to get the karma bonus for posting AC. If I can't be bothered to log-in or don't have an account, then there is little reason for me to be granted any benefit such as the +1 Karma Bonus
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APK, you more than klansmen, neo-nazis, and pedophiles, challenge my faith in anonymous expression.
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An "ad hominem" would be "HOSTS files are useless, because APK is a Nazi pedo." That you irritate me more than those other groups is just a simple statement of fact.
3/10, because I responded.
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Pleased to meet you, Mr. Smith. My name is Min-jun [koreanslate.com] Kim [wikipedia.org].
Perhaps you know my friend, James Smith [lifesmith.com]?
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John "Cockgobbler" Smith or John "Smalldick" Smith?
Missing employees of Yoyodyne Propulsion Systems?
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Uncle Bob, is that you?
Fear??? (Score:2)
Slashdot statistics? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does Slashdot have any statistics to share on the percentage of troll posts / off topics and flamebaits by ACs vis-a-vis registered users ?
Agreed, that registered users may not be using real names. But, still Anonymous comments v/s registered comments will provide a good starting point. My gut feeling is that the statistics would have a higher number of ACs being abusive and malicious than the registered users.
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No idea, but I filter ACs out, unless they manage to get moderated up or answer my postings. I only answer to ACs answering my postings if they make good points.
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I have the same rules about answering postings, but I don't limit that to just ACs.
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I only answer to ACs answering my postings if they make good points.
I dont suppose you answer to non-ACs that dont make good points either right. Then I dont suppose it matters if the person responding to you is anonymous or not, does it?
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It does. I am not above to point out to non-ACs that they are idiots and why. With ACs, I assume they already know they are idiots and wrong, otherwise they would not post as ACs. /. does allow pseudonyms, after all.
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One would like to think that posts were judged based on their merit and content rather than on who posted them, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
They are, just not as individual posts but as a continuum.
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It seems to me that most AC's who have really good points have generally been moderated up.
Also of course, it depends on the story - on some stories as a moderator you are looking more for AC contributors if it's a sensitive topic or people might be divulging some information that could hurt them otherwise due to the subject matter.
Betteridge's Law of Headlines (Score:4, Interesting)
So, no.
Link to the TechCrunch article (Score:5, Interesting)
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/29/surprisingly-good-evidence-that-real-name-policies-fail-to-improve-comments/ [techcrunch.com]
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No. (Score:5, Insightful)
You might get less trolling (but not much less) but you'll miss out on a lot of extremely useful comments that can only be made anonymously or semi-anonymously. Some people are too shy or scared to speak out without anonymity, some just value their privacy. You'll almost never get insight from insiders at a company without some level of anonymity. Too much good value is lost for too small a reduction in bad comments, and bad comments can be controlled by good moderation anyway.
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Part of free speech and the "marketplace of ideas" requires there to be at least some level of anonymity. Trolling is simply part of the internet. Just ignore the troll comments if you want, or read them if you want.
Anonymous speech has had huge impact, particularly in early American history. You have to remember that the major works of early American politics were anonymous, including the Federalist and Anti-Federalist papers.
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Let's name the subjects: (Score:3, Interesting)
Political views. Eample: remember back in '02 when all those folks who were against invading Iraq had their property vandalized because they "didn't support the troops and hated America"? Turns out those people who "hated America and the troops" were right.
Religion. Example: I live in the Bible Belt. If it were known that I am an atheist, I would have some serious problems with my neighbors. Like anonymous vandalism.
sexual orientation. there are folks who have a severe prejudice against homosexuals and a co
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I can't agree that *anonymous* free speech is a right. It's a bit complicated, but if you can get away with anonymous speech, that's fine, but there should not be an *expectation* of anonymity. Say you write and publish a presumably anonymous pamphlet or something, and another person figures out who you are based on some clues or catching you in the act. If you had a *right* to anonymous speech, then it should be a crime for that person to reveal your identity. But it should not be a crime for that person t
Maybe "93 Escort Wagon" IS my real name... (Score:2)
For most people, using your real name (e.g. "Joe Johnson") doesn't really remove your anonymity that much - nor does it pin down your location anymore than posting under a pseudonym does. It might be interesting, from an academic viewpoint, to see if people with unusual names (e.g. "Moon Unit Zappa") behave in a more socially acceptable manner when they're forced to use their real name online.
Also, why the heck does the only link in this story go back to another Slashdot post? That link adds nothing to the
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it's possible they updated since you posted this. The first link is a callback to the previous /. story, the second link is to a tech crunch article about how effective the policy was in south korea.
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Yup, they updated it - several other commenters also noted the (initial) lack of a link to the Tech Crunch article.
In any case, I'm not sure South Korea is a good test bed. A friend of mine is from there and has previously made the observation that some huge percentage of the population has one of two family names - Kim or Park. Having to post their real names probably isn't giving away much from a practical sense.
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i have a somewhat strange name and tried to make this point in email to NPR.org and ConsumerReports.org both of which require real names. Unless you require SS# as well, "real name" really has a disparate impact on people w/ more uncommon names.
My solution had been fairly easy. I won't even consider posting on a real-name site. And this doesn't even address the issue of how trivial it is to circumvent these by posting under a false name. So basically the only people you exclude are the ones (like m
Re:I won't consider posting on a real-name site (Score:3)
Yeah, I also come from the school of internet thought that said "limit your real name on the net, it's the content not the person". I've worked pretty hard to build a "Web Brand" across a bunch of sites, while searching my real name leads to a fairly tame set of results. As I like to say, anyone that motivated can figure out the connection in under an hour, but it's a base level of veneer to slow down the most important cases like snooping HR and spammers.
There was a site that made me REALLY angry when I wa
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won't make a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:won't make a difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Exactly, I have argued something similar [slashdot.org] a few days ago. Basically, people are rude on the internet not because of anonymity, but because you can't punch them in the face.
Obvious answer... (Score:2)
We don’t know how this hidden gem of evidence skipped the national debate on real identities...
Because it doesn't fit the expected narrative!
Sort of works on Facebook, but: (Score:4, Interesting)
1) You have a real incentive of actually signing up with your real name because otherwise your friends won't find you.
2) Your friends can see what you write.
This creates a (somewhat) self-regulated comment environment. People still post dumb stuff on Facebook because they're dumb, but at least you get rid of most trolls, one-liner thumb seekers and Justin Bieber haters that haunt for instance Youtube.
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This has nothing to do with the issue. You don't have spam on Fb because you can choose who you read and who you ignore. If a "friend" on Fb is just a troll I can revoke him from my friend list and never see him again. That has nothing to do if he is using a real name or not.
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..oh but of course it is, if you didn't know there's people who post "OMG THAZ SHIT WACK POOPOO" allover the net but don't do with that their fb feed because their fb friends who sub to their stuff with their real names don't want to see that and they realize that, but they still do it on other sites. hell, it wouldn't be cool at all if all my slashdot rants appeared on my fb feed - however, I do realize that pretty much anyone of them could come to slashdot to read them. if they'd complain I'd say tough lu
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No it doesn't work on facebook. Hell it doesn't work on any site where they require the "facebook social plugin" if anything, the comments degenerate even faster, and it becomes a giant screaming shill match of epeen stroking to see who can become the biggest asshole of the thread with the most likes. Oddly enough, I generally just strike sites off my reading list that use it for commenting.
Just makes comments less interesting (Score:5, Insightful)
I've found that moving from anonymity to real-identity based comments (i.e. Facebook) just makes comment board much less interesting.
The SJ Mercury News switched to FB comments a year or 2 ago, and after the switch, I stopped reading the comments (and the site) because the comments switched from controversial discussion (and yes, even some trolls and personal attacks) to boring "Yeah, me too buddy" comments.
On Slashdot, I often post anecdotes from current and past jobs, and I wouldn't do so if my name was attached to the post.
Re:Just makes comments less interesting (Score:5, Funny)
On Slashdot, I often post anecdotes from current and past jobs, and I wouldn't do so if my name was attached to the post.
Yeah, me too buddy.
Re:Just makes comments less interesting (Score:4)
A lot of sites are figuring out that user comments are relatively worthless. Yes, they increase page views and 'interaction', but at the same time only a small percentage of users are looking at them, because who has the time to read hundreds of largely worthless comments? When you see 1000+ posts about the latest smartphone news, most of those comments are "write-only", nobody ever reads them. But the site still has to maintain hosting and pay people to moderate the comments, which could easily outweigh the advertising revenue.
So, I can see how a site would be perfectly happy with a smaller number of 'boring' facebook comments.
Slashdot was largely set up as a discussion site with threaded comments, user moderation, filtering, etc. People post longer-form comments and actually reply to arguments. It's a tech audience which is generally OK with anonymity (even though everyone thinks everyone else is a "shill"). It's an entirely different atmosphere than most high-traffic blogs or newspaper comment sections.
Anonymous is critical (Score:2)
The problem is the people (Score:2)
People that are cretins will remain so, whether real names, pseudonyms or anonymity. There are some that will behave a bit better when they can be recognized later, but pseudonymity works just as well here. One massive drawback of real names is that many people will not be able to post anything marginally critical anymore, because their present or future employers could find out. In fact, I am inly allowed to post on /., because I do it under pseudonym. Real-name policies can have a massive chilling effect.
"improve" (Score:2)
It will "improve" comments in the same way that the Stasi or the Holy Inquisition "improved comments": minority opinions will be silenced since any form of contrarian opinion is frowned upon, and tends to result in repercussions, by employers, friends, and governments.
won't work, just make a fake name (Score:2)
Seriously, this is stupid.
Fake names are easy.
Bob Dobbs
John Smith
Jay Woo
J. Wu
I don't even have to make clever ones, just some of the most common names in the world will work.
I don't want any of you to know who I am, if I did, you'd probably be a friend of mine. Not one of you needs to know what my last name is, and if I am, or am not famous. It's none of your fucking business unless I decide to tell you.
Maybe we should use numbers instead of names, or I know, we'll all go by our Social Security numbers.
Ask John Doe (Score:2)
Really if you see a post on the internet from "John Doe" are you going to make the connection to the actor/singer?
All this means is that people named "John Doe" or "Joe Smith" or "Sanjay Gupta" will be able to say whatever they want without it being associated with them.
Reduced fear of judgement (Score:2)
It is the reduced fear of judgement among the population that is the real reward of such a policy. In my opinion. Reduced fear of judgement, together with more effective application of judgement in that small selection of cases where it's importance is recognized by all sounds win-win.
re important lesson for YouTube, Facebook, Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Having subscribers' and posters' real names would vastly increase the value of their web analytics, and allow them to sell qualified leads to marketers ("all these email addresses are for people who proactively viewed at least one SUV product video within the last two weeks"). That's what those guys care about, not comment quality.
I am not anonymous (Score:5, Funny)
I am Skapare. Never heard of me? Then consider yourself lucky.
Works for me (Score:2)
I switched to using my real name a long time ago. I do find that it makes me a bit more cautious about what I say and how I say it. As others have mentioned, there does seem to be considerably less flaming on Facebook than in forums that permit (much less are dominated by) anonymous posts. I've even heard it said that Facebook's #1 innovation was producing a system that actually encouraged people to use their real names.
That's the crux of it, though; people use their real names on Facebook because it is
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I think the difference though is that on Facebook, people have the ability to control (or at least the illusion of being able to control) who sees what, meaning (they believe) they can reveal for instance political views, religious views or sexual orientation without fear of for instance future employers finding out.
I think the best model is one like Slashdot where users who have previously proven themselves worthy of moderating get to moderate and those who appear to be doing a shit job at it don't, but wi
important in some cases, impossible in some cases (Score:2)
A real names policy is important in some cases, is impossible in some cases, and is both important and impossible in some cases.
An example where it's important is online book reviews. You don't want authors reviewing their own books, or, e.g., university professors getting their grad students to give five-star reviews of their advisor's book.
An example where it's impossible is basically any web site that isn't selling a product. Presently, the main method for verifying people's real-world identities is to h
Rudeness VS Freedom & Truth (Score:3)
Some of the belligerent and rude comments on /. get to me sometimes. But I would rather have freedom of speech and hear the unvarnished truth than require proper etiquette. I think we might see more politeness and get lied to more often if real names were required.
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Jon Houghi (Score:2)
At least with houghi people will be aware that the name is not one that I have on my passport.
Not necessarily. Jon Houghi sounds just as plausible as Jon Stevens.
It will lead to more internet related violence (Score:2)
When you can put a name to a commenter, you can eventually put a face and location to the commenter as well. And it may not be "government" we have to most to fear but instead we can conveniently point to the apparently vast number of self-righteous nut-jobs who believe that thinking any way other than their way warrants a death sentence or other forms of harassment.
Try disagreeing with scientology using your real name and see what happens.
Didn't work on the WSJ (Score:2)
The Wall Street Journal required full names on their comments pages.
It didn't work. They had just as many abusive, right-wing idiots as they would get with pseudonyms. I get more rational discussion at Slashdot, so you can imagine.
It's amazing what people will write under their full name. I could have gotten at least one or two people fired by reporting them to their employer, and I could have gotten at least 3 or 4 people visited by the secret service for shooting their mouths off about using their "second
ofcourse not..... (Score:2)
This is "If you have nothing to hide" again (Score:3)
I've heard this argument a lot over the years. In roughly chronological order:
If you have nothing to hide then...
...and on and on. Personally, this argument always fails for me.
Why did they need a study? (Score:2)
Anyone who reads the comments of an online newspaper will see plenty of people with their pictures and real names getting into pissing contests.
Fuck no. (Score:2)
^^^^^^^^^^^^ (real name)
FUCK NO.
Yes (Score:2)
In that case I would stop posting, so obviously overall comment quality would be way down!
No. (Score:2)
As seen on Facebook, there are a lot of shit comments even under real names.
The real names meme is not about improving comment quality, but rather it is a direct attack on anonymity as a right. There are busybodies, government officials, corporatists, etc, that think that the right to anonymity should be abolished. Doing it online is a quick way of getting people to accept it offline.
And then comes the turnkey police state, whether intended or not.
The US used to be the land of second chances. It is quick
In my experience... (Score:2)
Real name commenting does not improve my comments, it merely increases my regrets.
Real name? (Score:2)
One could also look at this from the other side... (Score:2)
the net has a very long memory... (Score:3)
Unique accounts should be required. But not "real names". The problem is that many HR departments (I know of at least one that does not admit to doing it but I know for a fact does) will as part of their research/vetting of a potential employee actually check for the name/email/phonenumber on resume on MANY online sources (myspace, facebook, google, and USENET) at the very least.
The problem is that once the information is out there, there is no way to control what it is used for. Many poeple that were active on usenet in the 90s would never have thought that their posts would last longer than the longest USENET retention period of the time. Google ended up purchasing dejanews and all their backup spools (http://googlepress.blogspot.com/2001/02/google-acquires-usenet-discussion.html) to be included in googles archives. [BTW; Google also aquired MANY other backups of USENET spools from other sources as well to round out gaps in their archives]
- An innocent comment about "Apple" now for example may cost someone their job in 3-5 years when Apple buys out the company that they work for which is currently competition...
Another problem that I have with Real Name requirement is that it would make it extremely easy for the crooks to impersonate someone and commit identity theft.....
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Should make it easier for security forces to track down those fomenting sedition, apostasy, gayness, etc.
"Gayness" is a politically incorrect term, and in any case homosexuality is a politically protected class.
Mr Coward, Mr. Anonymous Coward - please report to the Thought Control Center for Politically Correct Thought Retraining.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Informative)
homosexuality is a politically protected class
Not anywhere that still goes after apostasy. To the contrary, running on a platform of rounding up and executing the gays would be a great way to get elected (or appointed) in places like saudi, iran, uganda, etc.
It will also help governments demand people say supportive things. For example, right now lots of authoritarian regimes are happy to demand people show up to parades and pretend to be excited (and leader speeches and so on). Now imagine being told you don't 'like the dear leader enough' on the north korean future equivalent of facebook and twitter and so on.
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Should make it easier for security forces to track down those fomenting sedition, apostasy, gayness, etc.
How does one foment gayness? After all, fomenting straightness is a laughable idea, Unless you are talking about throwing a party and then I could see them wanting to track people down, like the kids in Project X.
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It doesn't make sense to you that a country that seceded from an empire in a revolution plotted under the veil of anonymity is trying to remove anonymity now that it's an empire itself? Really?