Calling for Online Accountability, Columnist Decries 'Anonymity Masquerading as Connectivity' (nwfdailynews.com) 128
An anonymous reader quotes a long-time columnist for the Northwest Florida Daily News:
In this age dominated by screens, we have become more prone to sitting in our cars, houses and workplaces and watching the world at a safe remove. From our couches, it's easy to have an opinion about everything. From that safe perspective, we know everything and we can comment, sometimes brutally, without fear of being called out. It's an age of anonymity masquerading as connectivity.
We seem to be more global, more in contact with people who may live hundreds of miles away. We can date people we've never even met. But in reality, we are hiding behind the safety of our screens, posting only photos that frame us as we want to be seen, using screen names and judging people in the online arena that we would never criticize if they were standing on front of us. This has not brought out the best in many of us.
The columnist ultimately argues the world would be improved by more accountability -- "being held responsible for our actions and our words."
The article's headline? "Stop hiding behind the safety of our screens."
We seem to be more global, more in contact with people who may live hundreds of miles away. We can date people we've never even met. But in reality, we are hiding behind the safety of our screens, posting only photos that frame us as we want to be seen, using screen names and judging people in the online arena that we would never criticize if they were standing on front of us. This has not brought out the best in many of us.
The columnist ultimately argues the world would be improved by more accountability -- "being held responsible for our actions and our words."
The article's headline? "Stop hiding behind the safety of our screens."
Anonymous is a stand-alone complex. (Score:2)
Re:Anonymous is a stand-alone complex. (Score:4, Insightful)
Anonymity is wasted on the living. (Score:2)
INSERT CLICKBAIT TOPIC LINE HERE (Score:2)
“With fire and sword the country round
Was wasted far and wide,
And many a childing mother then,
And new-born infant, died.
But things like that, you know, must be
At every famous victory.
They say it was a shocking sight,
After the field was won,
For many thousand bodies here
Lay rotting in the sun;
But things like that, you know, must be
After a famous victory.”
Robert Southey
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Uh yeah...no.
Speaker's identity matters because some people know what they are talking about and some don't.
I don't take my car to a plumber when it needs repairs, do you? The plumber may have some good ideas about how to fix it, but...
Re: Anonymous is a stand-alone complex. (Score:2, Insightful)
The US wouldn't exist without anonymous speech (Score:2)
Thomas Paine's Common Sense pamphlet was only possible because it was published anonymously.
Sure, the UK's government would have preferred no anonymity and full accountability.
But the US colonists wouldn't have preferred it that way.
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This sounds like a rant against the free sharing of ideas and thoughts
Yes, and that's where I generally agree. On the other hand I guess the rant isn't really against the "free sharing of ideas and thoughts", but against things which might not even qualify as "ideas and thoughts", things which might even prevent other, more civilized and possibly more valuable contributions from being shared at all.
In a meritocracy, an idea stands on its own, regardless of who says it. The mainstream media may not be a fan of these ideals
It is not just "mainstream media" who's opposed to meritocracy, and there are many valid reasons to oppose it. Nothing ever is "regardless of who says it", anyway – especiall
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In a meritocracy, too, someone known to have a strong history of having provided ideas and thoughts "with merit" will always be considered to rather "be right" in a dispute than someone else. And then we haven't asked the question yet what "merit" is even supposed to mean, and who is to define that.
Because we have to start somewhere. There are areas where I am an "authority", and areas that I am ignorant. My pronouncements have "merit" in the appropriate areas.
How does this happen? Partly through education, but mostly through experience of having been proven right often enough. My knowledge and experience have been shown to have merit.
Merit and meritocracy is simple to define. "A system in which advancement is based on individual ability or achievement.".
What is odd is how many people have tu
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You DO understand that "meritocracy", as a concept, was satirical in 1958, right?
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A lot of arguments are made from a position of authority. Dr so and so says so. If the idea has merit, the speaker's identity doesn't matter.
That's true for purely philosophical ideas and arguments. If you're telling me this drug is safe it matters if you're a doctor or the street corner drug dealer. Either way I won't personally perform the clinical trials to get first hand proof, for the vast majority of things we're relying on a chain of authority like that this drug was approved by the FDA that again depends on documentation of clinical trials somewhere. If you had managed to add Bullshittium to my high school text book's periodic table I'd
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I'm not going to take time to bother evaluating an idea that comes from an untrustworthy speaker. If you have time to consider every piece of garbage spewed out on the Internet, then good for you.
Re: Anonymous is a stand-alone complex. (Score:2)
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"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts" Daniel Patrick Moynihan
And therein lies the problem with the internet, which too often is about as far as you can get from a meritocracy. Billions of ill-formed (or blatantly false) opinions being presented as fact. In a meritocracy, there are mechanisms to weed the crap out (critical thinking, research, rational discussion, etc.).
As a layperson, if I present an idea as mechanically sound, ab
Bull. He wants vengeance. (Score:5, Informative)
The media hates how much power they lost recently and wants to take it out on the public. Remember when President Trump retweeted a silly meme about CNN that some random guy uploaded? CNN investigated, doxxed the guy publicly, and tried to ruin his life. They're all for anonymity when THEY endlessly cite unverified reports and rumors and quote from 'reliable insider sources'.
It's a Pattern With Them (Score:2, Flamebait)
The media hates how much power they lost recently and wants to take it out on the public. Remember when President Trump retweeted a silly meme about CNN that some random guy uploaded? CNN investigated, doxxed the guy publicly, and tried to ruin his life. They're all for anonymity when THEY endlessly cite unverified reports and rumors and quote from 'reliable insider sources'.
A similar thing happened on a larger scale with an edited action scene of Trump taking out a hoard of media outlets.
The best observation I read about that fiasco was that the original video (a clip from Kingsman where the hero shoots up a church) amounted to aristocrats (Hollywood) having fun with the idea of slaughtering peasants en masse, so it got zero backlash in the press. But then some random guy's edit/remix made the press lose their minds, because it's unacceptable for a peasant to have fun wit
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It's a real deep cut because that movie is all about Monarch mind control and Montauk boys have been used to kill targets overseas and may be behind targeted killings of people working at newspapers in the USA as well.
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Journalists react badly when you openly threaten their lives.
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That's the most hilarious part of that story -- journalists were so full of themselves that they actually thought a jibe at the death of news companies, as portrayed through the murder of anthropomorphic corporate logos, was a literal threat to their own lives!
Re:It's a Pattern With Them (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you actually watched the film? The hero doesn't shoot up a church - the villain Valentine uses his mind control devices to cause the congregation to go into a violent rage and kill each other. Harry who was in the church undercover succumbs to the mind control and participates in the massacre, but he's shot dead by Valentine immediately afterwards.
The church depicted is clearly a hate group using religion as a front, so you don't have much sympathy for them, but the point of the scene is that the rich arsehole Valentine has no respect for human life. Valentine is the bad guy.
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The establishment is pushing for anonymity to end.
You are seeing it everywhere... and their media lapdogs are obliging.
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I see you didn't even read the summary. This has nothing to do with power or the media. It's about how a medium that was supposed to connect us has instead just let us create fake personas and hide bad behaviour behind pseudo anonymity.
It's a fair point, online discourse certainly isn't what was predicted in the early days. Even places like Facebook where using your real name was supposed to make it better have largely failed in this regard.
Re:Bull. He wants vengeance. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even places like Facebook where using your real name was supposed to make it better have largely failed in this regard.
In other words, forcing people to post under their real names is not the solution to bring about this "accountability".
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And with the freedom to speak out that comes with anonymity, we have gotten the best and the worst of humanity. If there's more crap than quality, more hate than love, maybe that says more about us as a society than it does about the Internet, or about anonymity.
A small, self-selected cohort of haters does not speak for society in any single place, let alone humanity as a whole.
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Are you seriously calling "everyone connected to the internet" a "small, self-selected cohort"?
This isn't about the posting quality on 4chan specifically, or on a subreddit for motorcycle enthusiasts who have also climbed Mt. Everest while high on LSD - it's an observation across the internet in general. Anonymity or not, male or female, American or European or Middle Eastern or Australian or Chinese, black or white or any other color - people are angry animals wanting to be RIGHT, and anyone who disagrees
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The best of humanity? Can you give an example of someone anonymous posting something really exceptionally good?
I was agreeing until I tried to think of an example. Decent and occasionally good I can do, but the best?
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I see you didn't even read the summary. This has nothing to do with power or the media. It's about how a medium that was supposed to connect us has instead just let us create fake personas and hide bad behaviour behind pseudo anonymity.
It's a fair point, online discourse certainly isn't what was predicted in the early days. Even places like Facebook where using your real name was supposed to make it better have largely failed in this regard.
The tragedy of the commons writ large. My favorite example is the old usenet. There was a group called rec.radio.antenna where I could converse 1 on 1 with world renowned experts. Then the kooks moved in. People with ideas that were just plain wrong, demanding you prove their ideas wrong or else they were right. Then the folks with severe psychosexual and doxxing issues moved in and completed the coup, driving the knowledgable people out.
Much of today's internet is in the same place, or at best, heading
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My favorite example is the old usenet. There was a group called rec.radio.antenna where I could converse 1 on 1 with world renowned experts.
I'd extend your analogy to everywhere on the Internet; WWW, IRC notably. "Idle hands do the Devil's work."
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"Tragedy of the commons" refers to overuse of a shared but limited resource. Not really applicable here.
But there is more to it:
"The tragedy of the commons is a situation in a shared-resource system where individual users, acting independently according to their own self-interest, behave contrary to the common good of all users by depleting or spoiling the shared resource through their collective action."
That's from Wikipedia, but is the best definition of TotC I found.
The resource is the internet. You have your pool of users. Some just want to do cool stuff, meet with friends, maybe play games.
Some wa
Re: Bull. He wants vengeance. (Score:2)
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You're not kidding, this really happened. CNN threatens man into silence with threats of doxxing [i.redd.it]. Wow, it's amazing they can get away with this kind of shit. But they did.
Let's not forget CNN President Zucker's ex-wife is good friends with Ghislaine Maxwell. Yes, that Ghislaine Maxwell. Epstein's pimp.
Let's also not forget ABC's Amy Robach had all the evidence on Jeffrey Epstein 3 years ago. ABC hid the news and wouldn't let her report it. [youtu.be] The media covered up the story and Epstein didn't kill himsel
No (Score:5, Interesting)
You may not like it, but in today's insane climate, where people will try to have you fired from your job for saying something they don't like, being anonymous is more important now than ever before.
Yes people will abuse it. But people abuse everything they can!
I enjoyed APK. Slashdot was more fun when pure ACs were allowed.
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Honesty has no value if the source is disputable. That's why I always use my real name online and always will. The internet is an extension of public space. You can wear a mask in public space, but why would you, when literally nobody will take you seriously?
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
But it's great if you use your real name online. If you can use your real name online. Because not everyone can afford such openness, either because they need to fear the government, or they need to fear public backlash against their opinions. That backlash is not triggered only by crass statements that are universally seen as unacceptable, or hateful, or racist, or whatever; it can befall someone making a reasonable and well argued point as well. These days,certain people hold a viciously intense hatred for opinions that differ from their own. And these people are organised: if you go online with a piece of wrongthink, you face a lynch mob of thousands, possibly millions; people who will have your job and ruin your life for saying the wrong thing. And that aggression is spilling over into the public space as well, where speakers have been faced with violence... or with attempts to get them fired. Wearing a mask in public might not be such a bad choice for them.
We need anonymity now more than ever in order to preserve free speech.
Re:No (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of us fear employer backlash. I work in education, a field which is ridden with fear of scandal. We all know how easily a witch hunt can get going. People who work in education are not permitted to publicly express much in the ways of political or social opinion, and they certainly can't express any sexuality. If word got out around the school that I like looking at adult artwork, there would be angry parents, and the school would have little choice but to immediately dismiss me to appease the mob.
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And those backlashes can easily be started by allegations that are completely false. Slashdot is one of the few places I post under my real name. Usually, I use a pseudonym. At one point, I had a stalker online who would follow me, making comments on my blog and on Twitter about how I was a liar and did horrible things to children. Her proof? She was a prophet who talked to God. (Good luck arguing with someone who claims they talk to God. No evidence you present can dissuade them so I recommend not even try
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Being anonymous does not automatically make the source disputable.
It does so automatically if the anonymous person is the source and witness.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
That doesn't mean everybody is like you.
There's a lot of people online who could lose their jobs, their community standing, maybe even their lives if they were "unmasked" as (eg) being gay and living in the wrong time/place.
What about people living in evil dictatorships? Don't they have a right to plot anonymously against their governments? Unmasking them would lead to imprisonment and torture.
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>Honesty has no value if the source is disputable
What a stupid thing to say.
If a thing is true, it is true regardless of who is saying it. You determine if something is honest by verifying it with other sources, not by automatically trusting your chosen source.
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>Honesty has no value if the source is disputable
What a stupid thing to say.
If a thing is true, it is true regardless of who is saying it. You determine if something is honest by verifying it with other sources, not by automatically trusting your chosen source.
With anonymity you also strip away age,race, gender and sexual orientation. People can have their point taken for what it is rather than by who said it. Often this can mean it is praised when it would have been derided because of its origin.
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You can wear a mask in public space, but why would you, when literally nobody will take you seriously?
The only place where they would take an anoymous masked person seriously is Portland.
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Also trolls, people who say things they don't believe just to get a rise out of others.
Also idiots who pretend to be knowledgeable about things but instead spread misinformation, making the world a dumber place.
There needs to be a way to have both anonymity and accountability.
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You're right. HONESTY is what you get when you're hiding behind a screen name like mine.
This is why I am here to tell you that the OP is a trans-sexual African American Jew who diddles little kids. You know it's true because it was said by someone hiding behind the anonymity of a screen name!
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We should look for a way to have both. Anonymity and some kind of half decent forum to debate in.
Slashdot was really close but the moderation system is a constant battle. Taco talks about it on Twitter sometimes, it's an endless war.
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I think the discourse on Slashdot became a lot more civil once account registration was required. That is *the* reason I came back to the site. The anonymous trolls were flooding the site with their racist drivel. It was all bots and vitriol, with no value whatsoever. I am very glad that is gone.
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Disagree. Slashdot had a problem with trolls and kooks, that's true, but the vast majority of them got modded to -1 in short order. Removing anonymous posts was an unnecessary step.
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Do you know what you get when someone doesn't have accountability online? HONESTY
I don't see why that's true. I've even seen people saying the opposite. People on Slashdot reminiscing about the good old days of the internet, and how they'd sign onto chat boards (or whatever) and lie, lie, lie. And why wouldn't they? It's anonymous. All of this lying they had pent up that they couldn't use in real life now had an outlet. And since all they did was lie, fantasize and troll, they'd assume that everyone else on the internet was doing the same. So for them, the lack of accountability was the
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Technically, that's what lack of anonymity can lead to.
Yeah, it is called a "social credit system" (Score:4, Insightful)
Works very well, too, apparently.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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By that same token, the lack of anonymity has allowed for showboating and arguments designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. I'd take the cesspool of any of the chans over Twitter any day.
And especially- anonymity protects those most vulnerable, least able to present a cogent argument without being hounded by the mob. Not to mention annonimity means more accountability, as the argument stands on its merits and not on the prestige of the speaker.
Re:I'm not sure this is really the issue.. (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair being anonymous does make it easier to give an opinion that is perhaps not well thought out, that may be more emotion than reason. It also allows people to state opinions without (much) fear of reprisal and get their voices heard. I tend to think there are pluses and minuses to anonymity.
The answer is for people to grow thicker skins, not to take away everybody's privacy.
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The answer is for people to grow thicker skins, not to take away everybody's privacy.
It's not a question of thick skins or not, and in many cases it's not even a case of offence or not. It's a problem of discourse. And you can see that quite well here on slashdot. A good chunk of logged in posts always have been at least grammatically correct posts with well formed sentences regardless of the opinion or in some cases incorrect garbage they produce.
On the flip side you go down to AC level I may just have replied: Shut-up you stupid c**t.
The old adage: If you don't have anything sensible to s
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it would to have everyone at least agree on facts that reflect actual reality.
But the world is FLAT! Different objects fall at different SPEEDS! The Divine Rule of KINGS! Animals spontaneously appear from NOTHING! There are dragons and mermaids in the SEAS! Thog, over there, does it with WHEELS! Eggs are GOOD for you. Wait, BAD. Wait, GOOD, Wait, where are we again? Well flip IT.
Yeah. Let's all agree on facts that accurately reflect reality. Sometimes the reality changes viewpoint, but most times we don't even bother to look. Then we can happily OSTRACIZE the ones that don'
Thoughtcrime has gotten harder to prosecute (Score:4, Insightful)
What he really wants is an accountability system for thoughtcrime. In todayâ(TM)s toxic environment where having had the _wrong_ opinion at any point in your life is grounds for dismissal or worse, I would like a shred of anonymity to exist.
In an ironic twist, Slashdot itself has turned off posting without logging in ...
It's coming (Score:3, Interesting)
China has shown the world the way. You can't even get an internet connection there without facial recognition. This means the government can track everything you say back to the source. It's not so useful for stopping your speech, but what it is useful for is "rewinding" and seeing what you said, and who you said it to, and seeing your connections to others in a network that can be rolled up.
People won't speak their minds when faced with the very real threat of punishment. This is what led, among other things, to the fall of the Soviet Union. There was so much people couldn't say, and it produced a society full of lies. The people became super-cynical and this led directly to the fall of the Revolution. It can happen here.
Hagbard Celine's Second Law:
"Accurate communication is possible only in a non-punishing situation."
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Re:It's coming (Score:4, Interesting)
Why do people invariably bring up China? Have a look at this travel guide for Saudi Arabia. It makes China look positively liberal:
In Saudi Arabia, the internet is highly censored and all traffic is closely monitored. While a lot of social media sites are allowed, you should avoid posting any 'sensitive material' as it can lead to certain penalties, including hefty fines and imprisonment.
Blocked sites
More than 5.5 million sites are blocked by Saudi Arabia’s national firewall, including sites relating to; porn, LBGT+ and human rights issues, terrorism, critic against the kingdom and/or the royal family, anything against Islam and satire. Individual sites are also frequently blocked and unblocked depending on the political atmosphere. Practically, this means you won’t have access to adult entertainment, various international news sites or streaming services.
The ban on VoIP calls, such as Skype, Facetime and Whatsapp, was lifted in 2017, but calls are still frequently restricted.
Monitoring personal content
The heavy censorship also extends to content stored on your personal devices. Physical searches of personal items, such as laptops and mobile phones, are not uncommon so you need to be careful with what material you have on them. Revealing beach photos, for example - not to mention nudes - stored on your mobile could get you in trouble.
As well as sites being blocked, all online traffic is very closely monitored. You are advised not to post any sensitive material (anything that can be considered anti-islamic, offensive, harmful or illegal in Saudi Arabia), on public accounts to avoid any misunderstandings; journalists, bloggers, and human right activists have faced heavy punishments after posting ‘suspicious’ material online.
VPN provides some protection
If you want to access blocked sites and/or protect your privacy when online, getting a good quality VPN on your computer can be a good idea, but remember that even with a VPN, you can still get caught accessing blocked sites.
Generally, VPN sites are blocked in Saudi Arabia so you will need to get one sorted before you arrive. Make sure you invest in a good quality VPN service and avoid free ones as they often compromise your security. It’s a good idea to test a VPN’s security before using one. A good VPN should have:
Source: https://www.justlanded.com/eng... [justlanded.com]
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How we haven't carpet-bombed Mecca with C-138's full of live pigs yet I'll never know.
Re:It's coming (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do people invariably bring up China? Have a look at this travel guide for Saudi Arabia.
Two reasons, really.
First, today's rapidly modernizing China is infinitely more important and influential internationally than a backward fundamentalist dictatorship, which survives only because a foreign superpower keeps a "royal family" of camel fuckers in their palace by protecting them with a carrier group or two and selling them a fuckton of advanced weaponry. So people tend to observe with more attention and interest the things that China does, and are more likely to try to emulate it than the Saudi effing Arabia.
Second, in a decade or two China will again dominate the world economy as it has been for most of the history of the world. The "soft power" that economic domination gives them, will increase and China may start exporting its "values" using the very precedents the US created during the Pax Americana age. Saudi Arabia, on the contrary, will only get poorer and less important.
Size matters.
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I've heard you China apologists get paid fifty cents a post, is that true? Do you get Chinese money or dollars?
They get paid the same is you Saudi Arabian apologists.
The OP never said the Chinese weren't bad. He pointed out that there are other worse actors that are never attacked for those actions. Saudi Arabia being one of those.
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WTF? Apologist? Where on Earth did that come from?
I pointed out China has real-name ID on their internet, and I got a long screed of whataboutism designed to get the attention off of China. And now here's another one. So do you really get fifty cents per post or not? I'd really like to know.
It's a beautiful thing... (Score:3)
The problem is that anonymity is a *necessary* evi (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, yes, people can be dicks when they are anonymous. Because they can't be caught, or punished, or shunned, or even just stared at with a tisk tisk.
*Can be.* It is not the *reason* they are dicks!
The reason is: Dunbars number. Everybody in a too large group is interchangeable *to us*, whether we can know everything about them or not.
That means we can't feel empathy towards them. Which means we act like sociopaths towards them.
*That does not go away, if we de-anonymize everybody!*
We aren't anonymous to politicians, nor are they to us, yet they are dicks to us, and we to them.
We aren't anonymous to corporations, nor are they to us, yet they are dicks to us, and we to them.
And on the Internet it is the same: All you achieve by de-anonymizing everyone, is that people can be *more effective* dicks towards each other now!
Somebody very roughly calculated, that purely statistically, absolutely no matter what your views are ... there are about 5000 people on this planet, with the means and the will, to kill you for it.
And now they'd know who you are!
The solution is, to have smaller groups! Groups where you get to know each other. Where empathy is possible!
*Then* de-anonymization means people aren't dicks just because something triggered them or something outside ruined their mood. As they might catch a punch in the face or simply exclusion.
But normally, people already won't be dicks to each other. As they will be actual people to each other!
Conclusion: The author is falsely applying offline society thinking to the Internet, as he isn't an Internet native, but from the Eternal September crowd. His suggestion is the result of a blind knee-jerk reaction, and won't work, but hurt us all even more.
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It's a classic double-edge sword. It protects gay folk, but it also protects nazis.
Well, about Nazis... they are people too. (Score:2)
The problem I described is exactly why there are Nazis in the first place.
Despite being a "dirty foreigner", I got to know a few Nazis personally. (Apparently, I'm a genuine Arian. Don't ask me...)
It is a very simple pattern: Their life is shit, they feel helpless, and are looking for a cause. And nearly always, they genuinely aren't it. I think anybody can empathize with that. So when a potential scapegoat is presented to them, they of course take it. Makes life easy. Whether that be foreigners, 'republica
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How are corporations "dicks to us?" By providing goods and services that we can choose to pay money for or not?
Computers.
Mobile phones.
Candy bars.
Sliced bread.
Email.
Sex toys in a wide range of colors, sizes and configurations.
On-demand porn.
Maps.
Cars.
Motorcycles.
Itch cream.
PENCILS!
Personalized dog collars.
Koi pond filtration kits.
I am sure I left some stuff out.
Yeah. What dicks.
I prefer my VPN on top (Score:2)
He must be a police shill or a moron.
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If you trust your VPN, then you're the moron.
If the journalist really believes that... (Score:3)
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lol you sound like Julian "Scientific Journalism" Assange.
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In the modern internet using your real name online is basically delayed suicide; at some point you're going to say something that causes twitter or 4chan to explode, and when that happens people will use your real name to ruin your life.
Only absolute morons use their real name online when it comes to stuff that isn't directly work related
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If the journalist really believes that he should have included his name in the article summary, phone number, and home address
There's a lot between being anonymous, and giving your full complete details, and only a little goes a long way to removing anonymity.
Notice how people in the street that you meet don't generally act like insane thundercunts despite not handing you their home address and phone numbers?
Re:If the journalist really believes that... (Score:4, Interesting)
If you know someone's full name and the state they live in most of the time you can just put that in pipl.com or similar and get their mobile phone number and home address.
From there you can send them pizzas, swat them, call them at 4am every day from private numbers, whatever. You can even find out their family and friends and give them the same treatment. And that's just simple harassment, you can be far more malicious if you're angry enough.
Only brainlets use their real name online for anything that isn't directly work related
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Notice how people in the street that you meet don't generally act like insane thundercunts
Come visit Seattle and meet the people rendered effectively anonymous by the lack of a residence, job or bank account.
Can I just ask... (Score:2)
...how the fuck did this make it to the front page of Slashdot? It's not even long enough to be an opinion column, let alone an article, god forbid "News for Nerds." This article is trash and whomever shared it and posted it is also trash.
Anonymous sources? (Score:2)
Let the continued stream of Babel continue! (Score:1)
As humanity evolves with the Internet, many of the same trial-error-jettison-keep dynamics are at play.
Twitter's usership has peaked and will further decline. It's a weird echo chamber of people screaming in agreement or insane hatred; so normal folks looking for a take on things dip their toes into the tweet stream and recoil in horror, never to return. A quick example of the "morals" on display: their nutty CEO hangs out in Myanmar with murderers, extolling how serene they are while his platform will kick
Tough call (Score:3)
There's a lot to be said for a marketplace of ideas in which credentials cannot be abused because identities are hard to verify. However, anonymity itself is not immune to its own forms of abuse, and as this article points out, the abuse of anonymity has run so rife, with such devastating effects, that some compelling arguments can be made that it may very well not have been worthwhile on balance.
If there were an easier way to dox and shame the abusers of anonymity, it might go a long way toward addressing anonymity's problems. Abuse the privilege, lose the privilege, and potentially a lot more besides.
we have always been anonymous (Score:3)
anonymity masquerading as connectivity
Face it, we are anonymous and always were. The internet has nothing to do with it. Say whatever you want because nobody is listening.
Yesterday I visited a poetry group. About 30 poets in a large circle. One by one they went to the microphone and recited their latest work. Each had their turn to speak. Nobody listened. The other poets had whispered conversations or quietly rehearsed the poem they planned to present. They fiddled with their phones or flipped pages in a book. But nobody listened. The speakers may as well have been speaking to the bathroom mirror.
This is what happens on the internet. Everyone speaks, nobody listens. We have the illusion that we are heard. We might get 'likes' or other indications that someone saw our words, but did they read them, did they reach out to understand what was said? Those addictive likes give us the illusion that someone is listening; someone cares.
There are 7 billion people here who think they are special. They cry in the night to be acknowledged. Some will go to great lengths to be recognized; they may become great athletes or politicians or devious criminals. The most desperate among them become icons like Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Napoleon, Hitler. They made some waves but they were not special except for their extreme need for attention. The internet had nothing to do with it. We have always been anonymous. Accepting that is the first step toward self realization.
I know, right? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And disguised as Indians too. Damned troublemakers need to get their social credit scores knocked down for dumping all our tea.
This sums it up (Score:2)
This has been said [9cache.com] in various ways, but the point is still valid.
Re: (Score:2)
On being an adult (Score:2)
I remember a time when being an adult meant that you were able to filter unkind words and respond appropriately ( ie: not respond ). We seem to have lost that ability, as a whole, or maybe I'm just looking at the past through rose colored glasses.
Who the fuck cares if some rando on the internet says something mean about you? Why does it matter? Ignore it and move on....unless it's solid criticism of course, and perhaps that's what this "journalist" is actually railing against; the plebs having the freedo
The Problem (Score:2)
" The columnist ultimately argues the world would be improved by more accountability -- "being held responsible for our actions and our words." "
Politicians, CEO's, lobbyist types and practically every news organization in existence spew lies all the time and aren't held accountable for any of it. When THEY start being held accountable for said lies, we can talk about it.
What's good for the gander . . . . . .
Besides, without anonymity what you end up with isn't honesty.
You get a population too afraid to vo
Anonymity is useful because the rich and powerful (Score:2)
Good and bad (Score:2)
Anonymity brings abuse (Score:2)
It also brings honesty. To get at the abuse, one must step over honesty's corpse. Careful what you wish for.
The irony is not lost on me... (Score:2)
Wanted to post as Anonymous coward:
Subject: He responded pseudo-anonymously...
"Fuck you, no."
Only for Slashdot to respond: "Sorry, anonymous posting has been turned off. Please register and log in."
Dammit.