How would a “true” web-of-trust be superior?
I want people to be free to criticize that without being worried about being targeted by the government or it's supporters.
It is extremely important that people are free to criticize the government, while being as immune as possible to retaliation for that criticism.
The government has a documented history of retaliating against people regarding speech issues.
There was a long period, know as "the red scare" in which this happened.
There are many forms of "in between" retaliation, that is in between a democracy and an authoritarian government.
And it is important to also protect people against these in between consequences, by allowing them to be anonymous.
We don't have to straw man the situation, and talk about a dictatorship that kills people.
Instead, we can also say that lesser forms of retaliation are also bad, such as the kind that happened during the red scare.
Joe McCarthy was censured by congress and fell out of political favour. Furthermore, the Supreme Court handed down a number of decisions that greatly reduced the scope of the government's ability to penalise supporters of communism such as: Yates v. United States, Scales v. United States, and United States v. Robel. This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society, rather than coming up with elaborate mechanisms to hide our views from the government.
Ok, and regardless of that, anonymity still helps people avoid consequences for their speech. Which is a good thing, given that the government has in the past done things like that.
> This is how such matters should be tackled in a free society
Well that is cold comfort to the people who suffered real harm, during the red scare. While other people were trying to solve that problem "the right way", lots of people still suffered harm in the mean time.
Things don't always get solves immediately. Sometimes, problems just exist. And regardless if things have been solved "the right way" or not, other solutions, such as anonymity still help.
None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity still helps some people avoid some consequences for their speech, which is good.
> elaborate mechanisms
None of this is elaborate. Lots of people have pretty effective ability to post speech anonymously.
Instead, it would be you who would have to engage in large elaborate schemes to prevent people from being anonymous.
The default, easy, non-elaborate solution is what we have now. Which is that there are many platforms where anonymity is easy for most people, most of the time. And that the government would have to take pretty extreme actions to remove that from people, like court orders that don't happen very much right now for most people.
Perhaps, but there is now firm legal precedent that greatly limits their ability to do it again.
> None of this stuff is exclusive. Feel free to try and stop government consequences some other way. But regardless of that, anonymity still helps some people avoid some consequences for their speech, which is good.
Some people should not be able to avoid the consequences of their speech. For instance, people that harass, slander, and threaten others online. Additionally, people that use their speech to obtain money under false pretenses shouldn't be able to hide behind a veil of anonymity. Police officers that enforce the law by day and joke about how much they hate black people and jews while squirreled away behind their keyboard at night should have to own their opinions in the public square.
> Lots of people have pretty effective ability to post speech anonymously.
It's possible with enough tech savviness, but tactics like VPNs are more frail than most people believe.
There are also the situations of highly targeted minorities that would now be unable to protect themselves, because you've made anonymity illegal. These people really do need anonymity to protect themselves.
And no amount of laws can protect someone from a hate mob attacking them, that doesn't care about the consequences. One of the only ways for many of these people to protect themselves, is to be anonymous.
> Some people should not be able to avoid the consequences of their speech.
I have given pretty good examples where people absolutely should be given immunity from consequences. Specifically people should be immune from consequences if they are engaging in government criticism.
The examples that I gave are great reasons as for why anonymity is important for people.
> It's possible with enough tech savviness
Actually, it is possible with basically no amount of tech savviness. All you have to do is click the create new account button, on twitter, and you have just been given a pretty large amount of anonymity.
In order to have your twitter account de-anonymized, the government has to take pretty extreme actions, such as court orders.
Even if a certain anonymous situation is not 100% foolproof, it is still important that it is available, as it can help most people, most of the time.
It turns out, that simply being able to create an anonymous twitter account, is pretty anonymous, most of the time, for most people.
Also, the original point that I was countering was this "pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media".
So I am talking about specifically why anonymity, in the form of having the ability to do what people do now, which is create anonymous twitter accounts, and engage in political discourse.
To reiterate, I was specifically talking about circumstances where people broadcast to mass audiences. If people of a certain minority want to congregate together in a private space to discuss things important to them as though they would in their own house, then they should have every right to do so in private.
> And no amount of laws can protect someone from a hate mob attacking them, that doesn't care about the consequences. One of the only ways for many of these people to protect themselves, is to be anonymous.
I don't know what world you live in, but I haven't seen a hate mob running down my street for a while.
> Actually, it is possible with basically no amount of tech savviness. All you have to do is click the create new account button, on twitter, and you have just been given a pretty large amount of anonymity.
> In order to have your twitter account de-anonymized, the government has to take pretty extreme actions, such as court orders
That won't offer you much protection at all from the government. So you seem to have a lot of trust in warrants being issued justly, but also a great fear that the government will turn against you.
It's not that hard to get a court order if the government has probable cause that you've committed a crime. There have been 55,000 warrants for US Facebook accounts since the start of 2020. This is not including national security requests, which Facebook is not legally allowed to disclose.
https://transparency.facebook.com/government-data-requests/c...
> Also, the original point that I was countering was this "pseudo-anonymous political discourse on open mainstream mass-broadcast social media".
> So I am talking about specifically why anonymity, in the form of having the ability to do what people do now, which is create anonymous twitter accounts, and engage in political discourse.
I'm glad we're back on the same page, so would you say that the culture of anonymous political discourse on social media has resulted a constructive political discourse? Is there nothing you'd change about it?
Ok, and I think that it is important that highly targeted minorities are free to broadcast to mass audiences, without having to worry about being targeted or harrassed. Anyone who is fighting for civil rights, could become the target of mass hate and harassment, for both themselves and their friends and family, if the hate mob decides to target them.
If these groups did not have these protections, then it would only be the privileged, who would be able to express themselves to a wide audience. Other people, who are more frequently targeted, would no long have a voice.
> they should have every right to do so in private.
They should have the right to do that in public, as well, to a mass audience, while also being able to take actions to protect themselves from harassment, by being anonymous.
> but I haven't seen a hate mob running down my street for a while.
Women and minorities face a lot of harassment. It is not about a "physical" mob. There are more ways that mobs can target and harass people, than just some mob on the street engaging in physical violence.
I am not sure what to tell you, if you are not aware of all the threats and harassment that these people can get, from randos.
> So you seem to have a lot of trust in warrants being issued justly
Being forced to issue a warrant is another protection. That is much better, than if some random government official, just has access to that information, and can retaliate against you, without anyone being able to find out about it.
> also a great fear that the government will turn against you.
It is not just about some totalitarian regime. Instead it is about the in between stuff. Things like a no name burocrat, having your information, and using their power to target you, without there being a easy way for them to get caught.
Warrets and paper trails make it more difficult for government officials to abuse the information that they would otherwise have access to, if it was all available without a warrent.
> Is there nothing you'd change about it?
Yes, I would provide more ways for people to be even more anonymous, and provide stronger methods for people to protect themselves from retaliation, whether that be by random government employees, or random people on the internet.
Joe McCarthy wasn't the terrible person he is made out to be. Information discovered later, long after his censure, proves that he was correct in many of the cases where he was thought wrong.
Today's lies and censorship will become the supposed "facts" that are taught to future generations. All sorts of falsehoods will be used to created graded test questions.
Instead, we have the possibility of the recommendation engine recommending videos en-mass.
Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely unafraid of attaching their names to their beliefs. Just look at the stuff people say on Facebook. And consider that you don't need to publish your name in order to listen to a far-right ideologue -- only to be one. And it doesn't take many ideologues to reach a large audience.
I don't know that there is a solution, outside of "encourage platforms to effectively deplatform bad actors." This has been successful in the past in dealing with movements which recruit heavily through social media, like ISIS — the difference is that social media companies have feared partisan backlash from conservatives if they apply these strategies against the far right.
This risks suppressing free speech, but I think this entire issue is a result of us wanting to treat social media companies as perfectly neutral universal forums. The notion of unbiased platforms needs to be abandoned, and social media monoliths need to be split into distributed, federated platforms, like email or Mastodon. This way, platforms can moderate to their heart's content: excessive moderation of any particular instance is less of an issue because users can always move to a different, better instance, but people who were justly banned will be isolated from the general public in their own servers.
This model will have challenges, foreseen and unforeseen, but it's got to be better than the current media oligopoly. At the very least, it's progress.
> make spokespeople and activists extremely vulnerable
As you've demonstrated, anonymity is an imperfect system of protecting such spokespeople, so they should have greater legal protections. Reducing the spectrum of internet anonymity would actually support this goal as it'd simplify applying existing legal protections such as restraining orders within the internet domain.
> Beside, plenty of far-right reactionaries are entirely unafraid of attaching their names to their beliefs. Just look at the stuff people say on Facebook.
Perhaps, but that far right ideology must receive social promotion through 'likes', 'shares', and other such mechanisms in order to spread their message. Why is it necessary for these acts to be anonymous?
I sincerely don't understand how further decentralisation or federation could help resolve the problem. It just seems to me like you'd be making the moderation problem harder as you'd be shifting the burden from a few large companies to many small companies.
Meanwhile, the people who are actually threatened by this are the people reactionaries are victimizing — closeted gay and trans people, for instance. They lose their ability to find supporting communities online because as soon as they engage with a forum like that, such as for instance a relevant subreddit, their participation is broadcasted to everyone they know in real life. It's easy to say "they should have greater legal protection," but they already have legal protection. It's already illegal to murder trans people for being trans, but trans people are nonetheless subject to a massive number of hate crimes. Isolating these people and making it impossible for them to reach out when they're in abusive home life situations is a terrible policy.
And this is just one example of a group for whom the loss of online anonymity would be hugely damaging. You've massively underestimated the harm which being de-anonymized online can cause (that's why "doxxing" someone, or releasing their personal details online, is such a serious threat to their safety).
Does anyone know of any good research on the early days of radio? I have a suspicion we had a similar problem before regulation due to the overcrowded airwaves.
If you know of any good books that cover this era let me know please.
These movements did not materialise out of a vacuum. Their growth and replenishment of strength is largely contingent on permissive mainstream platforms on which to set up shop.
I think platforms like Youtube and Facebook have shown the dangers of democratised mass-broadcasting. There were dreams at the dawn of the internet that enhanced access to information would create a better informed citizenry, but rather it has just exacerbated our worst traits as a society.
I don't know what the solution is really. The current situation is untenable in America, but how does one unpick it without resorting to totalitarianism? I'm somewhat partial to ending anonymity on social media posts, so at least people must stand publicly by their positions and can't create sock puppets to inflate their message.