https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_News_Transfer_Protocol
Note that the D language forums are on NNTP. For those that might dismiss NNTP as obsolete, may I present:
Bitcoin is mostly a speculative tool and what few transactions happen on the blockchain are dominated by drugs and other contraband.
Society doesn't hold together at all unless people are smacked back into line when they act antisocially. No amount of technology can change that fundamental truth; ostracism and silence are core to human nature.
I see your point - Bitcoin does exactly what it claims to do - but it is not a feasible replacement for money.
Some sort of distributed validation mechanism could conceivably be created which avoids any single point of control for a piece of content. And in fact you could use the BTC blockchain as a proof of concept - post a message with your transaction that gets encoded in the blockchain. It now becomes impossible to delete or modify. It is essentially uncensorable. You could delete it from your copy of the blockchain, but the real blockchain is the consensus of all nodes, not your particular copy.
>Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal.
Garlic routing provides plausible deniability. ISPs can't know for sure that you are using I2P, for instance, or what you are using it for. Sure, they could force every ISP to ban all encrypted P2P connections. And we could start setting up mesh networks that would subsequently be brought down by authorities. But here's the real question: how much abuse will people tolerate in the name of "security"? What will happen when a majority realizes that these measures are intended to control and suppress them while the elite keeps acting with ever-increasing impunity?
Change either variable, to a "normal" hotel/office/home or a public VPN, and the connection can become very unreliable, if it works at all.
(with apologies to William Gibson)
Sadly, given the actions of Twitter, Facebook, Apple, and Google, that is a preferred option to the current state today. Ironically we will have more freedom in that state.
We have a system of justice, you get to defend youself, judged by your peers and posting general BS about politics is not a crime.
Youtube, on the other hand, will ban your channel without any recourse, so if you are earning a living from it, you kids might be on the street because something in a mysteruous machine learning algorithm got triggered.
> We have a system of justice ...
That's irrelevant here, and there are probably far more people who are likely to lose their livelihoods if they post unpopular stuff about politics under their real name. I think that political content creators on YouTube supporting their family through money from their advertising program are an extreme edge-case, and they can always move to a new platform, whereas people in the former category would risk their non-political day-jobs and this would have a broader chilling effect across society at large.
And tell me how the solution to this problem could possibly be to give the government access to and control over the internet activity of every member of the population? What kind of dystopian nightmare would we be trying to create? Do you think that access to this level and breadth of data is likely to make future governments more or less authoritarian? Do you think it might attract more authoritarian figures into politics? Of course governments can surveil people currently, but in relatively limited numbers or with the cooperation of service providers, but I can't imagine people seriously thinking that this would be a good idea, or maybe they haven't thought through its practical implications.
I do not see how that is true outside of US, unless we are talking about seriously extremist stuff
"they can always move to a new platform"
Like what? What platform has at least 10% market share as alternative to YouTube?
"Of course governments can surveil people currently, but in relatively limited numbers"
Millions of people is 'limited numbers'?
The liberty you are talikng about was already lost to corporates, the survalience state is alrwady here. you have no ability to escape phone providers selling your date and no knowledge of them doing it.
At least governments can be held accountable at the voting booth, a monopolistic company can't.
There was a really good quote adressing monopolies: "If we will not accept kings and tyrants over over lives, then we shall not accept a king over necceseties of life"
> I do not see how that is true outside of US
It's true amongst much of the Anglosphere. And of course China, Russia I imagine, most of the Middle East, Africa, the rest of Asia, and South America. So the vast majority of the world's population. And if people can't speak anonymously or pseudonymously, it's going to have a huge chilling effect on free expression online. By the way, look around the world to see just how much the definition of "really extremist stuff" can vary.
I didn't suggest that moving to a platform outside of the Big Tech hegemony was necessarily easy, but I did suggest that it was possible. We're in the early days of the consumer revolt against Facebook/Youtube, but if people are suitably motivated to move to other platforms, those other platforms will grow and develop. And it's a whole lot easier to move to a different tech platform than it is to move to a different country, or to change the law when you're in a political minority.
Governments can really only properly surveil people who are taking active measures to conceal their activities in relatively small numbers. They can get a certain amount of information and metadata about the majority of the population who use popular platforms and services, but there has been a tendency in recent years to encrypt everything and then to collaborate with the security services of particular countries.
> The liberty you are talikng about was already lost to corporates, the survalience state is alrwady here. you have no ability to escape phone providers selling your date and no knowledge of them doing it.
If I'm concerned about Alexa hearing my private conversations, I can unplug her. I get to decide whether the potential risk to my privacy is worth the benefits of using particular products and services. I can ask my friends not to livestream me on Facebook when they walk into my house. There's loads of popular technology that I'm perfectly free not to use, or to seek out alternatives. The fact that so many people choose the easiest, shiniest option is their decision, and their problem, and you don't get to make that my problem. It's both untrue and it's also a complete non-sequitur to say that we're already living voluntarily in a corporate surveillance state and then to say that we might as well therefore make it into a government-controlled surveillance state, and to replace terms and conditions with laws, and account cancellations and bans with criminal penalties.
> At least governments can be held accountable at the voting booth
In practice, this only tends to happen in countries where people are relatively free to do things on the Internet without the government tracking and controlling their activity. There's a causal link here.
> a monopolistic company can't.
Facebook will only continue to be the pre-eminent social network as long as vast numbers of people choose to continue to use it. You, personally, can hold it to account by not using it any more, but you have no right to stop other people from using it if they want to.
> There was a really good quote adressing monopolies: "If we will not accept kings and tyrants over over lives, then we shall not accept a king over necceseties of life"
To suggest that Facebook is a necessity of life really highlights what a position of privilege we're in. Perhaps people who are trying to advance that kind of argumentation need to have a good, hard look at what the "needs" and the "wants" really are in their life. I'd also recommend that you read some of the Austrian economists to find out what a real monopoly would actually look like, and why it is that you're unlikely to encounter one.
A lot of users IDs are already tied to their ISP. A simple date/timestamp and a IP address would probably identify the majority of users (in the US).
Yes, true. It's more the illegal-to-access-internet-anonymously part that concerns. Overreach is usually declared 'in the name of security/crime' reasons. A paid licence for more privileged access has also been mooted, but I can't recall where I read that.
[1] far too strong in fact as far as I understand it
Even when said stories are patently false and designed to enrage and inflame public opinion.
See also all the papers who escaped any real consequences for hacking the voicemail of a murdered child (as well as various celebrities).
How did the US government take back any control from newspaper barons? I honestly cannot think of anything.
I mean you already do. What do you call a signing up to an ISP?
Alternatively, you can use free wifi or a burner SIM with data. That possibility is not the case in every country, nor will it necessarily remain open in the future.
I don't remember for my current place but I know that when I first moved to the US I needed a credit check to get internet access in my home.
It’s gate keeping all the way down, it’s already here.
Everyone was all “ooo 1984! Scurry! Let’s build a Brave New World to combat it!”
Really though at this point, aside from science what industrial discovery is there?
We’re still just “flock building” like splinter religions.
This syntax or that, still an ARM or x86 chip with known limitations.
Programming to our imaginations delight is great as an art. Industrializing it is just pandering to speculative economics. “Bet you can’t!” “Bet I can!”
Round n round we go; HR and accounting filtering for the right kind of compliance.
Sure fear the government.
I fear humanity. It’s insane and clearly intent on its destruction
That is a business relationship, where a personal license to access the Internet refers to a government grant for use. Those are drastically different from each other.
Political leaders in the US are not really all that beholden to their voters, and very frequently strive to push self-serving agendas ($) over the needs of the public.
As dystopian as it sounds, we're already well on our way toward the Balkanization of the internet. Russia and China have their own firewalls bearing down on global network access. Many other authoritarian countries are following suit. It's going to be hard to stop that train regardless of if/how Facebook or Google are regulated.
We shouldn't confuse a throttled Internet with a fractured, balkanized one.
Biden is pro-MPAA/RIAA.
Super interesting that you mention this. I was just thinking the other day about what an absolute dumpster fire "the internet" is due to anonymity (obviously that's not the _only_ reason, but it's a non-trivial reason). This idea that "Let's give people the ability to be anonymous, and somehow, that's gonna make us all bond together and be better" is pretty hilarious in hindsight. Anonymity seems to just bring the worst out of people (that's not a tech problem, that's a human/culture problem). I would personally love to see a "web" where you have to comment...as your public self. Post messages...as your public self (not just on an individual platform level). So on and so forth.
I 1000% agree that eventually people will need some type of unique identifier to operate on the internet. And I'll take it a little further and say that in the future, anonymity will be reserved for the wealthy primarily.
And my reputation does not follow between groups either. I can even have completely distinct friend groups for different activities. Nobody at boxing class knows anybody I work with and the people that hang out with me at a bar can be a completely new set all over. I could even use different names in all these groups! :O
Yet we're all perfectly civil.
The same works online. I choose to use `swizec` everywhere, but is `ralston3` the same as `@r_ralston3` on twitter? Who knows. Does it matter? Not in the least. Look at us being perfectly fine fellows to each other.
On the other hand, you have to show government ID to walk into a bar and yet people are kicked out for bad behavior all the time.
People are kicked out of bars for being assholes and it’s because they have been drinking their inhibitions are lowered and judgement of consequences is disrupted. Similarity to anonymous assholes on the Internet - their inhibitions are lowered because there’s no consequence.
I don’t think we should require names use or prohibit anonymous contributions. But the culture of the internet is pretty bad in this regard today when millions of anonymous people spend millions of hours getting riled up at shit posts from anonymous people.
Pseudonyms that are not trivially created and discarded can build reputation and will generally behave themselves (see Urbit’s approach to this problem).
Anonymous accounts incentivize awful behavior (see 4chan).
Real life is different because you’re not truly anonymous in person - you’re recognizable most of the time and identifiable. There are also more in person norms and social constraints.
The exception to this in real life might be mobs, where the chaos and confusion can provide some anonymity and well - people in mobs don’t behave that well either.
I think a lot of it comes down to social norms. From what I remember, 4chan was almost boringly pleasant outside /b/. Because the norm and moderation were towards thoughtful posting.
On the other hand pseudonymous reddits with the norm of knee jerk responses and political twitter are awful. Because that’s the encouraged norm.
Personally, I think the important factors for maintaining a civil community is a focus on civility, some overt selection of topics (vs. having a group that's about everything), and a lot of moderation work in the background that prevents the decay of standards. Social norms, unfortunately, don't maintain themselves.
HN also has great moderation (thanks DanG) and a strict set of rules which helps.
If HN was truly anonymous (everyone posted under anon accounts) I think it would decay and I’m not sure DanG would be able to save it.
I do think Urbit’s approach to this (low cost to creating an ID) is a really good one for handling this problem and the general problem of spam decentralized, and at scale.
Huh? People get "censored" all the time on this site due to incivility.
Edit: I misread the parent comment, sorry :)
There are no real-world consequences for being an anonymous jerk online, so you are comparing apples and oranges.
> On the other hand, you have to show government ID to walk into a bar and yet people are kicked out for bad behavior all the time.
That's because under the influence of alcohol, one stops caring as much about real world consequences.
Being anon online is (somewhat) like being a drunk in a bar (for some people).
Your examples here have proven the opposite of what you were trying to say.
I used to believe that for a while, up until I started using Facebook. Then I experienced that people under their real names are just the same as the anonymous crowd. All it takes is to view the comments under any news article, or visit a group for regular people dealing with regular things.
That's why I stick to niche, focused communities - like HN. There you can find some semblance of civilization. The "general" Internet takes away whatever faith in humanity I have left.
There's something about commenting on-line in general, that seems to bring the worst out of people. My hypothesis is that you have to have a certain set of values around civility and rationality to be able to interact with other people on-line in a sane way. Without it - and I think most people haven't developed these values - it's just a mess. Why it doesn't happen so much in meatspace? I think it's a combination of social customs, taboos, and having more control over participating in conversations with random strangers.
I agree with everything you've said, but I'd also offer "evolutionary adaptation" as a reason not to be a dick to people who are close enough to physically attack.
The culture of a site is largely determined by engineering and moderation decisions made by its owners. Nothing more.
Anonymity is what gives foreign journalists the freedom to leak content their governments would execute them for.
Anonymity protects marginalised groups and it is essential to protecting democracy and freedom.
Isn't this Facebook? Granted I'm sure not every single profile is "verified" with an actual ID, but lack of anonymity doesn't seem to stop as many people as you'd think.
It only discourages the most sane people from participating thus it boosts the signal of the remaining crazies. Anyone who doesn't yet realize this just needs to join some local Facebook groups.
I think you can have platforms that encourage civilized discussion w/o needing to link that to a real name. (HN is a great example of that, in fact!)
And conversely, even a platform with real names attached can still end up being extremely uncivil (e.g. Facebook).
There's also a long (pre-internet) history of people publishing good stuff anonymously, for one reason or another.
That's Facebook though. And in my anecdotal experience the only reason most of my friends group has ever used Facebook is to post in private groups and events and use messenger. Scarcely any wall posts, very few posts in public groups. No opinions or politics whatsoever. Maybe the odd activist sharing some "wear a mask" message.
Those who engage in public discourse under their own names on the platform are by and large kind of ... strange.
Using your actual name for everything would be an amazing tool for building up a profile on you. Either you lay out your hobbies, interests and political standings for the whole world to see or you stop participating in those communities and discussions. And the profile won't be about only you, but your employer as well. If a load of engineers at X start posting more about tech Y or methodology Z you can deduce internal workings from that.
I get irritated by this logic. I don't think many people are arguing that anonymous access makes us more likely to get along. There are lots of areas where we have the freedom to do something, that access objectively makes things worse in terms of social cost, but we keep it because it's what is right. Installing a breathalyzer lockout device on every new car sold would decrease drunk driving. There's a few religious sects that could be eliminated that would overnight reduce the amount of vile rhetoric in the world. We all make choices as to how much regulation we deem acceptable in daily life. Many of us see no valid reason to permanently tie online access to personal identification.
Why can’t we just leave each other alone and let people be free? Minimize the politics of it all and stop pretending we care a single bit about each other.
Yes we live in a society but maybe our shared goal is to be left alone to live our lives with the ones we care about. We just seem to be pushing each other to the limits of what’s considered broadly acceptable and it’s creating more and more hate.
What is that, if not tolerance?
When someone has to drive 1,000 miles to try to beat someone up for using fighting words, people are far more brazen in their rhetoric.
This is why, as I've posted before here on HN, I always use my real name in my communications. Because I expect to be held accountable for what I say, and how I say it, and I'm willing to accept the consequences.
But I’m sure it’s fine. /s
People don't care: real names, real faces on Facebook, yet they still act as raging lunatics.
The old, actually anonymous internet 20+ years ago was much better.
EDIT: clarification: anonymity is not what's causing the dumpster fire, it's the people, and the companies driving them into vicious circles to get more attention - and thus, advertisement time and money - out of them.
I'm going to guess you're liberal and think the 'storming' of the capital was the political event of the decade on par with 9/11.
Yet it was all organized in the open on facebook using real names.
Curious how using real names did not stop anyone.
People are willing to do things they believe in that are detrimental to themselves. That is after all why the US exists.
Anonymity is a way for people to say that they want to blow up parliament and get feedback on why it's a good or bad idea before doing it.
It is very confusing to me why the US, a country that hasn't had a real genocide since the 1860s, is taking advice on speech regulation from countries whose last genocide was in the 1940s.
As newspaper barons before them, the internet has not policed itself adequately enough, according to the governments of the world, and now they will act in unity to take back some control.
And then what? Decentralized systems, and The Dark Web, will grow.
Citizens will require a personal licence to access the internet, and anonymous use will be illegal.