This comment rhymes with the justifications for Real Name policies. They don't work.

All real name policies do is make many LGBTQ+ people feel unwelcome.

Facebook does tie posts to real people. It doesn’t work. People are just as toxic.

It would appear there is some irony in this SoftTalker.

What do you define as shit posting?

Not the person you're replying to, but I agree with them. For me shitposting is discussing in bad faith.

But what is it?

Being contrarian for no other reason than to annoy, or trying to get under someone’s skin, ignoring their arguments and riding roughshod over what they’re trying to say. Things people avoid doing in real life because very soon after doing them you find yourself disliked.

Oh my god, yes. It's like most online content has to be communicated in crappy memes, sarcastic quotes, and weird existential dread responses. It drives me insane.

The bar for "shitposting you don't want your coworkers to know about" is so low nowadays that it's almost a free speech issue to allow anonymous accounts.

If you post about not like drag shows in front of children, that itself is harmless enough in a vacuum but polarizes people to a serious extent

I think maybe it depends how you define shit posting. If you mean trolling or posting extremely negative and low-effort content, then I suppose I agree with you about it being toxic.

But if shitposting is just off-color jokes or talking about topics you might want to keep private, I don't see that as a problem. I think a lot of great internet content wouldn't exist without some form of anonymity. I certainly wouldn't share genuine insights into my job without anonymity. People wouldn't share sexual content or secrets. Many people wouldn't share anything at all no matter how tame or appropriate. My wife over thinks when she writes and is always afraid she isn't wording things well. She posts absolutely nothing outside of Reddit.

My definition of shit posting is the stuff I say on Reddit. The highest rated comment on my previous account there would likely get me banned here. :)

I'd say that then this hypothetical new social network just wouldn't be suitable for Reddit-like shitposting.

Keep Reddit and Twitter for that, this-new-thing for real-identity real talk.

I don't see a problem and I'd love it.

Grow a thick skin. Instead of shielding people from real world things expose them to it. In a few generations they get used to it/learn to use it.

Like Google deliberately fucking up their image search and not releasing a proper face search... because rainbow ponies would fall from the sky.

I am not even sure how this is an actual position to be defended.

Writing anonymously or with pseudonyms is as old as feather pens. It allowed people to denounce tyrants and allowed women to publish their writings.

To force everyone to show an id to publish is either very naive or ill-intented to push us into a full Orwellian framework.

'Shitposting' or scorn writing is the price to pay so that anonymity is there for when you _truly_ need it.

As people who don’t do this, I prefer to stay anonymous. Anonymous writing has a long and good history with some bad apples. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwafrr

> It would be nice if it went away by tying posts to real people. Some people don't care and would shitpost anyway, but most people only shitpost because nobody knows who they really are.

If this was true and the only explanation, HN should be much worse than it is and Facebook should be much better than it is.

Even as a person who hardly ever get in trouble with mods I have come to deeply appreciate the possibility to have accounts or profiles totally disconnected from reality.

Many stories we see couldn't have been shared if a hard link to a real identity was necessary, and many questions could not ve asked.

For example random22username12 asking about some technical aspect about some software is not a problem.

But if he is Firstname Lastname from Some Company it might get him in trouble, as it might tell others what they are working on.