> I've never once believed that Meta would honor / fight for anonymous accounts of any kind on their platform.

The way I see it is that they are honoring anonymity and they are being compelled by the court to release personal information after initially refusing to do so.

The problem is with the courts, not with Meta. Ideally they should just eat the 100K fine.

"Ideally they should just eat the 100K fine." , I don't see that happening with their current leadership; a half-fought court battle for PR sake seems on brand though.

Is it that straightforward? You can slander anyone and/or reveal their private information without the 'victim' having no recourse whatsoever besides complaining to FB?

No, but this seems completely tangential to what is discussed in the article. If understand it correctly:

- Person A anonymously published some supposedly defamatory information about person B on platform X

- Platform X knows who person B is

- While it's not determined that the information was indeed slanderous* the court compels platform X to reveal the identity of person A.

- Person A sues person B in civil court etc.

This does not seem to be at all unreasonable to me.

*only thing I'm really concerned about is that while obviously (given how legal systems work) you can't determine whether it was slander or not without both parties, the court should still try to determine whether the accusation is at least somewhat valid before compelling the platform to reveal that person's identity.

Of course some could say that eventually this might lead to situations where governments would restrict/ban any platform which allows users to post without revealing their person details to the platform (and well Facebook already does that on their own). That would of course be terrible..

I think it's far from ideal that Facebook and some other platforms force you to reveal your identity. However once they have, I don't see how can it be unreasonable for a court to able to compel them to reveal the identify of one of their users in certain cases.

I don't see how Online Safety Bill is related? It's not like the identity of anonymous posters on FB is E2E encrypted and requiring an order from a court to reveal it is not exactly the same as 'screening of all user content'..

Obviously courts should consider severity and other factors but factors like damage to reputation, other damages etc. should be the deciding factor on whether a court would accept the case not whether it's published on Facebook or anonymously.

Even if a platform wanted, the laws will prohibit it by requiring user knowledge.

Privacy and anonymity are not the same thing.

You would need a warrant to extract the messages/identity directly from a person's computer as there is nothing otherwise to obtain.

Edit: And, when I refresh it's not dead... I don't understand this system apparently.

If enough people vouch for a dead comment it goes back to normal. That's probably what you saw.

On the bright side, the article is full of interesting detail.

Making the old online hitching posts (like facebook, google, video games, ect) family friendly, or else! then a lot of disaffected young men are going to be venting their lack of financial/dating success somewhere else.

Are we just going to dump these people out onto the streets and hope it all works out politically?

It's possible that this is just some abusive asshole using the court to clear their name. It's equally possible that the accusations are all made up and that the person who posted them has a grudge against the plaintiff for rejecting them. We have no real indication either way, other than that the judge believed that there is a chance the plaintiff is in the right.

Either way, I think it's fair to assume something went wrong during a date. I'm not sure what the rest of the parent post is referring to.

He might be trying to figure out who else is making those comments.

All of this is to fight child porn, as always, although, unlike normal people, those who earn on child porn can make that additional effort to find some homeless person, drug addict, etc. and get sim card activated.

So we are where we are with lack of privacy for regular people. Maybe one day governments will realize that not only them have access to all of this information, foreign intelligence too, which make much easier to recruit/blackmail spies and in the end, shattered privacy costs much more than imaginary child porn fight.

If they do work without activation could you please enlighten me on who's selling these, it not one of the major phone companies, nor is it Lebara. Lycamobile maybe?

I'm in Europe and I can go to any supermarket and buy a cartload (depending on stock) of pre-paid cards without having to show any ID to anyone. They also work in any EU country.

> The court's ruling mandates Meta to disclose key identifying information, including the username, email address, telephone number, and the IP address used during registration and logins.

I was under the impression that this is routine.

> would you like to live in a world where someone could baselessly and maliciously accuse you of rape or other defaming acts without consequence

Yes, if the alternative is that I can be held criminally liable for hosting a web forum that doesn't require some form of government enforced ID system. How could it be any other way (genuine question)?

The alternative is how things currently work. Meta is not being held criminally liable here, and people are allowed to use the platform anonymously so long as they do not engage in criminal behavior.

Thats a false dichotomy. Many kinds of freedom actually result in less freedom. A society where you are free to sell youself into slavery is less free. A society where 10 year olds are free to work in the coal mines is less free. A society where you are free to ignore legitinate court orders is less free because people will turn to vigilante justice instead.

i find the fear vs freedom dichotomy to be a legitimate set of choices. you didn’t argue against fear, you argued against individual freedom vs societal freedom. which is not what the gp was going on about.

For example many countries have mandated seatbelt laws. In this case the freedom to not wear a seatbelt is exchanged for health and safety. Someone could claim this is done out of fear, and that's not completely untrue. And as you allude, fear can be totally rational and backed by data, thus fear vs. freedom is not an unreasonable exchange.

Apple is trying to keep your identity secret on your device so that they cant verify anyone only devices.

I'll use the exact same kind of argument to make the opposite point:

Facebook answering a legal subpoena isn't illegal.

> To be anonymous don’t reveal your identity to anyone on line.

They are not anonymous from Facebook perspective.

Exactly I'm not sure of your point. If an organization gets a subpoena they turn over what they know. If they don't know they can't hand it over.

I don't think you are making the opposite point but I will try to be open minded. From my perspective we agree.

Are we punishing those who wish to remain anonymous but do not have the technical ability to do so. Is there a right to anonymous in the EU?

If anonymity isn't allowed why can't advertisers track you in the EU without your consent.

What privacy are you in favor of? Identities should be private when in public? Until someone requests it and then it goes into the public record?

It is completely unrelated to a private citizen interacting with a private business in the eyes of American law, American business and Americans ourselves. The only free speech issue here from our perspective is "Is the government illegally restricting Meta's corporate right to free speech?" And no, making Meta identify a user is not a violation of their 1A free speech rights to us.

If you're speaking of a totally different European legal concept, it might be helpful for you to identify that.

In America, proving libel is extremely difficult and requires you to demonstrate real damages.

So in this case if it were American, unless the aggrieved party can demonstrate monetary damages, under American law there is no libel as we do not consider "hurt feelings" or "damaged reputation" to be libel. So in America we would demand that the offended party demonstrate that they have been financially harmed before we unmask the anonymous individual to fully investigate and adjudicate the claim.

If you're discussing libel under a EU or European nations context, it could be helpful to identify which version of libel law you are referencing, because this case from an American's perspective is no where near our extremely high bar. (And, as a side note, under American law all international libel convictions are automatically unenforceable here, to prevent tourism to areas who do not require sufficiently high bar)

2. I am not complaining at all.

3. In fact, I am replying to someone complaining that folks "don't know what <$GENERAL LEGAL TERM WITH REGIONAL DIFFERENCES> means" and I'm explaining: you're on an American website whose readership is majority American, talking about an American business, and you have the audacity to claim "people don't know this <HIGHLY LOCAL LEGAL TERM>?". And so I'm explaining WHY Americans would be confused by the seemingly low-bar for libel or confusion around free speech.

This case may be European courts and entities (and I asked for location specifics as the concepts can often vary country by country in Europe), but this website is not a European website and it's absolutely normal than Americans are here discussing this.

As far as I know, there are more Americans here than visitors from any other country, but the majority of people is still not American: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35568123

I feel like American readers are sometimes guilty of assuming everyone else is also American and understands their references, but the world is a bigger place than that.

Based on my poor understanding of US law, I think you are mistaken. Defamation per se recognizes that certain statements are so damaging to one's reputation that proving damages is not required. From [1],

> In an Alaska Supreme Court case, a woman accused a man of assault, battery, and false imprisonment, and he brought a claim against her for defamation. The court explained that because the statements imputed a serious crime, the man was not required to prove the damage to his reputation and emotional distress.

The case discussed in the article includes accusations that the plaintiff films women without their consent, allegedly in a sexual context (although that's redacted so I could be wrong). That could totally fall under category 1 of Defamation Per Se.

[1] https://www.findlaw.com/injury/torts-and-personal-injuries/w...

The era where you could fax ASCII art of a gun to someone without the Feds following up is gone. It was perpetrated not on any kind of justice theory of the power of the anonymous actor, but on a power inequality: governments hadn't caught up with what the technology enabled, so individuals using new technology could out-maneuver enforcement.

That is no longer true for most Internet users. The tools are in place for mass-surveillance and mass-enforcement. Governments can take down a website, governments can black-hole a DNS entry, governments can honeypot someone into trying to trade Bitcoin for criminal activity, governments can jail citizens indefinitely until they cough up passwords, and governments can require a corporation divulge privately-held information on penalty of loss of corporate privileges (including ability to exist).

The "golden era" of the Internet was a latency hiccup, not a new world order.

Anonymity is protected in special situations such as elections, communications, whistleblowing etc.

Do you have a source on that? I can think of FAR more parts of society that don't require identification than parts that do. It feels impossible that "almost all parts of society require identification" in a world of infinite possibilities.

I put some pants on 10 minutes ago without identifying myself. Then I left my house without telling anyone. Then I walked down the street and never had to identify myself. The mall I visited didn't require ID. Finally, the McDonalds I went to accepted cash and I didn't have to prove who I am.

Which one of these activities do you think I'm lying about and required ID?

Sometimes a right must necessarily exist for another right to function. Anonymity must exist to allow freedom of political speech, which is the most important kind of free speech. I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone ever argue that people have a right to be anonymous all the time, but only in context of other rights, and often this is quite narrow. Some examples: political press, political speech, voting (that I voted in the Us is public, my ballot is anonymous).

A better comparison would be the Twitter user that was tweeting Elon Musk's jet flights. This was before twitter was purchased, and Elon Musk was not able to get the court to order Twitter to hand over that information.

In Europe, police usually have a right to request information from companies and people. This is codifed into law, there's not necessarily any legal procedure for how it needs to happen.

There are some standards on how inter-country information is requested.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_law_(legal_system)

Agreed, except that Ireland en England are part of Europe.

Also (and I'm not sure on this part) in The Netherlands we have WvSr aka Sr (Wetboek van Stafrecht, criminal law) and there's privaatrecht (aka burgerlijk recht, civiel recht). Subpoenas would be vordering(srecht). Government issue these as well, but it seems to fall under civil law.

Yes, there is a civil/criminal divide, this is not so much related to being civil/common law

(and just because this is HN, see the graph at the bottom of the page for a French example - though they call it civil and penal jurisdiction https://cours.unjf.fr/repository/coursefilearea/file.php/105... )

There absolutely is in many European countries. The divide is just along different lines than in US.

https://www-librededroit-fr.translate.goog/quelle-est-la-dif...

The Twitter user is pseudonymous at best, and was posting objectively true data, publicly available, regarding a notable, public person in these United States.

The FB user in TFA was anonymized by group membership, and posting allegedly defamatory and untrue information about a private person.

The first order effects seem pretty benign, even salutary - but I’m not sure the court really thought through all the implications here.

Is the Dutch legal system inviting themselves to become a party to every single he said/she said drama on Facebook?

What will Facebook need to do to extricate themselves from such an odious entanglement?

Normally, you wouldn't need Facebook to disclose any names because Facebook isn't anonymous 99% of the time. There are plenty of anonymous and pseudonymous forums that would be at risk and yes they too have to follow warrants should the court decide against them.

If Facebook wants to stay out of such cases, they should either leave the jurisdictions where such warrants are possible (so planet earth, probably) or they should enforce non-anonymous posts so plaintiffs can sue each other without involving a court warrant first.

How do you propose they leave?

Why is the responsibility on Meta to make sure users in a jurisdiction don’t sign up for their service? Surely some of this responsibility could fall on the user.

But they can't play it both ways.

They have an office in Amsterdamm, they control a large part of the ad market in the Netherlands, and probably host there or nearby on EU soil.

They can't seriously expect to not be subject to dutch law.

That's not what's happening here. Facebook has a Dutch subdivision (Facebook Netherlands B.v.) and an office in Amsterdam. They're absolutely subject to Dutch law. They could leave, but the EU means that they'd be subject to this kind of order from a Dutch court unless they left the EU entirely, which would make it harder for EU companies to pay them for advertising, hurting their profits.

I agree that they are subject to the laws of the countries they operate in. I do not agree that a company should own all of the responsibility in making sure no Dutch citizens access their services. The idea that the internet would be different depending on where I access seems anti-internet.

When your business model relies on user data to generate profits, you have to collect it and that makes it discoverable.

That's GDPR for you, though.

I know the UK and USA definitely do these prosecutions regularly, even though both countries would throw a hissy fit if Iran started prosecuting every tourist who visits and was known to not wear a headcovering outside Iran.

I'm pretty sure the Dutch subsidiary exists just to avoid taxes, the Irish branch is the main company most EU citizens interact with.

If you're the person having their reputation smeared by anonymous cowards it maybe doesn't seem so "petty" as you dismiss.

This seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do; have the person slandering somebody anonymously brought into the light where there is a level playing field in which they can present their case.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ugly-battle-over-shtty-media-m...

Some cases were probably well desreved, but anonymity allows easy score settling and revenge.

There's no recourse against an anonymous accusation, there's no way to defend yourself, and there's no way to prove you are innocent.

It's a court order!

Just because this would be a civil matter in your jurisdiction does not mean it is a civil matter under Dutch law where this lawsuit is from.

Legal action is very expensive. While vexatious litigants exist, the total volume of legal proceedings being commenced is not particularly large.

I like how websites are special. Like no-one ever says "I am shocked that a hotel provided information to the police about a guest wanted for murder"

> Meta faces a penalty of one thousand euros per day, up to a maximum of one hundred thousand euros, if it fails to comply with the court's decision

Only 100K to completely ignore the court's ruling... Easy.

Like other companies, Meta routinely comply with subpoenas for user identity, post history etc in the US too. In fact they give their requirements here[1] so law enforcement know what sort of order to bring and how to serve it on them. This has even been abused by bad actors forging court orders etc to obtain user data[2]

[1] https://about.meta.com/actions/safety/audiences/law/guidelin... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/apr/04/us-law-en...

It doesn't mean you can say whatever you want without consequences. It means you can say it and no-one can prohibit you from saying it. But someone can definitely drag you to court for saying it.

The purpose of the right of speech speech is to remove certain, but not all, consequences of expressing opinions in public, i.e., outside of your head.

    1. Everyone shall have the right to hold opinions without interference.

    2. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.

    3. The exercise of the rights provided for in paragraph 2 of this article carries with it special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, but these shall only be such as are provided by law and are necessary:

    ( a ) For respect of the rights or reputations of others;
    ( b ) For the protection of national security or of public order, or of public health or morals.

In the US system at least, you can say whatever you want about someone... But if they haul you into court for damaging their reputation, you'd better bring receipts that you were speaking truth, to the best of your ability and knowledge. Not even the US right to free speech extends to spreading damaging falsehood.

I'm not sure what does this have to do with freedom of speech. It seems to be right to anonymity or something like that, which I don't think is guaranteed in most places?

Oh, wait.

Could you explain what "woke left" is? I understand 'left', i guess, but reading the rest of your comment i see that 'cancelling' [I'm guessing again - censoring?] is what 'the right' do too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancel_culture

Cancelling is distinct from censorship, because it's post-factum "consequences" (i.e. character assassination). "Censorship" is usually understood as measures that prevent publication in the fist place, before the actual speech happens.

Attributed to Idi Amin

I'm severely confused by people who make arguments like the root comment. By that logic I have freedom of murder, since I'll probably only be caught and punished after I've done it

If I go around this forum posting "chips rapes children" everywhere you go and you sue me for defamation, that doesn't mean you're against free speech. You have the right to protect your good name as much as I have the right to express my opinions about you. I this example, you would obviously have the ability to crush me in court for spreading baseless accusations.

There are troubling threats to free speech, such as the incendiary lies spread under the guise of "fake news", followed by governments trying to control the wild conspiracy theories and endangering our rights to free speech in the process. However, you having the right to defend yourself against baseless accusations isn't a threat against anyone's human rights.

The key point is that to defend yourself against baseless accusations often requires that the accuser be known.

Of course there's article 7 of the Dutch constitution (as a guide for laws related to speech, not necessarily for individual rights, as judges cannot directly use them in most judgements) and article 10 of the ECHR (which comes with loads of exceptions like ensuring protection of morals) but those are still directed at states and governments rather than individual freedoms.

Of course the concept of freedom of expression goes beyond the legal definition, but the legal definition is the only one that's relevant as that's the freedom you actually have.

Yes and the current laws are adequate enough to address this. We don't need to restrict everybody's free speech because 1 person published their ex's home address. Stay out of my life and my business and punish the people for breaking the law. That's not a good reason to take the ability to be anonymous away from everyone.

In this case the (allegedly) injured party doesn't even know who to sue (besides Facebook I guess..) does that seem entirely reasonable to you?

Other account types should really have a verified identity imo. It would drastically limit the amount of abuse.

People happily spout abuse under their real name on Facebook. Seems very naive to think preventing anonymity would curb it as much as you think.

If you get rid of the main propagators, other users will have very little of this type of content to engage with in the first place, and it WILL limit the amount of inspiration material other users will be exposed to. We only have this problem because of the easy access to social media. It used to be dubious corners on internet forums and newsgroups no one was interested in, but now everyone is exposed to all this grotesque filth.

Many such accounts main purpose is, very conspicuously, to spread misinformation, and as such there is no real reason why they should be on Facebook in the first place.

I support anonymity when necessary, but as history has clearly shown, limitless anonymity will be abused by bad actors. If there are no limits in place, then bad actors will be able to drown us in a flood of disinformation – this will, as is somewhat currently the case, allow conspiracy theorists to control the flow of information more easily. Repeatedly disproven claims can be repeated in all eternity, and we will never move these people's understanding.

Fact checking will not catch everything, unfortunately. Currently the AI systems is not fast enough to tag things that has already been fact checked, lacks context, or is just manipulative. There are consistent ways to post content and behave that does not directly spread misinformation, but when looked at as a whole, is, actually very clearly intended to manipulate people with misinformation.

So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

> we only have this problem because of the easy access to social media. It used to be dubious corners on internet forums and newsgroups no one was interested in

As in, everything is kinda fine, but some people are just evil for unknown reasons and spread the lie that everything is not fine, and infect others with it?

Here's what I think is a bit more realistic, and notice how stripping people who already have no privilege of the ability to communicate with each other safe from persecution sounds in that context.

> "People are angry, frightened, desperate. This is actually pre-Trump. 40 years of neoliberalism have left the victims of this assault angry, resentful, isolated, contemptuous of government. It's in Europe, it's in the United States, you see it everywhere.

> That's fertile territory for demagogues who can say "I can save you, follow me." It's also fertile territory for conspiracy theories. People want some understanding of what's happening; they're not getting it from the media, they're not getting it from the intellectual classes, they're certainly not getting it from the government. So they search around for something that'll explain it. Why is this happening to us? That's the kind of situation in which you do get conspiracy theories. [..] When you're living in an intellectual environment in which there are no answers, no coherent answers available, you're suffering, you don't see why, you turn to, you grasp on to something.

[..]

> It's happening all over, and I think you can trace a good deal of it to the effects of neoliberalism. It had a goal, remember: the goal of neoliberalism was the transfer decisions, authority, away from the public to the hands of private power, and to atomize the population. You'll recall Margaret Thatcher, there is no society, just individuals tossed out into the market that somehow survive for themselves.

[..]

> The first acts, first acts, that both Thatcher and Reagan carried out was to demolish labour unions. First move, [in] both cases. Reagan went as far as authorizing scabs, you know, strike-breakers. Illegal in every country except, at times, South Africa. Did it right away. The labour unions had been smashed in both countries. Why? Well, it's one of the very few ways in which people can organize to protect themselves, so we've got to get rid of them. Eliminate public schools, but do it by underfunding, don't give enough funding so they don't work, then support private schools as an alternative. All throughout the society, eliminate the means for people to organize, act collectively, make decisions. Transferred into the hands of private power. And the results are predictable and perfectly plain.

-- Noam Chomsky

Erich Fromm pointed that out as early as the 1950s that when people have no real part in the decision-making, their thinking becomes "kinda empty and stupid". How could it not? A muscle must atrophy if you fixate it. If you use incompetence as an excuse to strip people of even more agency, you get even worse outcomes.

>So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

I actively engage and create conspiracy theories on anonymous accounts for fun and to be silly online

So, don't reject things you don't understand so quickly.

To be clear – I do want there to be an option to create anonymous accounts, but they have to be clearly marked as anonymous. Again, go back and read what I actually wrote so you can engage properly in the discussion.

But on the other hand, what should someone do if they are truly wronged by something like this? They lost their job, their spouse left them, all because someone decided to slander them under the veil of anonymity. Should they have any recourse?

Of course they should. Tip: Don't phrase "they should have some recourse" as a question, it just makes you sound uncertain and invites refutation.

What if you are pro trans people? In 10 years you can be prosecuted by it, if a new party is elected. It can have new 'standards'. You will not be able to contradict mainstream narrative. You will not be able to say anything against corporations and governments.

If you will do anything outside of 'boundaries' set by companies, governments you will lost your job, spouse will leave you, all because you wanted 'a better world'.

On one side of scales is a place of total invigilation, on the other is a place with internet trolls. Companies like meta and twitter are quite good in rooting our trolls. So the current situation is inconvenient, but we can live with it.

If we opt out anonymity then the overall result will be a lot worse than the current situation is.

Oh, that’s so very Meta and Twitter and Reddit. I believe they return a delayed response only to maintain appearances of some human being having had a look at the reports.

What I don’t understand is how come a user was anonymous in a Facebook group.

Of course, you're not anonymous on the back end, just publicly.

Meta doesn't like judgements against Meta that would open them up to more scrutiny from legal institutions.

This isn't about money.

Meta has absolutely nothing to win in not complying with the legal request in that _specific case_. Meta never claimed to be the champion of anonymity, quite the contrary...

Except in this _specific case_ the plaintiff asked Meta to remove the anon content and Meta said No.

Then the Judge asked Meta to provide the details of the anonymous user and "Meta argued that Facebook users should be able to express criticism, even if it is severe and anonymous."

In case you were wondering where such a ruling happened.

Well that settles that, then.

As a purely business move, should Meta just play this as a principled stand, and eat the fine?

If there's any negative reaction chatter, maybe it's on one of their platforms, in which case it's engagement?

First, why in the world do you want Meta to get into a habit of ignoring the law of the land?

Second, fines for non-compliance to court orders are not one off events. The fine is set with the purpose of compelling action. If the action doesn't happen, higher fines will follow.

As a purely business move, can Meta increase brand goodwill by publicly resisting for awhile?

I find court summaries of the Dutch courts to be quite readable. Google translate also seems to work quite well.

It should be noted that this is a "kort geding", which i believe translates to a "preliminary injunction" but I don't have the legal education to say what the differences between the two may be.

Some anonymous user claims that the person who started legal action committed gross sexual misconduct. The judge ruled that there's little evidence to back these claims and that the plaintiff is suffering an impact significant enough to warrant further action.

It should also be noted that Dutch law considers defamation to be a crime (as in, illegal under criminal law), not a civil law issue.

This isn't the first time a company has had to hand over subscriber information because of libel or slander either. I don't really see what the big deal is.

Since the whether or not the accusations are true doesn't factor into such a crime, it can be enforced on the presence of harmful accusations alone, which has fairly big implications for the sort of social media witch hunts that we've seen cropping up in the recent decade.

Justifications defined in the law are "necessary defense" and "common interest". The second one is specified as "believed in good faith that the charges were true and that the public interest required the charge." IANAL, but I think this can apply to social media witch hunts to at least some extent.

The press can for example discover and publish evidence of corrupt dealings of a politician, while there is a minimal chance any prosecutor or court would be interested in the case.

As a someone from a country with similar law I think it is a good thing. Social media witch hunts are not good for society and they often fall under our defamation laws but people are still allowed to write about corrupt politicians.

If you have a legitimate accusation to make, prosecute. Don't merely complain on social media.

It's confusing from a US perspective, where we believe free speech is important since it allows the bringing of injustices to light. Are courts in the Netherlands trusted so much that they leave almost no injustices for others to speak out on?

A case has a fact-finding part, then a part where the law and precedences are matched to the facts as found, then a decision.

There actually is a very limited "is" system in use in common law in many countries — the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inquest (usually: "coroner's inquest.") But they're really only used in practice to find cause-of-death. A "libel inquest" would be quite novel.

Right now, in most legal systems, you can't create legislation based on findings of a court other than the ultimate toplevel finding(s) — and those toplevel findings, at least in a criminal court, can only ever be about innocence/guilt for specific crimes, and can only ever be about the titled parties of the case.

This means that, if the justice system happens to discover an important fact about someone that it would be helpful for legislation to "trigger upon" — but that fact doesn't translate to their guilt in a specific specific crime that they are a titled party to a settled criminal case about — then there's no toplevel assertion for the fact about them to "ride in on" to have effect in law. So the law is effectively helpless to do anything, despite the court having "uncovered" that information.

Consider: a criminal trial for kidnapping of a child, where the child was being dropped off at a daycare center every day; and in the course of establishing motive, testimony from expert witnesses reveals that said daycare center was negligent in their care — perhaps criminally, though not necessarily so — but at least to a degree that would trigger the state licensing board for daycare centers to revoke their license... if the trial had been a civil trial about that.

Because the evaluation of the innocence or guilt of the accused for the crime of kidnapping, does not directly require the establishment of the "truth of the matter" of whether the daycare center was negligent, the testimony given in such a trial cannot be relied upon to establish negligence.

But, if the "truth of the matter" came first — as its own top-level inquest — and if it sought the truth-value of every claim made by both parties, hierarchically — then the result of the inquest could be used directly to decide both the guilt of party X in the crime of kidnapping, and the guilt of business Y re: both civil suits and statutory negligence.

Consider also: in such a system, you could get rid of the concept of a "class-action lawsuit." Class-action suits exist because the alternative is O(N) expensive and lengthy civil suits that each have to independently evaluate the claims of harm to a concrete party. But if instead an inquest is done into the "truth of the matter" of whether party X caused harm to a class Y; and then that fact became valid basis for any individual member of class Y to sue X and receive a summary judgement based upon the already-evaluated "truth of the matter" — then we'd have a much more useful system, where only the people who really do feel that they were harmed would bother to sue, and would each then receive damages sized to the harm actually done to that party. (Yes, I realize that this creates an unlimited liability on the balance sheet of any company who "falls victim to" a class-action inquest, given that there's no point at which they can say they've settled with all parties. Good! They should be perceived as permanently tainted by anyone looking to M&A with them — they're the corporate equivalent of a convicted felon!)

Not to speak of that the courts take their merry time, so a corrupt politician can be reelected before anybody knows of his or her dealings - if it wasn't for the free press.

A kort geding is a civil court with the specific aim of solving cases that don't require a full blown legal investigation (which can take months).

Usually it's either for urgency reasons (ie. public and obvious defamation on public TV need a correction issued very quickly to prevent tarnishing someone's reputation) or because the matter simply isn't that huge (your neighbor cutting the tree on your property down doesn't and shouldn't take a full year to resolve).

A kort geding can be escalated into a full legal proceeding if either party is unhappy with the outcome however.

FWIW (probably not much; legal terms rarely match 1:1 between jurisdictions), Wikipedia thinks a “kort geding” is a preliminary injunction.

https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kort_geding disagrees with the “don't require a full blown legal investigation” claim, saying that the primary reason is urgency:

“Interlocutory proceedings (in Belgium often interim relief or référé) is a short-term civil procedure for urgent cases that by their nature must be decided quickly. […]

Matters that by their nature are urgent are, for example, the request to ban a strike or the request to prohibit a publication, because it is incorrect and harms the interests of a directly involved person.”

I think that’s more likely to be true.

(iOS Translation)

And I'm sorry for the upcoming little rant, but whoever thinks they're anonymous while using a Meta(or any Big Tech platform, really) product is an idiot, tech literate or not. Not even places like 4chan have true anonimity, depending on the place & jurisdiction we're talking about[remember the case of the guy making a call to violence(illegal) that got arrested]. The 'traditional' web is not anonymous at all:not only the underlying protocol(s) is/are inherently not anonymous by design, but you add insane surveillance and you can eventually crack anything. Even things like TOR/others are not truly anonymous, and the US regime proved that if they want to find you, they will, assuming they have jurisdiction.

Coming back: I don't quite get why people talk about free speech in this context. Not only S230 is a broken f&ckfest but we're also talking about a non-US place. What's more hilarious is that even if we would have talked about the US, defamation (w/ calls to violence & other speech not protected by 1A) is still illegal.

Anonymous accounts should not be disallowed entirely, but they should be observed more actively for misbehaviour, including things such as spreading of miss- and disinformation and manipulative content. Sometimes individual posts does not really spread misinformation, but when you look at the bulk of the content it becomes clear that they are actually engaging in the active spreading of disinformation. This brings me to a very important point: anonymous accounts should be clearly marked as being anonymous. They should therefore not allow a profile picture.

Disinformation can also be in the form of suggestive or questioning material. E.g. Sharing a piece of misinformation and writing "interesting?" or "I really hope this is not real?". If such behaviour is consistent, then it is usually because that account is used to re-share disinformation, and if the account has nothing else of relevance. E.g. Does not have any authentic connections outside of this "conspiracy" network, then obviously it has no authentic purpose on social media.

So while anonymity is important to defend, we also need to identify the bad actors that abuse it. For this there are some behavioral patterns that are easy to identify, and this could, to some extent probably be automated already now.

In the last 15-20 years the internet became less and less anonymous, and yet those problems still exist and they're a central issue. While it's mostly a correlation and definitely not a causal factor (because internet adoption was non-existent back then compared to now, amongst others), it still begs the (rhetorical) question of why the pressure against anonimity.(See past and current abuses in this regard by governments/empires/etc). I'm semi-jokingly talking about a conspiracy here, because i've used both anonymous and 'very verified' platforms, and most of the time the misinformation happens on the latter. This is especially true since the facebook days, because the platform itself gives the vibe of credibility (alongside the user/entity posting it).

Trying to combat misinformation in this way is and will remain a cat&mouse game because there will always be actual bad actors which will try to impersonate/immitate the good ones. Put it like this: you have the same people walking on 2 streets: on the first one they hear Biden/Trump/Macron/etc. saying a fake thing, spreading misinformation; on the next: a random hobo saying the same thing. Which one will have the worse impact? While I'm not sure there have been done such studies/experiments, past "anecdata" tells me the influential person successfully fools a higher percentage of those people. While you could say "but once exposed, he's recognized as a fraud" and that's entirely true: we then return to my point of people trying to impersonate/fake credibility or grift the issue by saying unquantifiable or things that just cannot be entirely fact-checked (without projecting or speculation): those actors do more damage because they appear credible.

I fully agree though that there are certain aspects that need to have a 0 tolerance policy (CP and similar things) even when anonymous. And with regards to flagging anonymous users as such: would be interesting if any social network tries to make the experiment of having semi/fully anonymous modes: because honestly that would be just one of the few actual solutions to combat polariation on social media: by encouraging more free & honest discussion (even if there's 90% chance it becomes less civil).

(It's also the seat of the government, so you'll also see sentences like "The Hague says..." in the media that actually refer to the government.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metonymy

It's likely a safe assumption that you are anonymous from the other users, which was the original intended functionality.

You're talking about being anonymous from any and all people and agencies, and it could be argued that you probably haven't gone far enough in your description of how to be truly anonymous from even the most motivated person/agency.

It’s interesting to see Meta taking the opposite stance in this argument when they’ve been so instrumental about suppressing criticism deemed misinformation by the CISA, DOJ, FBI, NIAID, CDC, etc…

...I don't know if it has any legal implications, but it sure does undercut Meta's ethical high ground, that they will tell people all about their users for money in order for them to serve up advertisements. The case in question would on the surface appear at least as valid a reason.

I'm sorry, where do you infer that? Meta literally refused to do exactly that, and went to court to defend the practice. They're only doing so now because they lost.

You won't be able to. Facebook doesn't sell emails or identifying data.

To literally quote from the Privacy Policy [1]

> We share information about you with marketing vendors. For example, we share your device identifier or other identifiers

---

But this is all irrelvant.

Meta's Privacy Policy makes it extremely clear that they will share your data when there is a court order.

> We access, preserve, use and share your information:

> In response to legal requests, like search warrants, court orders, production orders or subpoenas. These requests come from such as civil litigants, law enforcement and other government authorities. about when we respond to legal requests.

[1]: https://www.facebook.com/privacy/policy?subpage=4.subpage.11...

Talk is cheap, show me the money/code/emails.

If we could make an exception in the law, then it might help create more small tech companies in small towns.

I could be daydreaming here, but: What if we make it legal to run unmoderated social media apps as long as (1) they are operated by a local company with their own software (instead of saas) (2) they function with the same kinds of limitations as a physical town notice board?

I'll daydream with you except mine is different. The optimal social media in my view is one tied to your real identity. Moderation would only be applied under court order by the relevant jurisdiction for the view of the content within that jurisdiction. i.e.:

1) American posts content critical of Indian officials. That content is restricted by order of an Indian court and no such order is additionally given by an American court. It would be hidden from view within India but not from within America. The inverse would be true.

2) Indian posts content critical of Indian officials. That content is restricted by order of an Indian court. America (or any other nation) has no duty to protect that speech and thus no claim over it. That content is censored everywhere.

Additionally, everyone would have client-side filters which may be published. Emphasis on "published" because the publisher would be accountable for their words just as much as a newspaper within their jurisdiction. Though they wouldn't need to say much (i.e.: list of people I [dis]like). Unique identity and nationality are the only ones I can think of right now. More complex examples:

1) An American publishes a list of politicians who have made inflammatory public statements. They have evidence of this for each person on the list and make no additional assertions about their behavior. People not interested in such content could subscribe to the filter. (I guess people interested in chaos could view the inverse.) No court is willing to censor this list because their statements are protected speech.

2) An American publishes a list of men who have committed sexual crimes (such as in the original post). They assert it as fact not alleged crimes. They include someone who has not been proven in a court of law to have committed that crime. They can be sued for libel and possibly forced to remove the person from the list or reword the list description.

Anonymity between the user and the social media service wouldn't exist, but it might between users. The service could be mandated by the jurisdiction to unmask or otherwise ensure the accused does not fall within the jurisdiction.

IMO, Section 230 is too relaxed for large scale social media, but not relaxed enough for some other applications. It basically allowed big tech to mod the public square like modding a game, for it to be much larger, to move people around into biased groups, and to keep a record of all conversations, and train autocomplete bots on them..

I do not want more restrictions on existing apps. My point was that I wanted every local community to have their own online forum that's only accessible locally (through a RSA cert that rotates monthly, perhaps). They can even build minigames and cute events for themselves, and that would boost local morals and economy.

I think your thoughts on real online identities are interesting but I do not believe in either Censorship or total free speech. It's like the halting problem: I don't think there is a fixed list of rules that can always tell you the correct answer (To censor or not).

I wish the article would go into detail what exactly the "transgressive behaviour" is, because now it is unclear to me how far I can take criticism that is either directly or indirectly linked to an individual.

For example, what if I have an extremely poor experience with a seller? Does it matter if this seller is a business or some random individual getting rid of 2nd hand items? What if the user being criticized is also anonymous?

In any case, I shall be using throwaway accounts more frequently just to be safe.

> A Facebook user has made anonymous statements in Facebook groups about dating, accusing [the plaintiff], among other things, of having the intention to use and then dump women, of being a pathological liar, and of secretly recording women. Two images of [the claimant] have been placed with these statements. [the claimant] argues that the allegations are untrue and intimidating and that he suffers considerable (reputational) damage. [the claimant] wants Meta to remove what he considers to be unlawful messages. In addition, [the claimant] wants Meta to provide him with information about the identity of the anonymous Facebook user and about any other groups in which this user has made these statements.

Anonymous Facebook User is a contradiction in terms. Same for Anonymous Microsoft User, Anonymous Google User, Anonymous Apple User, Anonymous Amazon User.