This leak looks like a trial balloon. I'm fascinated by the notion that requiring disclosure of people's physical location, as well as demanding that they prove their identity, would be conducive to an online culture of free and healthy expression.
These proposals seem to be aimed at intimidation and breaching the privacy of each and everyone, rather than at the surveillance-like operations and propaganda-enabling structures of the Big Ad/Social Media companies.
> I'm fascinated by the notion that requiring disclosure of people's physical location, as well as demanding that they prove their identity, would be conducive to an online culture of free and healthy expression.
"Fascinated" isn't the word I would choose to describe it..
So, my local paper had a comment section that was dominated by the typical hysterical, unhinged, anonymous arguing between far right and far left partisans that we see in a lot of online discourse.
They changed to a "real name" policy and now the comments, while much reduced, are also much more thoughtful and tend to stay on-topic.
> They changed to a "real name" policy and now the comments, while much reduced, are also much more thoughtful and tend to stay on-topic.
Real name policies eliminate specific categories of speech.
One of those categories is trolling, which naturally makes everybody very happy. The problem is that some of the other categories are really important.
If you require real names then people with minority views are afraid to present them, even when they can make a major contribution. People won't disclose relevant inside information, including malfeasance, because they face being fired or abused until they quit. People won't say anything against the interests of anyone in a position of power over them.
It's basically a mechanism that gets rid of the Nazis and SJWs by getting rid of anyone critical of the government or existing power structures. The resulting debate is unquestionably a lot more polite, but politeness is not the only consideration.
I'm in favor of deanonymizing social media. I don't think it will affect whistleblowing, because so far mainstream social media has not been such a great source of whistleblowing. Anonymous leaks are still best presented by a journalist that's willing to vet the info and put their name on it.
What anonymity does do to social media is muddy the waters to a great degree. Online discourse is now built on bad faith, because of the lack of consequence and reputation.
I've enjoyed anonymity as much as the next person, but I believe it is a net detriment to communication.
> I don't think it will affect whistleblowing, because so far mainstream social media has not been such a great source of whistleblowing.
It's not just about The Pentagon Papers and Wikileaks. It's about people being able to point out banal incompetence and small scale corruption so it can be corrected without being retaliated against by petty members of the city government with egg on their face, even when there are no journalists willing to take the small story.
It's not even just about whistleblowing. When you have to write everything knowing your mother, your boss and every busybody in the PTA will probably read it, people are going to self-censor.
> Anonymous leaks are still best presented by a journalist that's willing to vet the info and put their name on it.
Journalist is not a title of nobility, it's anyone engaged in that specific activity.
To do what you're asking, a source would need to anonymously send the information to different prospective journalists until one has the resources and willingness to vet and publish it, in parallel if it's at all time sensitive. In other words, the source needs the ability to send information anonymously to an arbitrarily large number of people with no formal credentials. Who then themselves need the ability to anonymously pass it on to arbitrarily many others who they think might have more resources or be more willing to formally attach themselves to something with risk of retaliation by powerful forces.
Which is basically a description of anonymous social media.
> What anonymity does do to social media is muddy the waters to a great degree. Online discourse is now built on bad faith, because of the lack of consequence and reputation.
We already have the ability to verify identities. We know that @ggreenwald on Twitter is Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept because it says so on the official web page of The Intercept.
Nothing stops anyone from only reading things written by people with verified identities. If you don't like anonymous or pseudonymous speech then why are you listening to it? Instead what you're proposing is to prohibit everyone else from hearing it. Which is never something anyone should get to decide for everyone else.
Okay, but what about political dissidents, people in abusive relationships, people in backwards areas who aren't heterosexual, just play shy people, and many others?
I don't have a clear cut answer myself, because on the other hand, anonymity opens the floodgates to so much manipulation that also ends up hurting real people, and that will only get worse as technology gets refined in those directions. Those that want to control and manipulate won't give up easily either way, there's totalitarian "victory" possible in either direction:
Tie everything anywhere to a real name, and people will ultimately police their own thoughts, because wanting to say things you can't say sucks, so they'll stop wanting that, the one thing they have control over. Keeping foggy and dynamic what is and what isn't allowed to say will make people shrink to the smallest possible attack surface that still allows basic physical survival.
Go the other route and make everything accessible to (super advanced) bots, make it impossible to confirm anyone's identity or follow any money trails, and with enough of that people can be be manipulated by an overwhelming, yet fabricated social consensus, and herded into bubbles.
Of course, the worst of both worlds is also possible.
Anyway, anonymity online gets a very onesided rap. Some of my fondest "internet memories" were exchanges were with total strangers. Maybe I just remember those differently (I don't really think of online interactions with real life frieds as online interactions), because they always came out of the blue, or because they seemed to mean more, since we both know we'd never meet again and were being open or helpful just for the sake of it, with the reward being purely personal gain (even joy is gain), not social capital.
> Why do we travel? Among other things, to meet people who don't think they know us once and for all; so we may experience once more what is possible for us in this life.
I think policing your own thoughts and communication in a social setting is an essential element to human discourse, and the lack of self policing is exactly why online discourse is substantially lower quality and is based on bad faith.
There's a difference between self-control and a chilling effect on speech, though. I see no problem with someone being mindful about what they are saying and how they are saying it. I do see a problem with someone self-censoring a discussion or expression of an idea because of fear, especially fear of the government, or fear of other damage to their lives.
If people are afraid to express ideas simply because those ideas aren't popular (even if they aren't very controversial) I think the quality of discourse is lowered.
When a not-out member of the LGBTQ community can't enter a discussion or express something because doing so would tie that to their real name, having to self-censor because of a lack of anonymity becomes a problem.
I don't know that there is a perfect solution, either. Having full anonymity introduces other problems.
Although that is conceptually sound, how far can we go when we suggest the Internet invented dissent? The biggest social changes in modern times happened before the Internet.
These proposals seem to be aimed at intimidation and breaching the privacy of each and everyone, rather than at the surveillance-like operations and propaganda-enabling structures of the Big Ad/Social Media companies.