Another wrinkle in all of this is that you can use free speech as a form of censorship.
For example, if someone says something you don't like, you can intimidate them into shutting up by, say, threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity, address of residence, and so on. On certain corners of the Internet, merely dropping dox is good enough to get randos (who won't even be affiliated with you, so +1 to plausible deniability) to harass someone you want to shut up.
A more technical variant of this is DDoS attacks. Instead of trying to intimidate someone into shutting up with threats of stochastic terrorism; you shout over them by sending a bunch of traffic to their site until the server crashes or they run out of money.
So even if you're a hardcore free speech extremist, you still need to embrace some level of "censoring the censors" if you want the Internet to actually be usable.
Agreed. That's not even getting into just pure spam, which from people like Alex Stamos I've heard is 100-1000x the issue that culture war content moderation is. Once you've accepted that a platform can remove the kind of spam that killed MySpace- or doxing or a DDoS attack, as you say- you're already on the (common sense IMO) road to content moderation. Which again, from 25+ years of the modern Internet, we know is just mandatory to have a useable site
That's not censorship though. Threats are what people are forced to do when they cannot censor you, as censorship is much more direct. And DDoS attacks aren't speech.
You've seemingly distinguished DDoS attacks from legitimate traffic. If someone is "flooding the zone" with disinformation with the purpose of making it impossible to discern the truth (i.e. it's not legitimate, good faith discourse), is it not reasonable to draw a parallel with DDoSing?
DDoS traffic doesn't contain any form of "speech" and cannot lead to any. If you insist on drawing dodgy analogies, the correct parallel would be someone taking a truck to a political rally and then playing incredibly loud white noise at volumes that prevent people hearing each other.
As for the idea that people are deliberately flooding the zone with disinformation, I'm afraid I've only seen that coming from the sort of people who use it as an excuse to engage in censorship. There is certainly a massive disinformation problem, but it's not the one they mean when they say that. Consider the experience of this guy, who just "woke up" to the fact that the BBC has been manipulating him:
I myself watched a deceptive BBC news report last year in which they presented a social worker as a "dental specialist", a man whose brother died of COVID except the report admitted the cause of death was unconfirmed, and supposedly flooded ECMO unit that turned out to have spare beds available.
> threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity
What's the problem with that? Bad things on the internet happen more often than not because of the lack of responsibility.
Doxxing has become the primary sin in the Internet religion but it would solve all kind of problems. I am going to commit that sin and say that Doxxing is the solution, you can downvote me and make my comment greyed out and censor me when you argue against censorship.
Instead of deleting content, simply make sure that it's linked to someone who can pay for it if it turn out to be something to be payed for.
The Anonymity argument is only good when you are actively persecuted by a state actor. I don't agree that you deserve anonymity because the public will demonise you. If you hold strong believes that can be met harshly by the general public, you better be ready for the pushback and think of ways to make it accepted. That's how it has been done since ever.
Therefore, when a content is questionable maybe the users should be simply KYC'ed en left alone until a legal take down order is issued. If its illegal(like illegal porn, copyrighted content, terroristic activities etc), go to prison for it. If its BS get your reputation tarnished.
Who the hell gets to judge what is 'to be payed for' in this world you're talking about? The mob? No thanks!
In fact the internet actually went to shit the minute it pivoted from 'Dont share your personal info publicly' to 'please give us every last drop of your personal information and share it publicly'
>Who the hell gets to judge what is 'to be payed for' in this world you're talking about
Those who demand the payment, obviously.
Denying the existence of the god or being gay could be something to be payed for in some places and obviously that is horrible thing but anonymity doesn't solve that.
Fighting for a change or leaving that place solves something. Alan Turing himself was subjected to these things in the United Kingdom. A few decades later things changed in the UK and had nothing to do with the anonymity.
Now those who think that gays deserve equal rights demand payment. Again, anonymity it's not helping the anti-gay folks but simply creates low quality discussion and stress and nothing more.
Stopped people getting doxxed, hunted down a lynched in countries where you're executed for being a homosexual, while still being able to communicate safely online with other people in the same situation?
How exactly does anonymity not solve that problem?
> If you hold strong believes that can be met harshly by the general public, you better be ready for the pushback and think of ways to make it accepted. That's how it has been done since ever.
The problem is that we're not talking about the general public. Let's say I'm Jewish. Someone on the internet may "doxx" me by finding a group of neonazis and spreading my information there, resulting in me getting threats and hate.
The internet seems to specialize in this sort of "doxxing". Why? My theory is that the internet, even if you have a real name for a handle, still distances and dehumanizes others to the point where it's hard to understand the pain you're causing.
It's hard to walk up and slap someone because you feel the slap and see them wince in pain. It's easy to DM someone on twitter something far more hurtful than a slap, laugh about it with your tribe of neonazis, and forget about it the next day.
> The internet seems to specialize in this sort of "doxxing". Why? My theory is that the internet, even if you have a real name for a handle, still distances and dehumanizes others to the point where it's hard to understand the pain you're causing.
That's a good theory. My personal theory is there are a lot of psychopaths and sociopaths in the world, and the internet lets them find each other and form communities that revel in causing misery.
I think the solution of your problem is physically securing you against neo nazis instead of hiding your identity. Unless of corse you are writing this from the 1940's and you are in Central Europe. If that's the case, you have a case.
I am writing this on the internet. Physically securing myself does nothing to prevent hatemail, DoSs, and slander.
The ideal that "lies can't hurt you, the truth is stronger than lies" has never seemed to actually work. There are countless fictions are far more prominent than facts, and there are countless people who's online experience has been damaged by a small contingent of dedicated attackers.
The response to "harboring free speech to the extreme results in neonazis digitally harassing Jews" should not be "okay, fine, lock your door at night, free speech is more important than you being harassed".
>If people believe that it’s wrong for you to be subjected to that, those who do this to you will pay for it.
Are you referring to vigilante justice or just trusting the system? (What Americans refer to as the "democratic process" and the "justice system")
Because if it's the former, it takes a lot for people to raise a hand against others outside self-defense.
If it's the latter...the system usually fails. And saying "yeah well eventually, once there's enough political pressure, it won't fail" isn't any consolation to those who are now having to spend thousands of dollars on a therapist to recover from the trauma they've suffered (because American health insurance typically has crap mental health coverage).
>People are much nicer when their reputation is at stake.
I think a more accurate statement would be "People are much nicer when their money is at stake." And I don't mean "nicer" as in "genuinely better," it's more "I'll paint on a smile and not say anything bad" (just ask a waiter and they'll have plenty of tales where they had to do this for a tip).
Today, there are plenty of online hangouts for people with all sorts of ideas. This is great since people can easily form communities around a TV show, hobby, etc, but it also enables flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, whose views are often rooted in bigotry (see: All Gas No Brakes video on the flat earth convention [0]). Those communities tend to encourage an "us vs them" mentality and to cut out those who seek to "hold them back" (basically modern cults - alienate yourself from your friends and loved ones, we will provide all the community you need).
In the past, joining groups like the Klan was a much more difficult endeavor (they tended to operate much more in the shadows), and the groups tended to be on the smaller side. Today, it's just a matter of joining a Facebook group about "race realism", "the truth about George Floyd", or whatever, and bam, you have access to thousands of like-minded individuals to build your own personal echo chamber. The traditional tactics of people avoiding those they dislike IRL don't work so well as a form of collective shaming when you've got someone who is terminally online and has tons of people to tell them just how right they are and linking various garbage to reinforce the worldview.
See, I deeply dislike my speech moderated. Here on HN I am not allowed to advocate certain opinions like "US was wrong on even attempting to ban TikTok", I already got in trouble two times for it and I hope this wont be the 3rd one(I am supposed to pick my words carefully so not to inflict strong feelings, or my account gets rate limited or comments hidden). Also, whenever I express an unpopular opinion or controversial proposition(like the one in this thread) I would get my writings grayed out or collapsed instead of rebutted. That is a censorship by a community. When it comes to the online communities, they are often heavily moderated to push certain agendas which creates bubbles.
Free speech is non existent these days. The places that had were invaded by trolls and dabd actors, go shut down one by one after each incident that cost outrage.
My proposition attempts to solve these issues. Don't censor, never delete or ban anything or anyone unless legally required to do so(copyrighted content or illegal porn), hold responsible instead.
I recognise that there's value of anonymity, what I propose is to limit it to the occasions when there's a value.
Oh BTW, if when I say non-anonymous I don't necessarily mean a connection to the government issued legal identity. Using a pseudonym that is the same everywhere but not connected to a government recognised identity should be good enough most of the times. Throwaway accounts are fine when relevant. One person pushing an agenda through multiple accounts is not fine. There can be mechanisms to allow anonymous posting attached to a real identity where doxxing is an option when the person is determined to be a bad actor.
For example, if someone says something you don't like, you can intimidate them into shutting up by, say, threatening to reveal their personal information, such as their legal identity, address of residence, and so on. On certain corners of the Internet, merely dropping dox is good enough to get randos (who won't even be affiliated with you, so +1 to plausible deniability) to harass someone you want to shut up.
A more technical variant of this is DDoS attacks. Instead of trying to intimidate someone into shutting up with threats of stochastic terrorism; you shout over them by sending a bunch of traffic to their site until the server crashes or they run out of money.
So even if you're a hardcore free speech extremist, you still need to embrace some level of "censoring the censors" if you want the Internet to actually be usable.