In these sort of arguments I don't really understand why civility in and of itself is valued. It only makes sense in a social situation that affords civility. For that you can make "giving up anonymity" opt-in, rather than opt-out (which is mostly what is being done a lot, from forums that force you to use FB accounts to tor users in various countries who have no easy way to opt-out of foregoing anonymity).
It is rather silly to quote civility when the alternative, the lack of anonymity, has terrible "real-world" consequences, as mentioned in the article.
the argument willfully ignores the many voices that are silenced in the name of shutting up trolls: activists living under authoritarian regimes, whistleblowers, victims of violence, abuse, and harassment, and anyone with an unpopular or dissenting point of view that can legitimately expect to be imprisoned, beat-up, or harassed for speaking out.
Can someone explain the rationale of placing civility ahead of the above consequences?
The argument is that online anonymity itself also creates real-world consequences, such as character assassinations, harassment, and downright internet crime.
If "Civility" means "being nice to each other", why shouldn't we value it, in and of itself?
>online anonymity itself also creates real-world consequences, such as character assassinations, harassment, and downright internet crime.
anonymity itself doesn't create crime or harassment. Like in the real life, it only makes it easier to perpetrate one. With this being said, why wouldn't we all wear GPS and RFID enabled collars at all times with our name, identification number and scan barcode being promptly visible on the collar?
> why wouldn't we all wear GPS and RFID enabled collars at all times with our name, identification number and scan barcode being promptly visible on the collar
I think, for a lot of people, "civility" means "ritualized groveling before people more powerful than themselves", and they're unwilling to make it anything more than completely optional.
Imagine there's a service (HackerNews, 4chan, whatever) that you use. It gives you the opportunity to opt-in to real identity, at which point, you will only post with your real identity, and only see posts with your real identity.
If you opt out, you may still post and discuss, but you remain pseudonymous. You may share your details and information, or you may share nothing. You can see all comments and reply to anything, but the people who are real-identified don't see your posts or replies to theirs.
If you let this system run, I strongly believe that the number of people posting with real identities would be a fraction of a percent of the community, often doing it to make a specific point and then logging back out.
The "open internet", without enforced identity, is just a more interesting and useful place to visit than Facebook, or any other "exclusively real identity" destination.
(note: I replied to parent because this is related; I don't disagree with it at all)
Civility is really important if you want to have any meaningful exchange of opinions. However it is idiotic to claim that the only way to afford it is via real identity. I imagine an adaptible text algorithm that removes profanities and hate speech would even make youtube comments useful.
As somebody who worked on a social networking website for high schoolers back in the day, I can say with authority that trolling never stops in that age range. We quickly gave up the profanity filter arms race as we saw more and more obscure uses of unicode.
Anonymity is about much more than people trolling each other. Anonymity is what allows a guy to mug you and then disappear into the wide world without consequences. It's what allows a child rapist to buy a nice house next to an elementary school. It's what allows a known terrorist to board a plane and crash it into a building.
I don't deny there are many great benefits to anonymity, especially on the internet, but people should be aware of the costs. Anonymity can allow people to do bad things and get away with it.
I don't even know where to begin with telling you everything that is wrong with all that you just said.
Instead of initially refuting them one-by-one, which only creates an argument on your terms, let me set the tone of an argument on my terms.
You present a strawman's argument instead of valid points worthy of serious debate in regards to the original statement. You make a weak, passing reference to anonymity being about more than trolling and then reference emotionally loaded examples to support said references.
Now, to refute your points individually.
1) Muggings often happen in public and private settings. You can be on a busy street, or in an ally, a public place, or even your own home. Two of my friends (who are here on HN too) were mugged in Rome a couple of months ago. Those fellows got away with their stuff and never caught, I believe. I've also had friends who were mugged in other situations, were able to give descriptions of their attackers, and those criminals have been arrested later because the public and police are on the lookout for them. The lack of anonymity doesn't prevent you from being a victim of crime. Many crimes such as mugging are committed by repeat offenders who are well-known to law enforcement. Being anonymous or not does not prevent crime from happening.
2) You reference the supposed possible threat implied by children being attacked at some future point by an anonymous deviant. This is a common tactic most often used to prop up weak arguments by appealing to the possible fear in parents. Statistics and reality quickly discount this notion. First, most acts of sexual abuse against children are committed by relatives. Not random strangers. Secondly, due to the extreme lengths over the last 20-30 years that this fear tactic has been used in the U.S., today we have massive online publicly available databases of people even remotely associated with sexual acts against children. The possibility of someone with such a history moving into a neighborhood near a school is more remote than at any time in history.
There was even a story the other day on MSNBC where a happily married couple met in high school. He was a few years older than his then girlfriend, she was 15 and he was 17-18. Her father didn't like him and reported him to the police after it was revealed they had started having sex. Despite that they have been married for years and have 4 children together, to this day this man is still labeled as a sex offender.
The restriction of anonymity and freedom for the majority should not be severely restricted simply because of an unfounded fear tactic, which is what you imply.
3) Third, you reference the 9/11 attacks. This is the most emotionally charged topic to happen in the last 10 years. One that the U.S. has spent tens of thousands of lives and TRILLIONS of dollars to "combat". There was nothing that was anonymous about the men that boarded those planes.
To quote, "Within minutes of the attacks, the Federal Bureau of Investigation opened the largest FBI investigation in United States history, operation PENTTBOM. The suspects were identified within 72 hours because few made any attempt to disguise their names on flight and credit card records. They were also among the few non-U.S. citizens and nearly the only passengers with Arabic names on their flights, enabling the FBI to identify them and in many cases such details as dates of birth, known or possible residences, visa status, and specific identification of the suspected pilots."
The failure to prevent 9/11 lies more in the faults of the U.S. security apparatus then any ingenuity on the behalf of the hijackers. Read up under the Pre Attacks section I reference in the link above.
Finally, to refute your last point and to sum up my argument, there are more costs to being known rather than being anonymous. Being known makes it difficult or impossible for the innocent to seek freedom, to examine their rights, or in many cases to even conduct financial transactions. To set up a panopticon surveillance apparatus to closely monitor a population for their "security" reduces the cultural and financial health of that society.
People that are extremely publicly known get away with horrific crimes often, right in front of everyone. This ranges from murder to sexual assault to massive financial crimes.
Its more expensive morally and socially to be watched than it is to be anonymous.
1) Muggings - If you get mugged by someone you know, it's very easy to find them and punish them. It's no coincidence that muggings tend to happen in big cities where the chances of a mugger attacking someone they know is very low (anonymity).
2) Sexual predator - If a priest rapes a child and the child tells people about it (i.e. removing some of the priest's anonymity regarding his actions) the priest is likely to be investigated and thrown in jail. If you know a sexual predator lives next to the school your kid goes to (i.e. he has lost some of his anonymity) you might take additional protective measures that could prevent your children from being assaulted. Whether this is the most common scenario, or whether it is fair for sexual predators to be publicly identified, are completely separate issues. I am simply illustrating a cost.
3) Terrorists - If you were the pilot of a plane and knew that some of your passengers were members of an extremist group that had plotted to destroy airlines in the past (i.e. some of the passengers had lost some of their anonymity) you would probably kick them off your plane. Whether or not this relates to 9/11 is not the point, this is simply an example of a cost of anonymity.
As for your last point: I never said the costs of anonymity outweigh the benefits, I simply showed that there are costs.
Intriguingly, without anonymity there is no real reason to prevent predators from living next to elementary schools nor interacting publicly with children.
Everyone around them would know their history, and name then therefore watch them to a close degree. As it is now, we simply try to prevent convicted pedophiles from being near unsuspecting children and parents.
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With a terrorist, the argument is the same. If one knows that party A is a known terrorist, and has thoroughly checked them out then why not allow them to board a plan. 100% security isn't demanded---if it were, then we'd simply lock up every known terrorists before they committed any additional overt acts, then never release them.
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Of all your cases, the mugging is the only one that makes sense because it refers to a lack of anonymity deterring a potential criminal rather than it being used as advanced warning for the potential victim.
I submit that it is not. How would your non-anonymous world stop a madman like Anders Breivik? He did not hide his views. He was a known user of white supremacist sites, and a known affiliate of white supremacist groups. However, no one, not even the fringe groups that he affiliated with could predict that he would carry out his horrible actions.
Breivik was not anonymous. That fact, however, did nothing to stop him from carrying out his crime.
I am not claiming that anonymity is the source of all crime.
Perhaps some of the misunderstanding is due to the broad definition of anonymity I'm using. Anonymity as I use it is the inability to link a person's actions to their identity. This type of anonymity breaks a lot of our social institutions. For example, if you don't know that a person committed a crime it's hard to arrest them.
If Anders Breivik was anonymous he would still be wandering Norway because no one would know that he was responsible for the murders. Some of the information I've read suggests that he wanted (or at least expected) to be caught. In such situations anonymity may actually discourage crime. I would guess, however, that most criminals would rather not be caught.
The argument I'm responding to states that if you know someone is a terrorist, then you simply prevent them from boarding planes.
That anonymity is the source of crime isn't my argument, it's his.
Clearly, you can be identified as an 'enemy' and still be dangerous. A good example is during time of war, soldiers are often uniformed and standing in ranks. There is no doubt about which 'side' someone facing you is on, and yet they are no less dangerous because of it.
Anonymity doesn't remove danger, but merely identifies that danger exists.
Wouldn't it be interesting if you could flag something to notify you if you're walking by a white supremacist?
Likewise there are costs to a loss of anonymity. Consider political dissidents living under oppressive regimes, or whistleblowers afraid of retaliation. So in a very real way, preventing anonymity does allow and is currently allowing people to do bad things and get away with it.
It is rather silly to quote civility when the alternative, the lack of anonymity, has terrible "real-world" consequences, as mentioned in the article.
the argument willfully ignores the many voices that are silenced in the name of shutting up trolls: activists living under authoritarian regimes, whistleblowers, victims of violence, abuse, and harassment, and anyone with an unpopular or dissenting point of view that can legitimately expect to be imprisoned, beat-up, or harassed for speaking out.
Can someone explain the rationale of placing civility ahead of the above consequences?