Would an end to anonymous posting improve social media?

[Birdjaguar]

I wonder how ending anonymous posting would change social media. One would have to be an identified real person to contribute or participate.

Moved from the Musk thread. there are many variations on yes and no and shades of grey. The poll is to capture the big picture while posts should express more nuance and thoughtful reasoning.

 

[Gorbles]

I wonder how ending anonymous posting would change social media. One would have to be an identified real person to contribute or participate.

This would in turn harm vulnerable folk as they'd become much more targetable by trolls or worse.

 

[Moriarte]

I wonder how ending anonymous posting would change social media. One would have to be an identified real person to contribute or participate.

Homogeneity in discourse, decrease in user engagement, emergence of alternative, anonymous venues.

Reduction in misinformation, trolling, due to accountability.

Probably a subject for a whole new thread.

 

[Samson]

It would kill social media as I use it. I have a LinkedIn account that is tied to my real identity, and I cannot imagine having an interesting discussion on that.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Would being identified reduce the trolling and expressed hate? Being anonymous encourages participation, it also encourages extremism, lying, and deceit.

 

[r16]

impossibility to challenge state sanctioned trolling . People rant . Other people read . Require "normal people" to use full personal information and they will not read . Everything New Turkey proposes serves something . New Turkey proposes you to use full personal information . Getting the idea ?

supposed to follow post #3 but forgot to click ...

 

[Gorbles]

Would being identified reduce the trolling and expressed hate? Being anonymous encourages participation, it also encourages extremism, lying, and deceit.

Could it? Possibly. But that can't be the only metric on which anything is evaluated.

For example, you'd need to correlate types of trolling and outright hate. Hypothetically, what if it reduced some of the low-impact microaggressions, but made stalking and related, more violent crimes more possible?

Ultimately suggestions like this can theorycraft in circles forever, and studies are going to be very contextual and limited by geography (and culture).

And that's before we get onto the benefits lost, in addition to the legal consequences. For example, it's common in the UK for teachers to change their names on social media (e.g. Facebook). I'm unsure if this is a legal thing, a per-school policy, or just recommended, but with my wife as a teacher, I know a lot, and anecdotally a lot of them have! I can't imagine reverting this would be good for them - you should see how some parents (not at all shielded by anonymity) get to treat them in person, nevermind digitally.

 

[Samson]

Would being identified reduce the trolling and expressed hate? Being anonymous encourages participation, it also encourages extremism, lying, and deceit.

I kind of do not know what trolling means these days. It would not stop good [1] old style trolling, but would prevent some expressions of hate. There were a lot of expressions of hate made by identifiable people in the recent trouble over here.

There is nothing wrong with having a social media service that has such rules. I kind of think the answer to a lot of the "think of the children" type complaints is a walled garden for children. Firm identification, perhaps of the parents rather than the kids, could well help with that.

To try and apply it to social media more generally would either fail or kill social media as it is today.

Spoiler [1] :

The "best" troll used to be the single innocuous statement that caused a long argument.

 

[Oerdin]

No, it would just make censorship worse.

 

[dusters]

Generally yes.

I'm totally honest. So being honest and having my name and photo along my opinion is fine.

My professional fields are education, chess and creativity. I usually don't comment on fields I have no education on, so as someone who reads like 98% and posts like 2% of time, it would fit.

On Quora there are more people with real names. It makes everyone look smart, but nowadays Masters or PhD is no guarantee a person has basics in logic, common sense and
critical thinking/scientific method.

 

[sophie]

Some of the foulest, most spiteful, most violently transphobic invective I have been on the receiving end of has come from white ladies with a profile picture of them holding their young children, a handle that is their real name, and a bio that lists their home city and links to their professional information so I don’t really think it would make much of a difference, no.

 

[PPQ_Purple]

Anonymity is the prerequisite for freedom of speech and expression. Without it people would newer dare express any opinion that is even mildly controversial less they be canceled by society. Thus abolishing it would be a fast track toward turning mankind into an echo chamber like we were in the middle ages. One where repressive governments and social groups control the population through fear and self censorship.

And I for one do not want to live in such a world. I would rather have a world where people are allowed to some times say things that I disagree with than one where nobody dares speak out for fear of lynching by the court of public opinion.

 

[sophie]

Without it people would newer dare express any opinion that is even mildly controversial less they be canceled by society.

Be trans on the internet for a week and then come back and say that.

Hell just a cursory scroll through facebook would suffice to dispel the notion.

 

[Oerdin]

No, you have the freedom to mute or put whoever you want on ignore if you want. Free speech might be uncomfortable but the only correct answer is more free speech. Otherwise it is a slippery slope which will be abused by authoritarians for all the wrong reasons.

 

[Moriarte]

We're already there, at least half way. From the point of view of authorities investigating a citizen - there is no anonymity today. A citizen, suspected of a crime will have all his e-mails read, also interactions on social networks, text messages, etc. for the past few years will be thoroughly analysed. Big media companies are required to keep long records so that governments can read into the past of their users in case a crime occurs. This lack of anonymity already prompted creation of encrypted messengers and other sorts of relatively safe means of communication for those not content to live in the matrix of greed with passport entry. Furthermore, there's constant pressure applied by governments to social media companies to stop proliferation of anonymity on various grounds of legality and national interest. I am fairly certain I have found my interest and hence my position in this ongoing debate.

Giving even more of my personal, locational, medical information to this international conglomerate of greed... well, I'll just say I am not entirely convinced it's such a great idea. I like my (however relative) anonymity of today. And I would like more of it with time, not less.

 

[Kyriakos]

Literally forcing everyone to be doxed so as to post - what a great hideous idea.
There are obvious reasons why anonymity in forums should be the user's choice, including risk of violence, work-safety, privacy.

 

[amadeus]

Everyone’s made the privacy point so I’ll make this one—in some cases, I don’t want to know what opinions my co-workers, family members, etc. express online.

 

[Voidwalkin]

No. Just a straight hard no for me.

 

[danjuno]

No, the internet has been moving in the wrong direction for a lot of reasons, but making dissidents trivial to hunt down is one of them. Finding others over the internet should be as difficult as possible.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I would quit social media.

And CFC is my only social media!