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The internet would be a lot poorer, if all users had to be identified. I really appreciate it when people tell their personal stories and talk about how they ha

The internet would be a lot poorer, if all users had to be identified. I really appreciate it when people tell their personal stories and talk about how they have overcome crises. Anonymity empowers people to help others by sharing life lessons. Those same life lessons would be very harmful for the reputation of the internet user, if they had to be posted with the user's real name. Not everyone has a life that is all sunshine. Not every use of anonymity is criminal or unethical.

fyredge 6d ago
I completely understand and actually agree with your stance. Consider this, the personal blog we love reading can remain anonymous, because it is private in the sense that it is ostensibly the writings of a single person, it is not a platform. To bring it back to analog, newspapers are platforms, where journalists are identified members of the public and can be held accountable for their words. If you would like more personal stories, by all means, search for the personal blog online and share them with your friends privately. But if you share it on a public platform like HN, you are making an editorial decision that this is worth sharing to the masses and thus should be scrutinized.
- voakbasda 6d ago
  If the blog is publicly published, so the author should be unmasked. Identification schemes would be fine if there were never abused, but every single instance of them has been abused in the past. There is zero reason to believe it will it be different on the internet. Are you familiar with how the DMCA gets abused? Do you really believe that bad actors will not find similar ways to abuse an identification system?
  - fyredge 6d ago
    Oh, that's not what I meant. It's the person who shared the content publicly that needs to be deanonymized, not the author. Think of it like advertising on billboards. When you partake in an activity with explicit intent to persuade others, you should declare who you are first. That's why my target has been solely focused on social media. Personal blogs don't advertise, social media does. Just like how a private business conducts themselves privately, but advertisements of a company should make clear if it is self advertisement or someone else advertising on behalf of them.

fyredge 6d ago

I completely understand and actually agree with your stance. Consider this, the personal blog we love reading can remain anonymous, because it is private in the sense that it is ostensibly the writings of a single person, it is not a platform. To bring it back to analog, newspapers are platforms, where journalists are identified members of the public and can be held accountable for their words. If you would like more personal stories, by all means, search for the personal blog online and share them with your friends privately. But if you share it on a public platform like HN, you are making an editorial decision that this is worth sharing to the masses and thus should be scrutinized.

voakbasda 6d ago
If the blog is publicly published, so the author should be unmasked. Identification schemes would be fine if there were never abused, but every single instance of them has been abused in the past. There is zero reason to believe it will it be different on the internet. Are you familiar with how the DMCA gets abused? Do you really believe that bad actors will not find similar ways to abuse an identification system?
- fyredge 6d ago
  Oh, that's not what I meant. It's the person who shared the content publicly that needs to be deanonymized, not the author. Think of it like advertising on billboards. When you partake in an activity with explicit intent to persuade others, you should declare who you are first. That's why my target has been solely focused on social media. Personal blogs don't advertise, social media does. Just like how a private business conducts themselves privately, but advertisements of a company should make clear if it is self advertisement or someone else advertising on behalf of them.