Interesting news. I don’t care about China. I care about us.
Got me thinking on a few topical questions. Please discuss. Let’s try and not shit-post, since I have a few questions I’d rather see explored and discussed with honest curiosity. Let’s see if we can have a collaborative conversation on the topic anonymous free speech.
How would mandatory real name policy work in a country with free speech? Would it, or if it wouldn’t, what would it take?
Is free speech something you can practice anonymously? How can anyone guarantee you any rights if you are anonymous and no one knows who you are?
Would you take and rely on your information from a masked guy on the street you don’t know? Would you if they were many? Should one take any anonymous person seriously, ever?
Would you accept having absolute freedom of speech without anonymity - everything you say is always attached to your name and face, you are free from legal prosecution, but not from social prosecution? Isn’t social prosecution the base fabric of a civilization? Is there a civilization without social prosecution? Isn’t civilization social prosecution?
Does the new technology (internet and cameras everywhere) make the original notion of free speech very much different, perhaps to the point of being obsolete? When it was introduced, your words remained where you spoke them. Now they are everywhere. You are almost guaranteed social prosecution for having an opinion on the internet, and may easily become subject to random punishment for being even slightly unintentionally ambiguous ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Online_shaming#Justine_Sacco_incident ).
Does anonymity directly expose our "id"s to each other, with social networks acting as the super-ego? Do we then really say what we really mean when we are anonymous, or does the replacement of our personal super-ego with a social network super-ego make us liars… or perhaps are we now different for being in a different world… or is it still all the same? Are we truly being more honest when we are anonymous, and compared to what - what is the natural state of human being today - anonymous, or not anonymous?
(Note that I am back to work and will try to participate within what my short time allows. Still I think it is important to try these questions on for a good measure.)
The definition of free speech varies country to country I doubt there will ever be an over all consensus on what it should be. I think that people should be allowed to say things, but they need to understand what they are saying.
Places such as pol and old YouTube comments is not the internet I want so maybe attaching a name to the toxic is the way forward. Unfortunately in the case of China they are using it against dissent of the population rather than stopping people being toxic so this is more of a western discussion than over all.
True. In China, there is explicitly no free speech. Removal of anonymity without both free speech and the right to bear arms seems to me very different to what removal of anonymity would be in a country where you would have both, or at least one of them?
All things considering, perhaps being anonymous is more akin to the right to bear arms, then akin to the right to free speech?
You know how people that attended the tiki torch rally before Charlottesville got doxed and fired? IRL names online make it easier.
Absolutely. I’d hate to use 4chan as an example but it’s the best one, you are free to share your opinion whether or not it’s a good one, but that’s the point.
Do news papers write damaging stories about politicians based on “”“anonymous sources”? Yes. I wouldn’t but many do.
No because there may not be legal consequences but there can be social ones.
Yeah no
Not if you have anonymity.
It’s your choice to make your voice obvious or not. I’ve made alt accounts here before and nobody knew it was me unless I told them. RIP AnarchV.
Yet if you are practicing free speech anonymously, is it then free speech, or anonymous speech? Is there a difference between the two? This was the thing nagging me for the longest. Does anonymous speech obsolete or supersede free speech? Is it possibly a super-set, or a subset of it? Note that we can find anonymous speech existing separately from free speech. So does it matter that there is a law protecting free speech if I, you, many, or everyone, is acting outside the provisions of that law for the convenience of avoiding a social punishment? Also, what would it take to motivate you and I to practice free speech openly?
Then, cryptography is potentially considered munitions. Again:
Is anonymity munitions, or free speech? I am looking to explore the possible relations between these. Let’s try it together and see how far we get?
If there is a law that no one practices, is it obsolete?
I don’t think it would be enforceable. Most cryptology and obfuscation methods are are open source. Too hard to kill. Even during the Enlightenment absolute monarchs couldn’t fully suppress anonymous printing.
The act of being anonymous is what gives the ability to speak freely. The internet is strange and people overreact much more there. Having the buffer of anonymity is a good thing.
Great question. Like all things, the internet should be taken with a healthy dose of salt. The older generations don’t seem to get this.
Overreaction is why anonymity is so important.
I am not sure. As time goes on, this question may become easier to answer.
I have a difficult time understanding what the big deal is with really terrible comments. Nobody forces someone to read a bad book. Nor is anyone held against their will in an auditorium full of shitty people.
Simple answer, turn off your fucking computer and visit the real world where people are more civilized. Leave the internet alone as a last salvation to vent your inner most thoughts.
On the other hand. I have many tangible projects and hobbies that require my attention. The sensitive people need all the help they can get to protect them from the big mean world that’s out to attack them. I’ll survive without the internet. In fact I’d be far more productive.
Becuz forced self censorship is the answer to making shitty people good… right? Same has been proven with weapons, remove them and suddenly people no longer want to be murderers… right?
I’m a goddamn genius and have solved a problem in a simple forum post after hundreds of thousands have pondered the issue.
Anyway rant over. Glad I was born an american in a constitutional republic where this bullshit can be refuted with a little enlightenment.
Anonymous speech keeps you from social and legal “backlash” on your opinion. You get the option to take a step back from your own opinion after the “intial publication” so you can avoid making the same mistake again, or not. You are free to evaluate your own point without beeing forced into any direction.
Free speech would be you beeing able to share your opinion with no right to beeing right.
Your opinion may be unpopular and as most people do not have the moral “capabilites” to make a destinction between a person and the opinion of said person, you as a speaker would face hard social backlash.
(For more on moral aspects, search for Lawrence Kohlberg, from there, you will find more)
In an ideal state, an individual could publish their opinion with their name and address attached without endangering their life, family, friends and property.
As for the real world, opinions can cause so high waves, there are immediately two polarized factions. And as some argue maximum freedom equals maximum safety, the initial speaker might get murdered in their bathtub.
Another problem is government survailance.
Power and money corrupt people. And then powerful people unite to gain more power and money corrupting them further. What happens when democracy fails one day? With all the records about who argues for what beeing open to the powerful few?
Looking back at historical events like the french revolution or the nazi rise, those with unpopular opinion will be murdered at some point further strengthening the powerful.
Trust takes effort. So does thinking. Just blindly trusting anything is as harmful as trusting nothing. But every story has some truth to it.
Those people who do the first research (investigative journalism for example) might not be operating in completly legal ways, but with very legitimate intentions. If noone was to trust those who research, totalitarian regimes would rise everywhere very quickly.
This is absolutely insane. Years ago I remember hearing the internet was the wild west, now I think I truly understood what people meant by that. If this comes to the west it’s probably time to just stop posting. Simply not worth the effort. What happens when you post something that’s offensive AFTER the fact? I’d rather not be fined or sent to jail because of some ironic shitpost I made a decade ago and potentially didn’t even believe in.
No doubt this will be coming soon, it’ll be to prevent hatespeech and hate crimes against some minority group or whatever. China is screwed. Add this with mandatory sesame credit and you’ve got a complete social disaster on the horizon.
Yes, because it seems to me that free speech originates in the necessity to protect the freely speaking person from legal prosecution for criticism. I.e, you already aren’t anonymous, but you also remain legally free after speaking.
I think they can’t be the same, and they can only be interchangeable to a degree:
For one, they are used for different purposes. Anonymity saves you from social prosecution. Publicity lends you validity, sincerity and a sense of commitment to what you say. I have recently even read an argument that anonymity is effeminate, whereas it is manly (or at least important) to stand behind your opinion. Anonymous, you only stand by anonymity. The “OP” remains unknown. Only some people let themselves stand firm in public behind their opinions. Maybe they are brave, maybe just insane. I can imagine situations where I would reveal my identity to lend the message real weight, but only under extreme circumstances where damage of not doing so would be potentially even greater.
Can you have a freedom without paying for it one way or another?
For second, anonymous speech can exist without free speech (the proof being China, for a short while longer).
And these are also a very important differences:
This is why I am trying to explore the difference between free speech and anonymous speech, among other questions I put forward.
I think we need to have a good vocabulary to discuss these subjects, given the dangers in front of us, very much the exact ones @Fudgeo points out. If there is a difference between free speech and anonymous speech, then we must bloody well know how to talk about it when the time comes (and that time is yesterday). Because we may just need to work that extra hard to achieve that
necessary.
Regarding the said vocabulary, it is my impression that our vocabulary is weak, and not our own, that it is re-purposed by political bowel movements to their own means - to speak their minds and not our minds - to shut up any idea not their own. That is, I think, why we do not have a clear distinction between free speech and anonymous speech nor a good measure to evaluate them.
We all experience things out “in the corner of our eye” which we can’t really put our words on - concepts we are too incapacitated to grasp and wield right. Having no vocabulary for it, we can’t talk about it. Yet I believe many of these things to be crucial to our future, as information has already moved into the digital domain. This is the direction we are going, and we absolutely must have the vocabulary to grasp it, to talk about it and to explain it. Even to the
Another interesting notion inherent to making a distinction between free speech and anonymous speech is - if free speech isn’t applicable to the anonymous speech, then neither are the limitations of it? You see why I think it is important to persistently explore the distinctions and relations? If you argue honestly, you don’t always know where you will end up, but it is very likely you will end up with a fresh take.
Apparently, also free speech has uses the anonymous speech doesn’t. Perhaps one can agree they have properties not in common. But what properties do they have in common? What properties of free speech can be completely replaced by anonymous speech and vice versa?
Hey, thanks, I’ll take a look at the materials in your post, see what I can figure from it.
@MazeFrame, I think you paint a rather bleak, albeit quite accurate, picture of the state of free speech.
In reality, neither do I. But I was also considering it hypothetically like this - if you can have anonymous speech without free speech (with China seemingly being a proof of that concept) can the opposite be true as well? That technically, in a society gone full 1984, could you have free speech guaranteed by law, although no anonymity. Perhaps there is a degree of anonymity necessary for free speech to work? Perhaps that anonymity was provided by vast distances and small societies back in the 18th century (strictly speaking of USA), but does no longer exist?
You are touching on it here:
but again, isn’t the original concept of free speech made to protect you only when you are not anonymous? And are we way past the original concept then?
Oh hell yeah man.
I wasn’t looking to get all the way there, but it does put forward that question, right? Another question being if it matters that you have something you don’t use? How much does it matter? Perhaps it would be easier to win one rather than two battles? I don’t really know - I haven’t really thought this through myself in any detail, as I really wanted to attempt a collaborative thing and welcome any and all answers to the questions I posed. And perhaps leading to new questions, and acknowledging if there are any which can not really be answered, and what it would take to answer them.
For sure, it is a bit philosophical. I think of it more like a playground. We let ourselves ask questions and see where we end up, and if we find interesting questions to ask maybe we end up with interesting answers to question .
Yes. Free speech protects you from being persecuted by the government. Anonymous speech protects you from being persecuted by some lunatic on the internet. We live in a world where psychopaths are swatting Twitch streamers. Without online anonymity you’re an easy target for pretty much every psycho who might have taken issue with one of your comments.
China really sucks. They don’t even have the presumption of innocence, yet they have the death penalty.
I’m flabbergasted. The person saying that is probably the same that would say “I bet you wouldn’t talk like that IRL”. Of course people don’t act the way they do IRL and online. I don’t share edgy Nazi memes with parents, but I do here, would you?
It would require eliminating encryption, tor, vpn’s, and all that kind of stuff. Never gonna work.
Anonymity is one tool to guarantee free speech for yourself, without relying on others to do it for you. It enables you to take your right to free speech into your own hands, not asking for permission from some authority providing “guarantees.”
Rely on? No. Information from an anonymous person could, depending on context, be useful for starting or aiding investigations, but should not be the sole source in arriving at a conclusion. Anonymous groups could be useful for tracking trends and averages in a population, but also cannot be solely relied on due to the possibility of multiple online identities per person and such.
Absolutely not. Free speech is required for civilation to progress, and anonymity provides the freedom from legal and social prosecution - and more importantly persecution - that can help enable people to exercise their freedom of speech. I think the ugliness of people being shitty because they can get away with it is a big reason some want to get rid of anonymity, but it is also the very reason anonymity is required as an option.
This highlights the prosecution vs persecution I mentioned above. One off-color joke is not grounds to ruin someones life like this. Had she been anonymous she could have avoided all this. You could argue that the mob acted wrongly and shouldn’t have ganged up on her like that. I would agree, but you cannot and should not trust the mob with your well-being. You should protect yourself using whatever tools are available.
Theoretically yes, in reality: no. Free speech is generally misunderstood. Free speech means you’re free from government persecution, it doesn’t mean you’re free from the consequences of expressing your ideals. I can go out to a public square and shout that Quakers are behind 9/11 all day long and not be arrested, but if my boss walks by and also happens to be a Quaker i’ll probably be putting in applications at the local Dennys soon. That said if you’re part of a mass protest in reality there is some guaranteed anonymity, you’re unlikely to be picked out of a crowd of thousands or tens of thousands. The same is not true in online forums. Even if you’re one of 1 million people that posted on a protest page all it takes is one simple query and anyone who cares can find out exactly what your stance is. tl;dr in reality there is “herd anonymity” but the same is not true online, and people would adjust their behavior as such.
What? Of course you have rights if you are anonymous, this is basically the antithesis to the first point. If anonymous you have the ability to express whatever viewpoint you hold without fear of either censorship or consequence. This too has it’s own downsides in that you generally see the worst in people in this environment but that’s another debate. Anonymity doesn’t magically give the right for people to harass or threaten, that’s still against the law and has been for a long time, and those that break them should be pursued accordingly. If i’m walking down the street and someone in a Guy Fawkes mask runs up, screams they’re going to rape and kill me and everyone i love, then runs i don’t think the police response should be “well he was wearing a mask, we can’t do anything until congress bans masks.” That’s pants on head retarded.
Everyone should take all non-peer reviewed information with a massive grain of salt, all the time.
No, absolute freedom of speech which i can only take to mean someone can yell “Bomb!” at an airport and not be arrested is not and should not be a reality. As the Internet as aptly demonstrated, there are people that absolutely thrive on being trolls and creating chaos for the sake of chaos. Legal prosecution is an extension of social prosecution. You can only exile an unruly member so far until the community says “nope, that’s it. You’re going in a pit where we don’t have to deal with you.”
I feel like this has been pretty well covered in what i said, but i will say that no the internet has not made free speech “obsolete”. If anything the Internet has made free speech more powerful, but it has always been a double edged sword and continues to be. The Internet has made it possible to document war crimes and spread them to the world at large like never before. For dissidents to voice their opinions and have them spread like wildfire and ignite entire movements and cultural shifts. The opposite is also very true. Being a raging pus-filled asshole carries the same dangers magnified in the same ways.
Now we’re getting into deeper waters that true academics and no armchair academics like myself wade into for sport. I’d say we wade into “true anonymity” for sport and fun, to poke and jab at those we at least assume are not like us, but always find comfort in our proverbial tribe. True anonymity is not the face of humanity and never has been. We are communal animals, isolation is a definitive method of torture for human beings because we need contact with other people. Real physical contact, not words on a message board. Anonymity is a tool, not a state of being. The Internet has made it more accessible and farther reaching, but it has not fundamentally changed people. We’re all the same worthless sacks of shit and meat at the end of the day, longing to bump uglies with someone else.
Disclaimer: Everything written above is purely my own opinions and brain vomit from a slightly drunk and somewhat opiate addled brain. Take it with liberal grain of salt.
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lol ?