China to Impose Real Name Policy for Online Comments

[Blunderbuss]

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.

Exactly. Yet this is one person I am inclined to believe they do talk like that IRL. I do have opinions on that person’s sanity and values, yet this is a person who does all the shit unmasked. I guess it takes a bit of special to do that. His conviction and genuity does not leave me unmoved, and as much as I’d punch him in the face, I wonder if he isn’t right in some way. He is one of the few people genuinely practicing free speech. And I must recognise there is a valuable lesson to be had there.

Now, if he said all the same shit IRL, maybe we could actually have a friendly talk, because his facial and body language might convey his rationale better, and the physical environment could allow us different mode of operation? You see, I am getting back to the question of how internet modifies our communications, makes us sensitive differently than the physical world for which the original freedoms were formulated?

I don’t share edgy Nazi memes with parents, but I do here, would you?

Well, since I don’t share them here, then I must be sharing them with my parents instead . But would you say you are using your anonymity just to provoke, or just to make some space? How important is it to you to say the things you say - what are you trying to get to when you practice the anonymous speech? I know you are one of the guys who didn’t really do much to hide your identity on this forum, and I know you’ve caused yourself some social punishment on this forum, so I thought it interesting to ask.

I seldom use memes to communicate - I think (though this is a sweeping generalisation about memes) people are most often predisposed to react to them without thinking, and seeing that kind of (negative) reaction repeatedly does not bring me any personal satisfaction at all. Besides, I still believe we need to dress things in our own grammar and vocabulary - memes extend what we are able to say, but I think they are also a very limited vocabulary when it comes to expressing some types of concepts.

Anonymity is one tool to guarantee free speech for yourself, without relying on others to do it for you.

Yes. There is a lot of truth in that. I do notice you don’t seem to conceptually separate anonymous speech from the free speech as I do. Is it so that you find them to be interchangeable in general, or for your own usage? Do you think they can be separated the way I did? I am curious whether I understood your meaning close enough to how you intended it.

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.

Anonymity as an enabler of being a public person?

You know, if free speech as in “protection from legal prosecution by government” is no longer enough, then the idea of free speech itself maybe in trouble?

We still have journalists and public officials. How should/can they operate within these “modern” ramifications of free speech? Would it be better if they could speak anonymously?

I wonder if a satisfactory solution would be such that you can create and discard identities on the internet. Some of them you would keep connected to your real identity, and some not. For example, one of them could even act to be a public servant and be able to build up and destroy trust people have in the specific unique internet handle you own. Could this be extended to real life? Perhaps you could hold office with that handle? You would decide when and whether to attach your meatbag to it, or not. Yet until then, you would only be judged on your performance?

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.

I agree, yet I feel rather chilled when I do. To me, free speech does mean and always has meant sharing comments of public value and doing so publicly. Yet I find myself repeatedly operating in a different modus.

in reality there is “herd anonymity” but the same is not true online, and people would adjust their behavior as such.

Indeed.

What? Of course you have rights if you are anonymous, this is basically the antithesis to the first point.

To my mind, when you are anonymous, you don’t necessarily exercise a right. You exercise an ability to act without a burden of identification regardless of a right.

If I recall correctly one of the three-letter agencies decided not too long ago to stop spying on American citizens. Yet they find it necessary to find out whether or not you are an American citizen by identifying you before respecting your right. Free speech is given to you by your country (even if it is a limited form). Anonymous speech comes from anonymising technology. I know this is semantics, but it is the semantics I am pursuing to understand. Why do I think semantics are important here:

• If you want free speech you must know to describe what it consists of.
• If you want anonymous speech you must know to describe what it consists of.
• If you don’t know to describe what it consists of, then you don’t want it, you are not asking for it - in fact, then you want and are asking for something else entirely.
• Whatever you get in the end, you won’t know what it is unless you can describe what it consists of.
• You know how people ask for something, and then when they get it, they are unhappy? For as long as we are making deals with the Devil every day, semantics matter.

Perhaps you could be guaranteed a right to have such an encryption that no one can identify you, and call it the right to anonymous speech (and now I am limiting myself to internet alone), but I still make distinction to the free speech (primarily because I have no argument that those two are one and the same).

Now my argument above may also be flawed? Let’s correct it then.

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.

Interesting point, one which is difficult to disagree on. Still, wouldn’t the right to anonymity enable you to do illegal stuff? And any right and protection enforced by a (government?) entity which can (reasonably attempt) to first identify you to see if your right should be protected or not, and then act to protect you?

I think of anonymous speech more in terms of this:

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.”

However I do agree there are problems inherent to full anonymity as well. In the most recent L1 news @wendell suggests gated internet communities on top of internet where not everything goes (on The Guardian censoring article). I don’t know if this is a workable future?

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.

I will ask the same question as I’ve asked @rdaniels. I do notice you don’t seem to conceptually separate anonymous speech from the free speech as I do. Is it so that you find them to be interchangeable in general, or for your own usage? Do you think they can be separated the way I did?

I totally agree with all the advantages of internet you list.

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.

Hey man, I hope there is no need for disclaimers. I sure enjoyed taking part in your thoughts.

[kewldude007]

But would you say you are using your anonymity just to provoke,

Nope, I just want to make people laugh, which happens more when memes are edgy.

How important is it to you to say the things you say

Highly

memes extend what we are able to say,

There you have it

[anon85933304]

If China is doing it their is probably something wrong with.
They have execution vans that also harvest organs of people who criticize the government. I bet the drivers are calling this move “job security”

[rdaniels]

Free speech is given to you by your country (even if it is a limited form). Anonymous speech comes from anonymising technology.

I think here is a fundamental difference between us. To me, free speech is a birthright of humanity. It isn’t granted, it is the natural order of things . Government does not grant the right to free speech, it takes it away. The US government takes less than most, if not all, other countries, but still it imposes restrictions on what you can and cannot say. That’s not to say that all restrictions are unreasonable (I’ve mentioned incitement to violence in another thread for example), but still I see the arrangement in the negative (“you can’t say x”) not positive (“you can say x”).

I do notice you don’t seem to conceptually separate anonymous speech from the free speech as I do. Is it so that you find them to be interchangeable in general, or for your own usage? Do you think they can be separated the way I did? I am curious whether I understood your meaning close enough to how you intended it.

They aren’t interchangeable in my mind. Anonymity is a tool to enable free speech, but it is not free speech in itself. Or at most you could classify anonymous speech as a subcategory of free speech. When faced with unreasonable restrictions on your freedom of speech, being anonymous allows you to circumvent those restrictions.

I agree, yet I feel rather chilled when I do. To me, free speech does mean and always has meant sharing comments of public value and doing so publicly. Yet I find myself repeatedly operating in a different modus.

If you could be assured that there would be no censure or punishment out of line with what was said, tools of anonymity would perhaps not be required. I would rather live in such a world, but this is what we’ve got.

Anonymity as an enabler of being a public person?

You know, if free speech as in “protection from legal prosecution by government” is no longer enough, then the idea of free speech itself maybe in trouble?

Well, I think the idea of free speech is in trouble. Between laws like Canada’s C-16, a lot of nonsense going on in Europe, various campus speech codes, and social media lynch mobs, things aren’t looking great.

We still have journalists and public officials. How should/can they operate within these “modern” ramifications of free speech? Would it be better if they could speak anonymously?

Not everything would work if it were anonymous. In the case of journalists, you could try. But since nobody else would know whether to trust you, it would defeat the purpose. Though considering how trustworthy journalists today seem to be even with their names public, perhaps journalists are nearing obsolescence anyway.

WRT to public officials, we need to know where to draw the line between words and action. Speech by itself can be anonymous, but actions have to be tied to an individual. A public official performing actions such as diplomacy or legislation cannot be anonymous, though if one were simply floating ideas to test the reaction of the public perhaps that could be anonymous.

The same goes for legal contracts, written or verbal. How could you ever enforce a contract if you did not know the identity of one or both parties? It simply makes no sense.

Still, wouldn’t the right to anonymity enable you to do illegal stuff? And any right and protection enforced by a (government?) entity which can (reasonably attempt) to first identify you to see if your right should be protected or not, and then act to protect you?

Anonymity is definitely a double-edged sword. It provides (in my view) necessary protections for the individual, but is very open to abuse. The same as p2p protocols did great things for, say, distribution of free software, but also enabled pirating of copyrighted material at unprecendented levels. There are good and bad applications of the tools, but you can’t get one without the other.

[Blunderbuss]

Thanks a lot.

I think here is a fundamental difference between us. To me, free speech is a birthright of humanity. It isn’t granted, it is the natural order of things . Government does not grant the right to free speech, it takes it away.

I understand what you are saying. Though, I believe any difference between us is more in the approach to the question. I perfectly agree it is the natural order of things. Government to me, is the artificial structure created to prevent one person from taking that right from another person. Sometimes by preventing violence, and in some cases by preventing som kinds of speech. It is in these terms I consider Government to be guaranteeing a degree of free speech to the constituents.

In general discussion of freedoms you have a negative and a positive freedom:

Two Concepts of Liberty

TL;DR, negative freedom is the hands-off version (do what you want with least interference necessary from government) and positive freedom is hands-on version of liberty (government enables as many as possible to do what you want, and prevents others from overpowering the balance). Negative allows, positive enables. There is no “negative” or “positive” evaluation of either, though.

Sadly, all freedom being mentioned these days is the hands-off freedom, although the other one is necessary to make it successful.

Even today there are many positive liberties even in US, for example with elementary education, road-building and maintenance, etc. Europe is a prime example of stressing the so called “positive”, just as US is a prime example of stressing the so called “negative” freedom. Both approaches are with inherent faults, and I personally believe one needs to regularly shift that sweet spot a bit to adjust to the times one lives in. And that is always a slippery slope.

But if internet has changed the playing field of free speech to such a degree, then that would mean we certainly need to get an update which won’t crash the system too horribly.

In these terms of liberty, China is possibly neither? It does not enable enough of its people to achieve measurable individual success? Or does it? I don’t really know. Someone always pays for someone else, and if balance goes tipping too far in favour of too few, revolutions happen. And there is no system of government in the world which isn’t self-preserving (to a fault). I am talking here about a system of government, not any government elected for a term.

One could perhaps say that US has been a prime example of having both for extended periods of time when each citizen was able to start their business and live off it? Due to economy change and technology change, perhaps it is a place some sadly perceive it no longer has either. But then again, so does everyone everywhere.

You see, I am not talking about free speech in absolute terms, but degrees of it. Most people have a natural freedom, and then some degree of government regulation to take it away, as you say. I am unable to see that as a bad thing, since I don’t wish for anarchy.

Also, I am not a close friend of any specific ideology - liberal, socialist, or conservative, and these days I am exploring the ideas, shuffling them around to reevaluate a few finer points. I do this regularly, as I find no single ideology comfortable enough to wear for a prolonged period of time.

---

We have so far established at least that:

• there is a definite difference between anonymous speech and free speech,
• we certainly need both for different reasons. Actually one reason alone - to retain individual empowerment in a world no longer interested in providing it.
• the playing for freedom of speech has changed by technology, and it has changed our behaviour.
• we have no adequate qualifying labels to put on what we have become (as in, going to shits is more of an expression of frustration), and how the interaction modifies our inner workings (as exemplified by id and super-ego).

I am still game for thoughts on the subject.