For those who do not know the story of Rehteah parsons please read this article (www.google.com)
During the case and the discussions online on the local news could get heated but they were all anonymous so the trolls came out and said many a asinine and stupid thing. Then government twitters got harassed and soon a lot of the locals of nova Scotia and in the rest of Canada are looking at anonymity on the internet and how cyber bullying and harassment can actually hurt people.
Some would say just turn the computer off and yeah some would,some but everybody is not some so for those who dont it hurts like it was done in their face like a punch in the damn gut. I'v always been on the side of a free wide internet where i can pass and go as i like and be as invisible as a ghost but recently i have come to question the pros and cons of anonymity and if the trend of the internet and the almost ad-hoc connectivity of people increases over time if the internet could even STAY anonymous.
So what do you think? Should we look at what anonymity on the internet is letting people getting away with vs personal benefit and a definitely better experience on the internet? I ask only this before you post ( but please post this was not just a wee rant id like discussion ) take a couple minutes and really think about it, think about the positives and if you want try to think of possible positives of anonymity regulation who knows you may be supprised what we could do with it.
P.S
If logans reading this sorry if i came off as loud id just like to see your repute
people need thicker skin, i swear this is the wuss generation, everything is offensive and you need a committee to address bullying when back in the day all you had to do was stand up for yourself. but i'll concede in the world of online it's a little more difficult but at the end of the day you could always just delete your account and never log back on.
This is just an excuse to rob you of your right to privacy.
This approach has been used before.
The 9/11 attacks was used as an excuse to give more power to the secret agencies (see all the stuff NSA is doing) and to promote the Patriot Act.
Terrorist attacks on the 7th of July 2005 in Britain paved the way for increased surveillance in London and increased power for the CGHQ. See a trend emerging?
Child pornography was used in 2006 in Finland as a pretext to censor porn sites, and, even more serious than that, sites talking about the extend of the censorship.
The same excuse is being used right now by the British government to censor sites, and a lot of those sites aren't even pornographic, let alone about child pornography. See a trend emerging?
Honestly, the list could go on, and on, and on, and on. I will say it again, this is simply an excuse to increase the amount of surveillance they are doing, or to justify it, to increase their control and their power over the citizens. Don't let them do that.
Back when bullying was done face to face standing up for yourself worked. But this approach wont work any more as you may never see the person harassing you. And deleting your account wont solve the problem ether as the person can just follow you.
Change your online name tag, block the asshole before the find you and you're good. ??? Profit?
But as someone who has grown up with all these new "rules" they really are BS, I mean we live in a world so protected we don't tell kids how to fail or anything like it. We give every kid a fecking participation ribbon so they don't feel bad THEY NEED TO FEEL BAD ABOUT THEMSELVES, it's the only way to get better it to see you need to be. either way it's not my generations fault it your's.
First: We never really had anonymity on the internet, but we had privacy.
This was a good arrangement since it allowed people to be free as well as investigating serious crimes. The police could lift the privacy on criminal individuals after being given permission by a judge on a case by case basis.
But since the western hemisphere has politically shifted towards the right since the mid 1990's, we are slowly being stripped of our rights. You can recognize the political right by their fear mongering. If you strike fear in the hearts of the people they will react conservative: this fact is being exploited to extract capital from the middles class, and since in capitalism the one with the capital is the one holding the power, democracy gets hollowed out to the point where it's going to be nothing more than a cruel joke to vote who is going to be the puppet of your oppressor.
Now back to the good part:
People are going to over-compensate hard for the loss of their privacy by brute-forcing anonymity. Eventually somebody is going figure out how to implement crypto & obfuscation so that it's easy enough for the masses to grasp. Somebody else is going to to use it to piggy-back file-sharing & then every 12-45 year old will jump on it, because: free stuff...
The conservative tendencies in governments that seek to control and dominate people may have won the first battle, but they are going to loose the war because they keep pushing the pendulum in one direction & it will eventually swing the other way.