Isn’t that what Facebook is supposed to provide? From anecdotal evidence, people are happy to engage in vitriol online that they would never do face to face, real name or not.
And to that point LinkedIn makes an active effort (in my experience) to highlight the most extreme political comments (I assume for the same reasons as any other social network- anger is a simple formula to fuel engagement).
It insists on sending me push notifications of the most bizarre conspiracy theories, even after I muted the accounts. Super frustrating when all you want is basically an electronic business card catalog.
Of course that’s not foolproof and there are millions of bot accounts by facebooks own admission. But at the scale of billions of active users across the globe I’m not sure what approach could be 100%
I'm not asking for Facebook to become a confirmed real-name only network. I am not asking for anyone to be compelled to supply a confirmed real-name only network.
I am saying: I wish that one existed and caught on with consumers.
I totally get what you’re saying. I just don't know how you actually implement this at global scale. I dislike Facebook and have not used it in over a decade, but I do believe they at least used to try and enforce real name policies.
I find absolutely ridiculous every social media / free speech discussion if platform does not have proof of identity. while you and I may have right to free speech the bots etc do not. hence, there is no free speech without proof of identity imo
Of course there is free speech without proof of identity. The Supreme Court has ruled that the First Amendment protects anonymous speech. The right to speak anonymously is fundamental to the right to speak freely.
You haven't proven the identity of "bdangubic" to us yet here you are exercising your right to free speech.
They're not saying people do not have the freedom to speak anonymously, they're saying that computer programs, by virtue of not being a person, do not have freedom of speech under the Constitution.
Obviously you can argue that you have First Amendment protections to write programs that then speak for you, which is essentially where the argument should happen. I think a very reasonable concession is: you can write programs that speak for you, so long as they do not masquerade as another person (real or fake). I.e.: you can write a program that speaks as you, or you can write a program that speaks as a program.
What if you were? One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.
The point is that would have no bearing at all on whether or not you would have the right to free speech if you were a person who chose not to reveal your identity.
One has to assume most of the "people" with whom one interacts on the internet are bots or AIs now, anyway. That's just the nature of our post-truth reality, it doesn't matter.
but “people” do not have right to free speech, PEOPLE do. if as you said most interactions on the internet are bots they are not covered by the bill of rights :) identity-proofing would take care of that…
if you trust social media companies (barf!) you can prove identity and request to stay anonymous. these are not mutually exclusive (of course IF at the beginning of this post is a big IF :) )
I think anonymity is important for some kind of coordination problems (e.g. against an authoritarian government). A better solution is to have a nominal fee, maybe $10/yr to be platformed, that way it's expensive to bot.
Well, the issue with coordination is you need everyone already there to coordinate. If people are only using the network for illegitimate uses, then it will get shut down (think 4chan, Silk Road). Really, it's in the authoritarian government's best interest (not the people's) to make multiple platforms. Most people will choose the free one, so it's 10–100x cheaper to either bot the pay-for-anonymity platform or shut it down when they notice it formenting unrest.
Google+ famously instituted real name policies before it was cool. You used to get banned on Facebook for using a nickname but I think drag queens pushed back, god bless.
Why do people insist upon sacrificing anominity and thinking they will get anything in return for it? I could forgive it in the 00s but it is inexcusable in the 20s. Real name policies just causes people to double down more. It has not been a pancaea.
