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armchairhackertoday at 11:36 AM0 repliesview on HN

But how would they be held accountable? Who gets to decide right vs wrong? How do you ensure the accountability mechanism isn’t used against you?

Today, people online are “held accountable” via harassment, threats, SWATting, and such directed towards their friends/family/employer, by internet lunatics who exist across the political spectrum. If you’re popular enough, it doesn’t matter if you’re a leftist, rightist, or literally Mr. Rogers; you’ll get haters who go out of their way to hurt you using whatever PII and vulnerability you expose. Or if you’re not popular, but unlucky and post something mildly controversial from either the mainstream left or right; or if you’re very unlucky. Or if you’re publicly a woman, you’ll face sexual harassment and potentially stalking.

And some of these haters and sex pests have nothing to lose, so holding them accountable doesn’t solve the issue.

I do think a solution involves holding people accountable, but carefully. Perhaps to start, people form overlapping social groups, so a system where a group can only punish people within that group (e.g. banning them from posting), but can’t outside (e.g. harassing them or people close to them, especially in-person, or threatening their job).