alt Hacker NewsBut why not? I want to make the distinction on public and private speech. In the physical world, no one should ever have their private speech scrutinized, that's why there are laws banning covert recording. But in public, speech is very much moderated. We don't allow hate speech and we don't allow harassment of others.
Social media is a public platform. We can't enforce moderation if we can't identify the abuser, they can always just make a new account. So deanonymize social media access, but for private communication? Let's leave that free from prying eyes.
To bring it back to cars, roads are public infrastructure, that's why you need a license. No one cares if you drive licenseless on your private track.
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I generally agree with this, but a problem I can't solve is: at what point does a "large group chat" become a "public channel"? If, hypothetically, someone is organizing a thousand people in balaclavas to turn up outside a business they want to intimidate, over Telegram or Signal, is that "private" or "public"?
(also everyone in this thread saying deanonymisation does not on its own solve the problem is correct)
Not all internet usage would be deemed public.
Social media sure.
What about what you watch on PornHub? Should that be tied directly to your government ID?
I know that's an easy one to cherry pick but just consider all you use the internet for and how an adversarial governmenft could use some of that info.
Personally I'd love to see all social media corps required to verify ID but leave the rest of the internet alone.
The internet would be a lot poorer, if all users had to be identified. I really appreciate it when people tell their personal stories and talk about how they have overcome crises. Anonymity empowers people to help others by sharing life lessons. Those same life lessons would be very harmful for the reputation of the internet user, if they had to be posted with the user's real name.
Not everyone has a life that is all sunshine. Not every use of anonymity is criminal or unethical.