this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Psychology
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So let me preface this by saying I understand all of the privacy and other reasons why the below would be a very bad idea, but I think it might help:
Make everyone use their real names. I already pretend that everyone knows who I am online and sees all my comments, I strive to treat all of my online interactions as if I was talking to someone in real life. If it’s something rude or something I don’t have the guts to say to a person’s face, or something I don’t want shared to everyone I know, then I don’t post it.
Edit to add after theotherben’s comment below: I definitely understand how this could be dangerous to many people and I don’t think it’s feasible. My main idea is just try to ask yourself whether you would say what you want to post or comment, to someone in person. But you guys are right, too many people ARE jerks in real life so that wouldn’t change. Idk, I mask a ton in real life and don’t use social media outside of Lemmy so I’m probably the wrong person to even think about this.
Yeah, because that won't make people overly anxious and some fake a lot of their interactions or be too obsessed, the best part is: the examples of this are the biggest social medias such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Also, have you thought of those who are in danger because they have an ex or a random internet user stalking them all over? Congratulations, that'd not help those people.
Anonymity can be good and bad but the good can overweigh the bad if you care that much to at least moderate the bad.
This is a psychology community, talking is healthy, you're thinking everyone must suffer of exposing themselves because the platform can't be properly moderated? Then it shouldn't even be public.
It's always been my opinion that anonymity makes people more aggressive and more willing to partake in antisocial behavior. A person in a car could have their trip extended by 2 seconds before someone else decides to endanger their lives because they see "slow car" instead of "real family on a road trip".
For stalkers, just have an option to lock down the account. Like, block the stalker and make your account inaccessible to those who aren't already your friend/follow you. With anonymous accounts, there's nothing stopping bypassing any moderation attempts by creating another account unless you do an IP ban, which can also be bypassed. Moderation and especially auto-moderation can be subject to silencing topics and voices the parent company of the social media platform deems shouldn't be talked about.
But if your real name is attached to any number of sensitive topics, getting doxed suddenly becomes a major issue. If Reddit is half full of psyops campaigns, political campaigns, marketing campaigns, what's stopping the people who use these sort of tactics from doxing and threatening you directly to prevent dissent directly from the source? I can only imagine what happens to all those people who have basic walkthroughs for Nintendo emulation only to have hired mobs show up to their door to break their knees within the week. Or a conservative government find a reason to jail (or worse) someone asking about abortion options.
So if you can't be anonymous and talk about sensitive topics without it resulting in rage and propaganda and you can't have your name attached to sensitive topics without it resulting in a risk of doxing or violence, what's the answer? I honestly have no idea. :/ Maybe it will always be a fact that there will be both anonymous websites in addition to websites attached to people's real names.
You basically just described the situation with Facebook/Instagram and they don't really help much, ever heard of web scrapping and OSINT?
So basically you criticize but provide no solution for people who can have their identity stolen/stalker who can happen to be very tech knowledgeable/work or administrate that very social media/corrupt law enforcement.
You have a picture of where people can openly say anything as long as they don't promote hatred while others can know who said it and try finding all their online footprint to stalk, extremely idealistic and zero pragmatism, who's to say the stalker isn't violent and because of that now the person is in physical danger? Your problem is lack of proper moderation where people can be anonymous.
I'm not sure if you think I'm someone else, but I'm not criticizing your point at all, I was trying to add to it. You and I agree that there are pros and cons of anonymity, but it falls on good faith and high quality moderation to make sure anonymity is better than having your name attached to something. I even went into detail how dangerous having your name attached to something is?
I was criticizing your approach to atttempt to keep people "private" while having their identity openly to show to anyone, Meta already does some of it and that does not solve it.
While you did acknowledge the dangers you tried making points there are workarounds to make people safe while pseudo private if they want to. I'm saying there's no such thing if your identity is public, it doesn't matter if its a bare minimum, that will give it a start to stalkers. Your line was drawn on this:
...
That's what I was addressing while taking your possibke workarounds to make someone pseudo private.
If that was your final point and whole stance, then we do agree. But I don't think moderation is solution to when people are exposed, there ain't just a single page on the internet where people can spread doxxed info on someone. However, if you mean that the problem with anonymity although the best choice is lack of proper moderation, then we're definitely on the same page.
Yes, this is why I said it's probably reality that there'll likely always be anonymous websites as well as non-anonymous websites. People would be able to choose what kind of identifying information they give (even though on all the major social media sites, they're honestly giving out more info than the average person would expect) The reality of existing on the internet is that nothing is secure or private regardless of your name- though having your name attached would definitely make the barrier to entry for stalkers to be lower.