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One time on Reddit I said guns were bad, and some nut job looking for a fight tracked me down because my username (at the time) was able to identify me with enough effort. They threatened lots of stuff on various communication methods. Fortunately, I had just moved states, so all their efforts were concentrated on the wrong area. So now I’ve made an entirely new identity for social media. I never post personal things, like where I’ve been recently, or even simple things like places I like to eat. On one hand, if it were not anonymous, I would have had a better chance of identifying them. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have been able to make a new identity.
I’ve thought occasionally about how there could be real accounts, but there are so many dangerous reasons for it that I don’t think it would end up working in the end.
All stories like this are super frustrating to hear.
I've heard some stories where a person was targeted because of their social media handle being desirable. The anonymity part works both ways for both parties, sometimes, but I feel like it helps criminals more often than regular people.
Well, every time a person isn’t attacked can’t be tracked.
I live under a rock. I just had to look up who Nikki Haley was. This question was not initiated by a political view, but I guess it will be.
Side note, I don't mind the idea of algorithms or decisions being public though.
I think there should be two parallel networks:
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anonymous one run by private corporations or volunteers with heavy moderation and the company taking full responsibilityp for anything posted there. pretty much what EU is trying to establish. You want to make money of anonymous posts? You take financial responsibility for making sure there's nothing illegal on the platform. You could still have right leaning sites but with no misinformation or harassment. Fedivers instances that notoriously post illegal content would get the same treatment as neo-nazi sites.
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publicly owned platforms (like mastodon instances) available for everyone for free but with no anonymity: you want to make something public, complain about something or simply interact with normal people you can always go there. Less moderation would be needed so it would be cheaper to run. Users will be responsible for the things they post, not the platform.
This way if Twitter is unable to moderate their content you block it and people would have public instances as an alternative. We would see if running a platform like that with proper moderation is still profitable. If not they would start charging people or shut down. I don't think losing sites like Facebook or Twitter would a big problem if we had public alternatives.
Both of those ideas are stupid. All online platforms should be regulated like public utilities and everyone should be allowed to go by a pseudonym if they want to.