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Anonymity on Tildes
I had a thought, which I'm not sure I agree with, but figured it would be a good conversation.
So much of our social discourse, and exploitation of our social platforms, can be associated with anonymity. Given the divisiveness of our times, it feels like it's almost a pre-req for a platform like this (this has already been discussed in other threads).
A slightly different question: Is there ever a place for folks that want to announce their identity, and go through something like a Twitter verification process? This could feed into the future trust/reputation feature.
That's a really interesting point.
I guess my broader concern is this. To take Tildes to the masses, how do you deal with state actors trying to influence our discourse? It can certainly be framed as 'high-quality' conversation. It will get more sophisticated over-time. I have to be honest, working in the field, it feels quite hopeless right now.
There's obviously a ton of downsides (would a Chinese dissident use their real identity?).
I feel like the structure of Tildes, the currently invite-only registration, and the Benevolent Dictatorship of Deimos (until user moderation anyway), will make this difficult to take hold outside of a handful of bad-faith propagandists.
Reddit really suffers from State-Actors because it's pretty easy to register a massive number of accounts, and automate them to post talking points and divisive rhetoric. The moderation structure of Reddit, combined with the complicit-apathy of the Admins, make it nigh impossible to do anything about them.
Tildes has a focus on high-quality content and conversation, and it wouldn't take very long for users to pick up an account posting socially-toxic content, shine a light on it, and force some change of some kind. It might be a greater problem when registration becomes open, but I imagine there will be strong tools in place to maintain quality and accountability when that time comes.
Low-effort divisive language will not survive here I think.
Agree, the current state is working. I thought I've read that the goal is eventually to open this to the world?
Unless something has changed, yes that's my understanding.
The timeline is probably later rather than sooner, as we need to make sure Tildes is in a good, strong place that can handle an influx of the general population before that happens. As of today, Deimos is the only one with any sort of power, and as a whole we've yet to develop a site-culture. I don't think open-registration is on anyone's radar at the moment.
Even when we're ready for open registrations, I expect it'll come in waves, just like on private trackers. Open registration for a while, close back down to give everyone time to acclimate, open up again later, and do it in a way where it's not open during periods of viral activity and intense interest, just like metafilter does it.
Neither do I :). I would say there's a lot of notions around what 'privacy' is/means. I think folks can be anchored around a belief structure that doesn't entirely map to reality.
A good NPR read: https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/10/29/560461835/how-russian-propaganda-spreads-on-social-media which is part of a broader special series over at NPR: https://www.npr.org/series/560815928/tech-titans-and-the-information-complex
We must think about how to address this as a community and can't pretend it doesn't happen.
I like badges and trophies, I have always thought giving small incentives for random stuff is kind of fun.
You know... like early users here someday getting an "alpha" badge and maybe a "year one" badge.
That's where the difference between badges and karma comes in.
You would earn a badge for random things, like being in the Alpha, Contributing to the Code, making a suggestion that gets permanently added to the site, birthday/anniversary, sitewide events, sitewide milestones, ect ect.
We would still be using the site because we wanted to, we would just be earning little incentives that make us feel good and also show how much a user has contributed.
The big difference, Karma you can farm and manipulate, you cannot manipulate a "Contributed to the Code" badge.
I don't mind seniority.
For example;
On Reddit I will take an account more seriously if it is a 7 year old account with a full trophy case and is moderating a few subs over an account that is 2 months old and hasn't even verified their email yet.
In some ways those users are better for having a bunch of badges, I am not saying it should hold too much weight, but it is nice to see how much someone has contributed over the years.
See I never really understood this.
Look at someone like Gallowboob from Reddit. Clearly a case of cross posting, essentially spamming tons of subs with the same content to farm Karma. You can see the manipulation but so what? It's not allowing his opinions to rise to the top over other people. It's not getting his a fan base for having the most karma. Maybe he gets recognized, but it's almost always in a negative light for those who know what he does.
I don't see the power of having tons of Karma. And this is coming from someone with multiple accounts, the highest of which is in the 100k club.
I also have multiple accounts, going back ten years and most are 10K-200K (mostly comment, I don't post much). I agree that Karma holds no power, although I will admit I am proud of my main accounts Karma regardless of how meaningless it is.
I never said it actually has any power, we call them "useless internet points" for a reason, but people do take them seriously and that is where the problem lies.
People focus on it, create posts and content just to boost their numbers and by doing so drag down the overall quality of the site.
Yeah with how much people complained about the karma farming, I guess I could never really see how it would be any different without it. I do see what you're talking about though when you phrase it that way, I mean psychologically just having the number there you subconsciously try to build it higher or lower (if you're a troll). And I could see that having some effect on the overall attitude of the site though I still wonder if it's even a noticeable about. I think there's just too many differences OTHER than karma here to see how it's going to be different without it yet.
Regardless not really caring about it in the first place I certainly don't miss it. The big different would be in the ranking of the comments and the dog-piling for anything that gets a negative score.
They make a great point. I would caution against ignoring basic human psychology when building an online community, though :).
Everything we do is a judgement call!
We want to drive the RIGHT kind of participation in this site. We all get busy. At scale, little things that trigger a psychological response in some can have pretty meaningful impacts on a community like this.
This has been studied pretty widely, a few examples: Do badges increase user activity? A field experiment on the effects of gamification and How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction
Give me that new-age karma!
I actually do like that there is no Karma counter here btw, far to many redditors live for their karma, but that doesn't mean we couldn't earn badges for contributions to the site and community.
Agree, Badges could do what Karma was supposed to do. Incentivize the right behaviors.
Tbh I wouldn’t mind some short bio feature similar to twitter’s - not necessarily a huge place to put paragraphs but just a short description to put whatever you want about yourself.
I think that abandoning anonymity is a terrible idea. Just look at facebook and you will quickly notice that onymous internet discussion is not much better. Anonymity gives people the freedom to say what they otherwise would not. You can say controversial things without people tracking you down and harassing you. For better or worse that's what it is.
This aspect of the internet is neutral and it is not inherently bad. There are many valid reasons to maintain anonymity that are not tied to trolling and the worst of human nature. What if you lived in an oppressive country with a track record of monitoring their dissidents? Would you feel comfortable having political discussions in ~talk? What if you were the only opposing voice in a toxic internet echo chamber? Would you feel comfortable voicing your opinion if it meant painting a target on your back?
If this were to feed into the reputation feature than I believe that many people on this site would leave. There is no need for it and the current site we have is a testament to the fact that civil and thoughtful discussion works while under the veil of anonymity. I hope I never see the day that a public user's voice is more respected than that of an anonymous one.
I agree with much of what you've said, but I'm trying not to view anonymity in a black and white construct. I think the blanket view on anonymity in many ways conflicts (and perhaps supports) the broader 'Trust' principles I've seen as core drivers of the platform.
I don't know that verification means I post my name to the world. It certainly could mean that there's a system you use to verify you're a unique human. And maybe a human w/ a certain expertise.
I think the black and white viewpoint risks stymying what could be a very interesting dialog about the pro's and con's and how you could mitigate the concerns.
I'm falling in love with this place. I get very anxious about the long-term ability to realize it's vision based on what I'm seeing in a professional capacity.
And yes - I'm always willing to be a voice of dissent, even in 'toxic' echo chambers. My identity is known by some and pretty easy to find out. That's a personal decision - although I'd hope if Tildes reaches it's potential that more people would be comfortable coming to the same conclusion.
Anonymity is quite important for me. Though Tildes has actually been really good, so much so that this is really the only online place that I've identified myself as a woman. Still, I know how it felt letting people assuming I was a guy so that I could have a conversation.
Ultimately, the choice is the most important.
Agree 100% with choice! Functionally, it wouldn't be easy, but if some smart people (I think there's a few here) brainstorm together - we could come up with the pros/cons and a model around it.
I fear it's too easy to brush off under the guise of privacy.
I definitely agree here. In Deimos' post, he kinda has a best of both worlds solution, which would be nice. My username is really identifiable by all my real world friends, so on more private topics, it would be nice to be anonymous. Which might be a good solution for your dissent example above too.
I've been bouncing around ideas on this since I first started using Tildes about a week ago.
There's benefit to providing anonymity. There's also benefit to having a more stringent sign-up process. Even when full launch has happened, I hope that Tildes still has more hoops to jump through for an account than Reddit does.
So, I was thinking about looking into how impossible it could be to create a system for "throwaway" child accounts from your parent. This way, the system knows you're not some(one/thing) looking to behave as a bad actor, but you have a username which is completely randomly generated (possibly in a Heroku-ish / Docker-ish style to make it human-parsable but universally unique).
So in my idea, you would go to your personal profile page, generate an "anonymous" alias and could then jump into that account to post. This would then show up as "verdant-fish-a3f7" when you post and you would have the ability to context-switch between the two "users" for when you wanted to post as "Catt" or as "verdant-fish-a3f7."
It's just an idea at the moment, but it shouldn't be too impossible to implement as I've worked on similar systems in Rails before.
It's a good idea and one I believe Deimos is already considering to implement. Personally, I would love something like this, and hopefully it will have the added bonus of a history for the poster.
Edit to add this where Deimos was debating it.
Glad to know I'm not barking up a crazy tree. Might be time to dig into Django to see if I could figure out a proof of concept to try and help get it into Tildes.
You say that like privacy isn't important. It's extremely important for some of us. There is absolutely no way I would participate in any open forum with my real name visible to all and sundry. I know what type of people inhabit this internet, and I'm not willing to expose myself to them.
Were people actively leaving the conversation or challenging your credibility simply because you were a woman? Or you just know what it feels like to not specify and someone calls you a dude or something?
Generally no one leaves a conversation, but the quality of it changes and my credibility definitely gets challenged. Oddly enough, that's annoying, but it doesn't bother me that much. It's being targeted that does. In gaming circles, if I'm playing CS or something, everyone seems to hunt for me as soon as they find out I'm a woman, and I get called worst names, like I don't really mind being called an ass or a bitch, but I don't like slut, cunt or whore. In general, everything just feels more aggressive.
In MTG, I just can't even have a conversation. I'll state one thing like "I don't really use the cycling mechanism" and I'll just get dogpiled on how I'm too stupid to play.
Edit to add: I don't really mind being called a "dude" or anything like that. Of course if I specified, I would prefer the correct pronouns, but honestly don't really care.
Yeah definitely familiar with seeing people acting like that during gaming. I was thinking in the context of Reddit and couldn't picture how it would really be that different aside from the creepy PM side of it.
I just assume everyone online is a dude until proven otherwise. Personally I don't really treat men and women that differently so it doesn't matter, but I could see it being annoying. Thanks for the extra perspective.
I posted very little on Reddit, and never identified myself as a woman. This was years ago, but at the point, I was use to being genderless/guy online.
To be fair, I know women who posted and I know they tend to stick to smaller subReddits, and didn't have any issues.
Nope. No. No way, José. Not on your nellie. No way, no how. Nyet. Not in a million years.
I've had actual death threats sent to me on Reddit. There is absolutely no way I'm letting nutters like that find out anything even slightly identifying about me.
I believe you are looking for The Well. It actually is older than the internet.
Honestly, I think what I'm looking for are mechanisms that stop nation states from influencing the population of other countries with such ease. But yea, that'd be a nice byproduct :).
This is a great question. I’ve never hidden behind or sought out anonymity (partially because it’s hard to spell.)
My user name is my real name and it’s linked to many platforms. It means when I discuss things this is me talking. I’m not hiding and I’m not putting on airs. You can easily find out everything about me and that makes me be more careful in what I say and how I act. I think it’s good. Hiding behind screen names allows us to make up personas and act however we want because no one can say if it’s true and there’s no consequence if I’m rude.
Same. I'm easily findable, I've shared my identity with many in private. I intentionally used my 'work handle' here, certainly didn't do that on Reddit.
Ha I do it on reddit too. Been 8 years there and have had no problems.
I'm in a similar situation. It's easy to deduce who I am from things I've posted about myself in various places.
I've had the police called on me. I've had calls to my house wherein the person on the phone spoke to my daughter and told her that they were going to kill me. I've gotten numerous texts and emails of a vaguely threatening sort - the texts and emails at one point were coming in every week. One of my clients received an email about me after publishing that they were working with me. I've had people create reddit accounts and pretend to be family members of mine (one guy got a bunch of information from my sister's facebook page and left a series of comments in a sub I moderate that gave enough identifying information that they were clearly pretending to be her; another account - possibly the same guy - did something similar, pretending to be my mother).
There's all kinds of weird people out there just waiting to make your day a bit more shit, and if you don't have the ability to deal with that, I think that anonymity is an important thing. Most of the things I listed above didn't bother me that much, but for some people it could be incredibly emotionally destructive.
Huh. See I have never ran across this type of problem. My main reddit account is 5ish years old and around 10k karma both posting and comments so it’s seen some use. It’s the one that’s linked to everything. I have lots of alts that I use just for lol’s and maybe that’s why. I tend to stay off the main big subs with my main account.
I think it depends on what you do on Reddit.
I think the last one is probably a key difference. Moderating a gaming community comes with baggage that I just don't really recommend for anyone.
Yeah I've had people do very similar things to me mostly because of modding reddit. The first time it happened, I was not prepared and it really affected me when someone explained how and where (specific places very close to me) they were going to kill my kids. I learned from that and made sure that I was undoxable after that. I always laughed when people threatened me, but bringing my kids into it was not okay.
Yep. Like I said, I have alts and I mod with those rather than my main.
That's smart. Do they never get threats of any kind?
Oh yeah. I used to get threats a lot. I was a mod of SRD so that tells you the quality users we were dealing with.
I was a mod of SRD once. For one day. It was an April Fool's day prank
👀I probably know you if you gave your reddit name. Depends what time period though.
Reddit name's the same handle I use everywhere - "aphoenix". I wasn't a real mod of SRD though I have done a lot of moderation across reddit in a variety of places.
I could see there being an option to be a verified user (blue check mark?) if we had users doing AMAs or something of that sort. But I do think it's really important that we keep anonymity as a key component of the community.
I do however like the idea of academic flair, allowing users to stay anonymous, but have the ability to submit proof of their credentials to receive a "PhD" or "MD" flair (hovering could show the discipline).
Anonymity should be a choice for those that need it or won't engage without it. Productive users should not be penalized for being anonymous.
Verification could influence trust/reputation in subtle ways, but I suspect folks willing to verify would correlate with higher reputation scores, regardless of any system changes.
If there is ever a verification system, unless its someone famous, I think they should still be verified anonymously.
A big part of why discussions on websites like this work so well is because of the anonymity, it's a major part of the culture and changing that would just make us facebook.
How would this make us Facebook? Don't understand that correlation.
The anonymity of sites like this set us apart from mainstream social media.
We function better because of the anonymous nature of our interactions.
We build reputations based on our usernames and we do so without having to reveal our gender, race, socioeconomic status or appearance.
It's a format free of judgement (mostly) and it allows for discussions and reputations based on our merit alone.
This is a very important part of how sites like this work, it's the number one reason reddit got as successful as it did and it's an important component to keep moving forward.
Now I do think being able to prove a degree or a discipline would help things, but I think it's important we don't mess with the format too much and anonymity should remain.
You make a lot of great points, although I disagree with the black and white views on anonymity.
There's a lot of very, very serious downfalls that anonymity is creating in our social discourse. It's causing profound harm to our society and creating the ability to drive mass manipulation of populations.
I'd think of it less like anonymity and more like using an alias that only you and the site admins know about. That alias also changes with every conversation, so tracking it over time is impossible. That way when you want to say something that isn't associated with your main online account, you can do it without having to jump through hoops here on Tildes.
Yes, I agree on that. Although I do not think taking away the anonymous nature of discussion based sites like this would help the situation.
It just means we need a better verification process for users and a system to identify bots.
On the flip side, anonymity is a breeding ground for awful things.
I believe that the rise of the alt-right is partially because online anonymity has given people a safe way to say the awful things that they think, which leads to them understanding that they aren't in the extreme minority of people, which is a loop which allows more people to explore the terrible things that they think.
Anonymity removes accountability from people, and without accountability, we end up with Reddit or 4chan.
...which ultimately is a very very good thing.
Sure, the the alt-right may have gained some freedom because of anonymous based discussion boards. But so has Occupy, BLM, Anon, and countless other liberal groups.
Anonymous based discussion boards promote free speech at the highest levels, we cannot discriminate when some of that free speech doesn't align with our personal views.
I can't agree with that, but I think that it stems from me not fundamentally valuing consequence-free speech. I think that people should certainly have the right to say the things that they say, but when you give anonymity and remove all consequences, then you end up with bad actors, bad faith, and no limits to the terrible shit that gets said because there's no social repercussions to the terrible things that come out of someone's mouth.
I also don't really value Occupy, BLM, or Anon. I think each of them suffer from a lot of problems, and that if the things that were being said were tied to people and not to nameless entities, then everything would be much more reasonable.
Our current culture is one of intense polarization, and I think that anonymity has greatly contributed to that. One can be a caricature of the worst things one slightly believes when online, and there's no possible repercussion. The many people who do it for a laugh just contribute to the radicalization of both right and left, because it normalizes the extremes that we're seeing.
I disagree. It promotes consequence-free, and thus value-less, speech. Some people take part in good faith, but the vast majority of people need the social conscience that comes in the form of consequences, or they become vicious.
At a fundamental level, I also don't think I value free speech as much as other people do. I think all actions have natural consequences, and actions include speech and thought. I think this is intrinsically something that we all instinctively agree with, but convince ourselves that we don't. For example, most people agree that anonymous death threats are something that should be reported, and legal action taken if possible, but that's directly against "freedom of speech". We also understand that words are indications of actions, and often indicate our intent, and that intent is important; a politician cannot just say, "I'm going to bomb your country because you've spoken out about my country", and then later claim, "Well, I didn't mean it, FREE SPEECH." Thus, there's some line that we draw where we say that things on one side have consequences and are not protected by the concept of free speech, and things on this other side have no consequences and are protected by the concept of free speech. I'm just saying that the things that are consequence free are very, very small. Every action has a natural consequence, and by giving people echo chambers in which they can say things without consequences, we are ruining a lot of things.
I've seen a few people posting here who would have high reputation scores if the reputation system already existed, and most of them are posting under pseudonyms rather than their real names.
I dunno, I work in an environment where everyone has a PhD and I hear a lot of dumb stuff, both in- and out-of-discipline. Giving people an opportunity to "pull rank" on others with a PhD flair without also giving others the opportunity to look at the person's publication record or whatever seems a little problematic.
I agree with you that one doesn't want to foster an environment where Rando Calrissian's crazy views on geology are given equal weight to, say, a PhD who's done years at USGS, and you don't want to force someone to reveal their real ID to win an internet argument (presuming that's possible)... but if someone's got a terminal degree in their field I would hope it would come through in a coherent and well-referenced post, rather than a dot next to their name.
(Which, with the amount of trust that places in readers to evaluate, might be sort of naive of me)
My wife has a PhD and is a university professor. Outside of her very narrow area of specialty, her opinion is no more valid than anyone else's. In many areas, it is less valid because she has sacrificed knowledge on some (basic) things to have exceptionally high level and specialized knowledge in a particular area.
A PhD doesn't confer magical wisdom, it's really only relevant in a razor-thin situation.
There are a lot of issues I find with the conclusions you've drawn, and—albeit to a lesser extent—that you seem to be using an incredibly thin "stopping nation states from influencing foreigners" veil to mask what's more or less xenophobia, but I'll focus on your conclusions themselves for now.
Verification—along with onymity in general—does the opposite of mitigate it. When everyone is verified, people will be more likely to stop applying healthy scepticism to everyone, and all it takes is a few bucks on, say, Craigslist or similar, to get someone to verify your account for you.
Nation states don't have any shortage of currency, circumventing verification is trivial.
Not inherently. If an account is throwing out propaganda left and right, it's fairly easy to see that they don't fit Tildes at all, and if they're just discussing issues with people and trying to change views naturally, that's, uh...kinda the point of the site?
Also, given the site's Canadian, there's very little reason it should be explicitly doing anything to aid or hinder the US political situation.
This is untrue for a few reasons. Primarily, if a verification process is put into play, Tildes becomes a North American site full stop. Any verification system will either encourage people from other areas to find somewhere else, or will make their opinions effectively worth less.
There's no single implementation that can be both hard to get around and welcoming to people outside of Canada and to a lesser extent the US, especially those under oppressive regimes.
Pseudoanonymity is fine. Let's leave it as it is.
This is a real threat. It's not just xenophobia. In the USA, the main threat is Russia. Here in Australia, we've got China to worry about. We already know about Chinese organisations bribing, and attempting to bribe, members of Parliament. We know that locally based Chinese business people are seeking to wield influence through how and where they spend money. I haven't seen reports of Chinese operatives posting on social media, but it wouldn't come as a surprise if that was happening as well.
Foreign influence is real. People's reactions to foreign influence might be inflamed by xenophobia, but the phenomenon itself is happening.
However, we do have to be wary that the cure isn't worse than the disease. We only have to look at the USA's response to the terrorist attacks in September 2001 to see how an overreaction can introduce even more harm on top of the original attack.
In that vein, I agree that we shouldn't require people to verify their real-life identity to participate on Tildes. I, for one, would refuse to do that. I would leave.
Oh of course it's a real happening, I'm just saying the way OP worded it seemed aimed less at 'Solving a perceived problem' and more 'xenophobic.'
Given a few particulars on how they're communicating, I'm guessing either they're a new-to-the-field psych major who's just a biiiiiiit too confident in themself, and or a reader of Slate Star Codex, and I don't personally have the energy to debate with that today.
Don't get me wrong - I've nothing against psych majors; in fact, the reason I made the above rebuttal in the first place is because I've got two friends who I talk to fairly frequently about this topic who're presently employed at one of the biggest (top-20 site on the internet by its their Alexa rank) social media companies at the moment in community integrity/people research positions and vastly disagree with the conclusions made in the OP - but some of them, especially those of whom communicate in a condescending tone and try to utilise Ipse dixit*, tend to have closed minds from the start of a conversation. From personal experience, I've found it's best to just allow someone else to debate them for the spectacle but to skip out on it, personally.
But yeah, I...actually agree with you on this one, for the most part. Genuinely surprised there, we tend to differ ideologically in most areas.
*This effectively means bare assertion, albeit there's a bit more nuance to it than that, and it's 4:09 and I really need to get some rest. Will update tomorrow with a link explaining if wanted.
I'm not all bad! :)
I don't run or influence Tildes, but I believe in the mission. And when I have ideas that pop into my head, I hope sharing them is welcome -- for whatever the reason, your response felt reasonably adversarial. I don't know that I've drawn conclusions, that's not the intent. I've made observations on the basis of what I do for a living and some fundamental challenges we're dealing with.
I also don't know that I said this was a US issue (if I did, shame on me). This is about communities being used to manipulate individuals using well researched psychological biases. This scares me, regardless of country.
I get disappointed by this dialog, it's really concerning for me. Some of the observations you make (e.g., "Not inherently. If an account is throwing out propaganda left and right, it's fairly easy to see that they don't fit Tildes at all") are patently false. Also, verification done well, can be highly disruptive to the scale in which sophisticated actors operate. Making a statement for folks to consume like "Nation states don't have any shortage of currency, circumventing verification is trivial." concern me. You're anchoring viewpoints of others. If this is an opinion based in experience, I would LOVE to chat privately :).
Interestingly, it's this type of thread that demonstrates the new world of information operations. Your response likely falls into one of three arenas (exaggeration intended):
The reality is, regardless of medium, none of the readers have any way to determine which of those three is accurate. And thus, as they read your comment, you're now framing/anchoring an entire dialog - because what you wrote appears well thought out.
I disagree. This comment does not exist in a vacuum. We have Eva's posting history to provide us some context (okay, the view of that history is limited right now, but the plan is to expose more of that history). We can see if her behaviour on this website has been consistent or inconsistent. We can see if there is any agenda in her posted topics and comments.
Even meta-information like when she registered on Tildes, what type of username she chose for herself, how active she has been, and what groups she participates in, can guide us.
If Deimos wanted to, he could find out who invited her.
We are not lacking context in which to judge Eva's comment here. By extension, this applies to all tilders: we can see all their posting histories and what they're interested in.
I'm pretty sure it would take you only a couple of minutes' looking at my history, for example, to work out if I'm a foreign agent. I mean... I'm Australian... so, by definition I'm a foreigner because this website is based in Canada (I just realised that this makes all the US-icans foreigners - and they're the majority of all participants!). But, do I have an agenda to influence discussions here to favour one country's interests, or to disrupt another country's interests?
You know nothing about me at all (even my statement that I'm an Aussie could be a lie). Am I one of these dreaded foreign agents?
You, also, are framing/anchoring an entire dialogue - because you posted this topic in the first place. Maybe you're the foreign agent! :P
I value my privacy rights highly, mainly because of the fact that there are many people who disagree with me politically and I do not want to become the next swatting death. However, even without my personal privacy right issues, another thing that anonymity is great for is that it helps to keep corporate influences down, as has occurred on public platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
That said, I also do not like trolls either, and we should not move towards any sort of 4chan esque system where everyone is anonymous and those who post overly offensive content should be removed. People should not be able to have multiple accounts so that you can know the history of the person who you are discussing with.
The system which Reddit had before profile pages became a thing was a good balance between anonymity and verification which I think should be replicated here. The main reason I trust Tildes so much is because it is stemming the corporate, anti-privacy tide which Reddit has been pushing recently, so we should not go in that direction.
Should we have various forms of ceremonial dickwaving? That's how you know you're dealing with a pro, the mighty deads you can trust.
Anyway, corporate interests can likely blend in here as well as they do any other website. Being Not Reddit and showing real names is not much of a guarantee.
I wish to be able to post a "detached" comment. Basically it's still in my account as far as admins (and maybe mods) go, but it doesn't protect my account if I write comments that get me banned. And normal users can't figure out that it's me.
I, for one, am for it. You can find me by this handle one just about everything. I don't hide from my opinions or thoughts. Hell, I even stream under this handle. You could probably find out all sorts of stuff about me, but IDGAF. I put out what I am comfortable with putting out. I wouldn't say something online that I wouldn't say in person.