alt Hacker NewsIn one thread I am defending anonymity online from government mandated ID laws.
Then I think to the persistent, malevolent, destructive lies that people spread with complete impunity and with faked video and photo evidence. This is not what the first amendment was designed to protect.
Wary of making government the arbiter of truth, I don't know what society should do to combat this evil. In a fantasy world where I were king, the person who ran this tiktok would be in jail.
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I have the same dilemma. Privacy and anonymity has always been a top priority for me, but we can't excuse malicious actors, we shouldn't even accommodate people with good intentions but misguided means if the outcomes are so clearly detrimental to society.
I don't think there is a good answer without limiting freedoms in either direction, and I don't envy the people in government that are earnestly trying to do good for their constituents but are struggling with a solution.
> This is not what the first amendment was designed to protect.
There is no codified constitution in the United Kingdom.
A reasonable compromise might be to require ID before payments are made to people.
In a lot of places this is required by KYC regulations anyway.
Don’t forget that not only they can do that, but they also disproportionate amount of damage (see US elections).
We need laws to stop this sort of thing for sure. I love the first amendment but we place sane limits on it all the time. This seems like one of those things cases where it's easy to draw the line and when people are being paid it's easy to trace the money to those responsible
Thought here: perhaps the answer is a restriction on promotion of material that doesn't expose a real identity.
Pseudonymity is sufficient to curb most antisocial behaviour on social media. A site operator doesn't need to know a malicious user's name but the operator should be able to permanently block someone.
It isn't necessary for anyone to be the arbiter of truth, but some body should be the arbiter of good taste. That someone doesn't need to be the government; it can be the community. Since good taste is subjective, it should be defined democratically.
At this point in history, it seems that unless social media has a mechanism to promote civilised behaviour, society will lose the ability to advance and improve.
You are conflating different things. Anonymous or not, people can post hate on the Internet. That's a question of moderation.
Personally I think it would be easier to just ban anything that is political altogether. Bluesky for example is 90% politics. Just because something can be allowed in some spaces on the Internet that doesn't mean it should be allowed on every single space. No reason for the "funny short video" platform to become a news/opinion essay platform.
>faked video and photo evidence
Yea, I've also watched mainstream news. Remember that time ABC showed "war footage" that turned out to be footage from some Kentucky gun range?
>combat this evil
Teach media literacy. I know this is utopian even as I say it, because you can't even teach people to close the door behind them, but I sure as hell don't want the government or anyone else to tell me what I'm allowed to read. That right is worth any cost. Any.
This person wasn’t anonymous to TikTok. They were doing this for payments.
TikTok had their information! Voluntarily, too.
Forcing everyone to ID themselves to companies would not have changed anything about this story
> In a fantasy world where I were king, the person who ran this tiktok would be in jail.
Now take this thought one step further and imagine if the king was someone you disagreed with, putting people in jail for posting things they didn’t like. Imagine if the king disagreed with you. Straight to jail?