Anonymity on the Internet Must Be Protected (1995)

http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/student-papers/fall95-papers/rigby-anonymity.html

by stareatgoats • 8 years ago

146 71 8 years ago

groups.csail.mit.edu

Freedom of expression must be allowed. With this freedom comes all sorts of problems, but these types of problems are not unique to the internet. Unpopular speech is a necessary consequence of free speech and it was decided long ago, during the drafting of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that the advantages of free speech outweigh the disadvantages.

It seems as if there are a growing number of people that no longer believe this statement. It's unfortunate and I never thought I would see free speech be devalued (in the US), but I regularly see calls to restrict speech.

I agree with this paper that anonymity must be protected, but I worry that current and future generations will continue to move away from these principles in the name of inclusion.

duckMuppet2• 8 years ago

Using any of the big tech firms, they are actively moving against freedom or anonymity on the net, specifically the web..

https://thehill.com/policy/technology/411002-leaked-presenta...

duckMuppet2• 8 years ago

And a great example..

Look above, comments from Josh Cole... bots control the internet.. only regulation, govt censorship, and censorship by tech companies can save the uneducated, unwashed masses which could never understand or be left to make their own decisions with regard to the web and information contained therein..

I always get a chuckle from those who have such arrogance and avarice, that only the govt can fix societal ills. It's horrifying. Experts...

malvosenior5• 8 years ago

The “utopian principles of free speech,” as Google describes it, are now being compromised by bad actors and difficult situations.

It's funny that Google would frame it like that, because here is an article from 1995 clearly stating that you can expect trolling to come from freedom of speech. This was a known issue with the internet from the get go. It's just that since society has become ultra-political that points of view from "the other side" has gone from being obnoxious to being something that must be wiped off the face of the earth, by force if necessary.

cft• 8 years ago

We live in a different country now. Humanities programs did their jobs

stareatgoats• 8 years ago

Not sure what you mean. Care to elaborate?

jfrankamp• 8 years ago

I think the 'marketplace of ideas' at least insofar as embodied in various internet outlets is what is failing and causing people to think that some speech is bad and should go away, due to the bullshit asymmetry principle and successful personal-hate targeting campaigns.

During the founding of this country we probably had trolls too, but its easier to regain a pleasant town square when the troll has to directly, physically, face the consequences of his free speech.

x2203• 8 years ago

troll has to directly, physically, face the consequences of his free speech

That's not free speech.

malvosenior5• 8 years ago

All of this was happening on Usenet to a much greater degree than anything I've seen on social media. That's where the term "don't feed the trolls" came from (still the best advice!).

The goal of free speech is not to create a "pleasant town square", it's to protect individual liberty and not allow powerful entities to control what can and cannot be communicated.

ip26• 8 years ago

When "speech" includes dox'ing, life-ruining harassment, Russian propagandists, etc, perhaps we conclude that "speech" does have shades of grey after all.

Just as we already decided long ago, not long after drafting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, when we determined that it was not OK to yell "fire" in a crowded theater, and that sharing state secrets with the enemy, while technically a form of "speech", was still treason.

malvosenior5• 8 years ago

You're mixing several things.

Threats and legitimate harassment are illegal in the US. No further action needed there. Just call the police if you're in danger. Platforms are legally obligated to work with the authorities and remove illegal content.

"Russian propagandists", is a partisan issue and definitely something that free speech should help protect. I'd say this strikes at the heart of the issue actually. People can accuse those they disagree with of being "Russian" or "bots" then get them censored. Free speech stops this from happening.

commandlinefan2• 8 years ago

Even more inexplicably, calls to eliminate free speech on the internet are usually advanced by the people who actually need it the most.

PurpleBoxDragon• 8 years ago

Back when I had the freedom (or naivety and luck) to discuss far more controversial topics, I found that everyone wanted to ban free speech. Normally they would come up with some justification of why the particular speech doesn't count and claim they did stand for free speech and how dare I say that $controversial_topic dare count as a form of speech. While some people had far wider definitions of what doesn't count than others, I found a topic that they all agreed upon.

I would even go as far to suggest you would probably agree with them, at least for the most common form of speech I saw people wanting to ban. Think of the worst image you can that someone could share or possess.

Once we agree that some speech can be banned, or even that we can just declare certain things don't count as speech, we set the precedent that limits on free speech are acceptable.

middleclick• 8 years ago

I particularly liked this line:

React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the most effective response is silence.

For every case of abuse, there are more cases of good use of a service and we should focus on those and not let the malicious ones become the loudest.

tomatotomato37• 8 years ago

Yup, there's a reason one of the internet rules of yore was "Don't feed the trolls"

jancsika• 8 years ago

Got it.

Now your anonymously accessible forum greets newcomers with the most abusive, disgusting posts imaginable sprinkled with the occasional post of an idealistic cypherpunk who abides by the dictum, "Don't feed the trolls."

Predictably, the forum is frequented by no one outside of a handful of idealistic cypherpunks and problem even fewer trolls (because it's cheap to saturate a forum with the most vile, disgusting content).

sbarker• 8 years ago

4chan does ok

bilbo0s8• 8 years ago

In my experience with web forums, this is the principal problem with trolls. It's kind of like real life, no one wants to be around them. So after a while, you end up with just the trolls on your site.

Maybe you can monetize trolls somehow? But I've never been on a team that came up with a good way to do so. No one wants to be 4chan.

In the end, it's always been better for the bottom line to try to make them go away.

jrnichols• 8 years ago

you also have the problem of defining what a troll is. Looking at many Facebook threads these days, "anyone that doesn't go along with my way of thinking" is a troll. Or they're dismissed as a Russian bot/fake account.

leetcrew4• 8 years ago

sure, but how often do people actually follow:

React to the anonymous information unemotionally. Abusive posters will be encouraged further if they get irrationally irate responses. Sometimes the most effective response is silence.

trolls don't need a lot of food to keep posting, but i posit they at least need some.

projektir2• 8 years ago

I never understood how this was supposed to work.

Any space where abuse was allowed rather than moderated, the space just became dominated by the abusive and they would overtake the space.

lostjohnny• 8 years ago

Yep

Internet is a strange place right now, much different from what it was

Don't feed the troll was born on the premise that abusers were a minority and that anonymity was protecting the good guys from the bad guys

Today anonymity protects the bad guys from being prosecuted

JoshCole5• 8 years ago

However, a small minority of people who use anonymity servers are sociopaths who are attracted by the ease with which they can avoid responsibility and accountability for their actions.

Yeah. No.

This argument against is old enough that it is now a straw man.

There are known state-level actors actively pushing propaganda through the internet. There are companies founded with the express purpose of providing influence in exchange for money. There are companies founded with the express purpose of providing bot accounts to make it seem as if a person is more popular than they are.

There is an industry and state level actors abusing anonymity online to shift discourse, with real life consequences more severe than death having already resulted. It isn't unreasonable to suppose that it is possible that millions of people will die as a consequence of some of the manipulations which has already occurred, given UN projections regarding the effect of climate change.

We accelerate in progression as we progress. 1995 is a lifetime ago. You might as well link Plato.

Recent google slides which made it to Hacker News frontpage has a slide that put the estimate of bot traffic on the internet near 30% of all traffic.

Taxes can be great; taxes without representation aren't. Anonymity can be great; anonymity for people with hostile motives who influence things which do not relate to themselves are not.

Have a little subtlety.

Edit:

I'm getting downvoted. Go watch Facebook testimony to congress and similar things in which their is admission of acts as vile as extremist groups being intentionally provoked into armed conflict being performed on online platform. Go read about the IRA and probes into Russian influence on social media. Stop being so ignorant, Hacker News. I get that you filter bubble out political talk, but in case you missed it, there is an actual reason behind why California is moving forward with a law to ban bots which don't confess to being a bot and similar laws designed to curtail these influence campaigns. Its not that legislators are insane.

malvosenior5• 8 years ago

I am commenting with a pseudonym on this website and I'm sure I hold many views which you would attribute to "bots". I am however a real person and not even Russian! Most of the people who you disagree with are the same, you must accept that.

robotrout• 8 years ago

But I was told that anybody that disagreed with the liberal bubble mentality of silicon valley was either a russian bot or was Brett Kavanaugh on a bender.

gambler2• 8 years ago

There are known state-level actors actively pushing propaganda through the internet.

The last group of people who will be thwarted by lack of anonymity on the web are "state-level actors". Literally.

There are companies founded with the express purpose of providing influence in exchange for money.

Probably the second- or third- last group of people who would be thwarted by deanonymization.

JoshCole5• 8 years ago

The last group of people who will be thwarted by lack of anonymity on the web are "state-level actors".

So you think Facebook adopting non-anonymous political ads as their policy was done because the intent wasn't to go after corporations and governments interfering with the political process? That instead, these people are the very last people who are going to be targeted?

The truth of the matter is that the first people targeted were these groups, but that they have the most resources, so may be most capable of overcoming these limits and causing harm anyway.

usepgp• 8 years ago

The problem isn't that people are acting anonymously, the problem is that individuals and organizations are acting to impersonate the non-anonymous.

follower counts only impact people because of the assumption that each follower is a _real_ person, which is a direct effect of the deanonymization we see today by social networks.

propaganda has significantly more impact when it is perceived to come from "just another normal person" rather than an anonymous bot.

JoshCole5• 8 years ago

propaganda has significantly more impact when it is perceived to come from "just another normal person" rather than an anonymous bot.

Yes. Exactly.

jumelles• 8 years ago

Wow, over twenty years old. Prescient.

pjc50• 8 years ago

The article is absolutely correct that there are lots of good uses for protecting anonymity or pseudonmity - that's what we fought the "real names" war for, after all.

Moderation is also vital to making a space usable. Enforcing real names is not a moderation policy in and of itself - people are perfectly willing to post hate speech under their own name, including in national newspapers.

Where these intersect is that it's much easier to moderate if you can ban someone in a way that they stay banned.

Anonymity on the Internet Must Be Protected (1995)

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