Is it time to remove anonymity online?

[GGizmo]

After reading another story about racist abuse online, is it time that anonymity is removed?

Back in the day I was against removing anonymity. But these days I'm not sure. Sadly people are exploiting it to cause so much trouble that it's becoming more difficult to defend it.

What do you think?

 

[GGizmo]

It would still be possible to use nicknames online. But every account would need to be verified via a bank card or something similar. This would be helpful that if someone is causing trouble then people would easily be able to ban them as they would know the bank account they have signed up with. As we move to a cashless society the availability of bank card usage will become easier to use. It would be like when some companies charge a fee which they then charge back to you to verify your over 18.

The downside of this though is that it would become easier to block certain opinions out totally. It would also give a lot of power to the banks who might know which places you have been banned from. I think down the line it might even play in to peoples credit score, similar to China with their social points system.

I can see both sides of the debate. It's a very tricky problem to eject the 'trouble causing' people as who is deemed a trouble causer would be subjective to the people enforcing the rules.

 

[GGizmo]

If accounts are to be verified before being allowed to post then I hope the database is secure, and isn't farmed out to adult companies of a dubious reputation - like they were suggesting to do with adult verification.

 

[GGizmo]

Note the analysis he mentions, he's thrown in the stats that have been mentioned in the other thread already but also the hope not hate analysis re: the group stages - they looked at 585,000 posts mentioning football players names, 2,114 were abusive (sadly fairly standard with football) so 0.36% and 44 explicitly racist so 0.0075% of the tweets!

Andrew Doyle is one of the best presenters so far on the channel. It is really interesting stats from hope not hate. Because they are the top anti-racist group around. So for them to present this data, when many people might say they have an interest to inflate racism, makes this data even more valuable.

 

[GGizmo]

Yup, but you'll still get the people with brain worms being like "omg that's GB news, not objective" etc.. despite the fact it's directly citing fairly objective data from a well-regarded organisation.

Yes, I'm seeing that on another thread. To many people have either taken the blue pill, or don't know any better.