The remedy is far worse than the problem

Yeah I don't know how you preserve much-needed anonymity, while also binding humans to their personas and holding them accountable for their actions.

Why do you believe anonymity is "much-needed"? Human society was built for tens of thousands of years on "stay away from Ben because he has a bad habit of not paying back what you loan him"

Anonymity is new and probably not something the human brain, which isn't meant to handle more than a few hundred familiar faces, can manage reasonably.

If you want anonymity 200 years ago, you had to print your own pamphlets and hand them out on the corner in a costume and hope nobody recognized you. Then you would go to church on sunday where the entire community would gossip about everyone's "sins" after the service.

Human history was radically more transparent about who was doing what, and who was saying what.

Nobody standing on a sop-box ever wore a mask, and while most used pseudonyms or pen names, there were only so many printing presses in the colonies, but that didn't stop the American rebels from spreading their claims.

The need for anonymity is in the face of enormously concentrated organised mass surveillance and power.

So, yes, it's relatively new. But it's not the only thing that's new.

Anonymity is, in fact, quite crucial to a surprisingly wide range of people: <https://geekfeminism.fandom.com/wiki/Who_is_harmed_by_a_%22R...>

That page doesn't make a very compelling argument. Yes, bullying and harassment without an anonymous identity is potentially more damaging. But nowhere does it seem to consider that many of the bullies and harassers would only dare do so with an anonymous identity.

Which has the better culture? 4chan, or professional settings and churches? Non-anonymous settings almost universally have better culture because people's behavior has an impact on their social standing in their community.

How do you define “better culture”?

I wouldn’t say you can compare churches and 4chan - one is an online activity with millions of people around the world joining; the other is a highly intimate affair conducted in a small community.

Exactly: the fact that people aren't anonymous and their behavior affects their standing in the community is a big part of why anti-social behavior isn't nearly as common as in anonymous spaces.

> But nowhere does it seem to consider that many of the bullies and harassers would only dare do so with an anonymous identity.

Have you seen Facebook? Anonymity does not, in any way, preclude horrible behavior and harassment.

Also, reducing the problem to “bullying and harassment” is frankly laughable, and gives rise to the suspicion that you at most only skimmed the page.

I mean, public flogging also (arguably) reduces crime, but we don’t want to have it, for good reasons. Disallowing anonymity has a lot of negative effects for all but a select privileged few, as documented by the link I gave.

And again, I've read your link and found the arguments lacking. It doesn't consider the fact that much of the bad behavior it identifies is enabled by anonymity. I'm not sure how public flogging relates to anonymity. There are alternatives to public flogging, like incarceration. By comparison, the lack of accountability and lack of disincentive to engage in anti-social afforded by anonymity is inherent to anonymity. There's no way to get the same level of social responsibility in an anonymous space.

> By comparison, the lack of accountability and lack of disincentive to engage in anti-social afforded by anonymity is inherent to anonymity.

Possibly. One could argue that the problem is not nearly as closely linked to anonymity as you argue it is, but even if it was, we would still need to have anonymity, including all its drawbacks, in order to make participating in the public sphere possible to all, instead of being restricted to a privileged few.

> There's no way to get the same level of social responsibility in an anonymous space.

You do know that this very forum qualifies an an anonymous space, right?

> but even if it was, we would still need to have anonymity, including all its drawbacks, in order to make participating in the public sphere possible to all, instead of being restricted to a privileged few.

You realize non-privileged people have participated in non-anonymous forums for ages. What on earth justifies the statement that without anonymity public discourse is impossible for non-privileged people? You realize that just because an article on geekfeminism.com claims something is true... doesn't actually make it true?

It's just a demonstrably false statement. Take, say, labor organizing. People who weren't privileged participated in the public sphere in a non-anonymous fashion. The Civil Rights movement was spearheaded by people who were de jure second class citizens. I could go on with example after example of people who weren't privileged participating in public discourse with their real identities. I'm truly at a loss as to how one can assert that anonymity is necessary to "make participating in the public sphere possible to all, instead of being restricted to a privileged few" in spite of the all the non-privileged people throughout history who participated in public discourse under their real identifies. It's objectively not necessary.

> You do know that this very forum qualifies an an anonymous space, right?

Correct. Which is why commenters are emboldened to say demonstrably false things, like claiming only privileged people are capable of participating in non-anonymous public discourse. I'm willing to bet that without the shield of anonymity people would actually think through such a statement and consider the number of non-privileged people that have participated in public discourse. They'd think twice before making patently false statements under their real identities.

But with anonymitiy, one's reputation isn't tarnished by making false statements. So here we are.