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Should the Internet remain anonymous?


rangeor

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Flashback is not "/b/".

One of the few places where you can speak my language without having mods remove your post because it's "inappropriate". Ironic, that their servers are abroad.

 

I don't want any surveillance over the internet. You are "anonymous", unless you use something like VPN, you are still very very easy to track down.

There's been suggestions that EU should introduce a censoring filter for child pornography. Great if it would be used for only that, but i fear that the governments could use it to block other servers hosting other material.

J'adore aussi le sexe et les snuff movies

Je trouve que ce sont des purs moments de vie

Je ne me reconnais plus dans les gens

Je suis juste un cas désespérant

Et comme personne ne viendra me réclamer

Je terminerai comme un objet retrouvé

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I just find the idea distasteful. I'd be reluctant to let my true feelings be felt because, after all, they could easily be spouted back at me by someone who just wants to get revenge on me IRL. Even now there's an extremely thin veil between my online and IRL self. It can take you seconds to find out my full name and my town, but I'm not being forced into doing that and I can control the information about me through my own choice. I could pretend to be someone else to protect my IRL identity from secrets that I wish to share but don't wish to be known... if you understand what I mean.

 

If people hadn't been anonymous then that man would have still killed himself, just nobody would have known about it for a bit longer. The internet doesn't cause deaths, it's the people that use it. The internet can be a tool for greatness but it can also be used for evil. But just being anonymous doesn't make anyone a criminal.

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I edit for the [Tip.It Times]. I rarely write in [My Blog]. I am an [Ex-Moderator].

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Nobody would own the internet if we were to stop anonymity either though. Individual countries would be responsible for keeping their own users inside their own laws on the internet, apart from that, state control would almost cease. As currently we do have censorship on the internet, for example in china, where you could say they do almost own their section of the internet. However, instead of people being able to bypass this censorship and partake in illegal activities, they would be noted down by whichever country they are from and prosecuted accordingly.

Your argument is so idealistic I can't really counter it properly, I'll admit.

 

But no matter how much we talk, they government can never win. You can hack through Chinas wall; they only block the gate of the internet not the internet itself. A US law to require all websites to require Real ID registration can be avoided by setting up a server in Mexico.

 

Seriously though, how could such a thing happen?

"The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you never hear it you'll never know what justice is."

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Nobody would own the internet if we were to stop anonymity either though. Individual countries would be responsible for keeping their own users inside their own laws on the internet, apart from that, state control would almost cease. As currently we do have censorship on the internet, for example in china, where you could say they do almost own their section of the internet. However, instead of people being able to bypass this censorship and partake in illegal activities, they would be noted down by whichever country they are from and prosecuted accordingly.

Your argument is so idealistic I can't really counter it properly, I'll admit.

 

But no matter how much we talk, they government can never win. You can hack through Chinas wall; they only block the gate of the internet not the internet itself. A US law to require all websites to require Real ID registration can be avoided by setting up a server in Mexico.

 

Seriously though, how could such a thing happen?

 

 

I do like to think of how I would like things to be in a perfect world and then think backwards from there.

 

 

With international and mass online attention, maybe even something coming to the attention of the UN, Real ID could be used worldwide for any website set up. All servers worldwide would need to comply to this, but apart from needing to be named, they would not need anything else. There would still be black-holes and anomalies, pockets of illegal activities and servers, however they would pale in comparison to the safe internet everybody would be able to enjoy.

 

Without anonymity, (this is thinking way into the future) we could have fully integrated media and internet etc. Imagine walking through your front door, walking up to a screen, having a biometric scan of some sort then having full access to anything on the internet (as long as you have the correct level of access). No more passwords for everything, no more old guys pretending to be little girls, being able to instantly shop on the internet with integrated banking. The possibilities are almost endless, but it all requires people to put a little bit of faith in authority and relinquishing anonymity.

Want to be my friend? Look under my name to the left<<< and click the 'Add as friend' button!

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Then that's just the internet as it is now. If criminals can still get by, what's the point? You all have a choice to put your real name right now and crimes can still get by. What's the point?

"The cry of the poor is not always just, but if you never hear it you'll never know what justice is."

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The anonymity is what helps me say what I really think.

Could you shut the [bleep] up for once? You irritate me like hell

[hide]I kid i kid i lurv u :3[/hide]

 

 

And, if you dont want the internet to be anonymous make a forum which requires people to be non anonymous.

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[hide]

Felix, je moeder.

Je moeder felix

Je vader, felix.

Felix, je oma.

Felix, je ongelofelijk gave pwnaze avatar B)

Felix, je moeder.

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Then that's just the internet as it is now. If criminals can still get by, what's the point? You all have a choice to put your real name right now and crimes can still get by. What's the point?

 

 

On the whole, it would lessen the crime, but it would also on the whole make things feel much safer for those who do not know how to protect them selves as well as they could. It could also increase the chances of big business' embracing the internet as much more than an additional tool, bringing it much more into the mainstream as a way of doing business.

 

One good example I said before which came to me would be online emergency services. Currently, they would probably get too many fake emergencies to be anywhere near effective. However, if you were to be able to see names, people would be much less likely to prank these emergency services allowing for a new way of finding help to open up.

 

 

Also Pirate, the problem is, it is almost an all or nothing scenario. If only a few people do it, there are enough trolls and the like out there willing to ruin it. If everybody including them had to give their name, then it may not happen.

Want to be my friend? Look under my name to the left<<< and click the 'Add as friend' button!

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Big thanks to Stevepole for the signature!^

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No, I don't want you all on my Facebook. That's why I have it set to private and even though I have like 300 friends, I know them all IRL. I know none of you IRL (as far as I know). Tbh I think having everyone's real name out for the finding on the internet is too little privacy and too much government control.

 

What happens when third graders need to do research for a class project on the internet? Will they need to use their real names to gain access to use search engines? Heck, my school already blocks Google and just about every other search engine, which is wrong. Is the internet [excuse my poor grammar] just going to get wronger and wronger? Just because some people are stupid?

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First the internet is not anonymous; the only thing preventing everyone from knowing my name is the difficulty to go through legal means to obtain it.

 

As for the ability to police the internet I do not see how that is possible even if there was no anonymity, for example let us say this thread was an illegal conversation and we were all guilty; if it is the websites country of origin that is responsible for reporting the infractions to other countries, there is about 20 unique people that posted on this thread from quite possibly 20 different countries. That is much work for little pay off just for one site. Tip.it seems to be hosted in the USA; how many sites are in the USA that would need to be monitored?

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We already have an ID that follows us everywhere, it's called an IP adress.

 

While we're talking about being police of the internet, I think google could be able to do something like that, seeing as they have these huge databases and knows what websites contain. I believe something like that would be too costly even for them though, seeing as the internet is a huge mass of websites and web based programs. It's already enough that they are starting to make deals with some companies to make some websites faster than others (I've seen that in the news recently), that's already ruining part of the net neutrality.

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I don't discuss anything I'm not comfortable with discussing in real life and I don't go around making the lives of other Internet users miserable, but I wouldn't want my full name and contact details plastered everywhere. I like being able to keep low-key but not some totally anonymous, shadowy type.

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Danqa, I'd like you (and anyone else who doesn't like internet anonymity) to read the cracked article I posted on the first page. Read it thoroughly, and perhaps some of the comments on it too. Then, come back and give me your counterpoints to the ones in the article. This should clean this debate up nicely.

You never know which rabbit hole you jump into will lead to Wonderland. - Ember3579

Aku Soku Zan. - Shinsengumi

You wanna mess with me or my friends? Pick your poison.

If you have any complaints about me, please refer to this link. Your problems are important to me.

Don't talk smack if you're not willing to say it to the person's face. On the same line, if you're not willing to back up your opinions no matter what, your opinion may as well be nonexistent.

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The (relative) anonymity of the internet is a wonderful thing, and should be held to be sacrosanct. While certain nation states have the wherewithal to identify you if they really want to by putting political pressure on the countries which ISPs are based in, it's still an uncertain and very public thing.

 

The internet allows people to discuss and talk freely about things which are taboo in their societies in countries, this encompasses not only certain fetishes but also support groups for minorities; queer/transgender individuals and atheists come to mind almost immediately. It also allows for quiet political dissents in countries which would not permit large public opposition groups (fx, China/Iran).

 

More power to large corporations and governments is never a good thing, especially without justification. To quote Friedman, "Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the greatest threat to individual freedom is the concentration of power."

 

Yes, there are instances of pedophiles/illegal fetishes/identity theft/hacking and a bunch of other things on the internet, but local government or intra-national organisations such as INTERPOL appear to be coping and addressing them.

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There's also the issue of whether certain governments in the world can be trusted with such information. Sure, the majority of governments in the world can probably deal with it responsibly, but most of those are democratic. They can ultimately change depending on the consensus of the population as well as other events, Weimar Republic style. It's in times of civil unrest about authoritarian governments where the world desperately needs places to discuss problems anonymously, otherwise dissenting opinions can and are suppressed.

 

 

Also, I think some people overplay the role that the Internet's anonymity has in morally questionable or wrong behaviour. If they didn't have the Internet, they'd just find another way which would be far more difficult to track.

~ W ~

 

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To be honest, I'm amazed it took this long for Godwin to make an appearance in this thread. Good job, tip.it! :thumbsup:

 

Well, I think they made a lot better arguments than mine, and with less outside links too. I'd like to hear your rebuttals.

You never know which rabbit hole you jump into will lead to Wonderland. - Ember3579

Aku Soku Zan. - Shinsengumi

You wanna mess with me or my friends? Pick your poison.

If you have any complaints about me, please refer to this link. Your problems are important to me.

Don't talk smack if you're not willing to say it to the person's face. On the same line, if you're not willing to back up your opinions no matter what, your opinion may as well be nonexistent.

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True, but putting the number of personal details online for everyone to see that this would require would open up a can of worms bigger than anything that trolls could come up with.

You never know which rabbit hole you jump into will lead to Wonderland. - Ember3579

Aku Soku Zan. - Shinsengumi

You wanna mess with me or my friends? Pick your poison.

If you have any complaints about me, please refer to this link. Your problems are important to me.

Don't talk smack if you're not willing to say it to the person's face. On the same line, if you're not willing to back up your opinions no matter what, your opinion may as well be nonexistent.

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