Nikki Haley vows to abolish anonymous social media accounts: 'It's a national security threat'
Nikki Haley vows to abolish anonymous social media accounts: 'It's a national security threat'
Small government stuff again from Republicans.
Lucky for me, I, famous Hollywood actress Margot Robbie, am using my real name on this social media platform, and therefore, cannot lie to you about who I am over the Internet.
Afterall, no one would ever spread misinformation under their real name using their reach on social media, especially not a Republican politician on say, Twitter. Right?
Surely, nothing could go wrong with this plan.
Putting the authoritarianism aside for a moment...
"How to dox literally everyone and give a leg up to identity thieves, a one step guide."
This is certainly a problem with it, but we are seeing a major problem without it too. I'm curious as to what people think a solution might be.
So all those Neo-Nazis on Twitter would have to go by their real names?
At least there would be an upside.
My (red) state is one of those that changed the law to make it illegal for pornographic websites to be seen by children. To view them, you'd have to have some kind of central ID to prove that you are over 18. This is absolutely a precursor to having to have an ID to use the internet at all. Every bad thing that has ever happened on the internet will be used to convince legislators to enact a law like this. It's only a matter of time.
Nikki Haley taking a strong stance against QAnon?
Sure. But only after we get gun ownership databases, background checks, national weapon registries…
"not like that!"
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This particular lib has a couple or three dozen guns. Put me on an "undesirables" list? Hard pass.
Imagine having posts talking about "liberal" and "lots of guns" tied to my real ID. Fuck me. I'd literally be top of list for these fuckers.
OTOH, I'd have the choice of simply shutting the fuck up in the public internet sphere. Chilling free speech are we?
These numb nuts (not you OP!), on both sides, want their agendas passed with no thought how it might be turned on them in the future.
🐆🍽😱
This particular lib has a couple or three dozen guns. Put me on an “undesirables” list? Hard pass.
And this is why we'll never get effective gun control legislation in this county.
"We want people to do something about the easy availability of guns and the mass shootings in this country!"
[Government passes a law that attempts to do something]
"Wait! No! Not my guns! It's everybody else with dozens of weapons that's the problem!"
If we got rid of the bot farms the internet would be a much better place, less polarizing, less nonsense, less propaganda. Israel, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia etc . I guarantee our “friends” and enemies, corporations and I bet even the US are deploying these bots all throughout the internet.
That’s what we should focus on. How though? I don’t know.
I've often toyed with the idea of getting rid of anonymity on the internet. Unfortunately it is way too one sided, as in your reach can be so far, and thus people would be anonymously able to harass you from around the globe, which would happen.
I was harassed years ago despite not (at the time) putting my real name online. I was on Twitter (back when Twitter was actually decent) and someone messaged me about my religious beliefs. Now, I never would force anyone to follow what I believe, but I'm always willing to discuss it in a purely informational sense. ("This is what I believe and why and I'll never judge anyone for believing differently.")
Quickly, however, something seemed off. Her questions started veering into "if you knew someone did something really bad wouldn't you have to report it or shouldn't they turn themselves in" territory. I stopped replying, but that didn't stop her.
What I didn't know at the time was that this lady, let's call her D, harassed many people online (including Boy George and the then-CEO of Firefox). D literally thought that God spoke with her and told her bad things that people did. Obviously, there's no arguing against "God told me you're guilty" and she would harass various people as well as anyone else people talked to. As far as what she thought we did? Let's just say she thought we were doing disgusting things with children.
Now, D targeted me because I was blogging at the time and liked photography. One of her other targets lived in New Zealand and liked photography as well. Of course, we all know that all photos on the Internet are just posted by one guy so D figured that he and I must be the same person. All those photos of my family? Faked.
D was determined to report me to the police for all my crimes as well as contact any companies I was working with to "warn" them. Thankfully, she wasn't Internet savvy or she could have tracked me down. She also wasn't the type of Internet stalker to try to travel to her victims. She did send threatening messages. A lot.
Now, I was lucky because I was "anonymous" (as far as her skills were concerned). The "other me" in New Zealand, though, had used his real name and mentioned his employer - a school. She contacted his school to report him (luckily, he warned them) and contacted everyone she could find in New Zealand with the same last name. He needed to have some very uncomfortable discussions with family members.
I finally got her off my case with some web developer trickery. I got her IP addresses from comments she left on my blog and set my htaccess file to return 404 for those IP addresses. Sure enough, she crowed on Twitter about how she brought down my blog and told everyone to see how I was taken offline. Meanwhile, everyone else was able to see my site just fine.
Last I knew, D is still online and harassing people. When she was targeting us, we'd report her and her account would be suspended, but she always had 5 or more backups ready to go. It's possible that she's still going through her normal cycle of harassment - only with Twitter/X less likely to suspend her account unless "God" tells her to target Musk.
Free speech includes the freedom not to speak. That includes anonymous messages. You don't have to speak your name.
Or, hear me out, no real names on social media.
Haley's next step against social media anonymity is requiring everyone to take the Kindergarten Cop questionnaire:
She's wrong, but you're wrong about why she's wrong. MAC addresses and IP addresses are useless for identifying individuals because that's not what they're for. A real system for tying internet traffic to people would look more like mandatory OAuth sessions using a government-approved identity provider.
Do they care enough to implement that? They already use ip and mac to identify
I agree but it should be social media that requires it.
Ha, fat chance of social media regulating itself.
Well she's one nut that Planter's let get away. However I'm not sure I totally disagree with her on this. I used to be all about free speech but now I'm totally for censoring and weeding out those people who only can respond to any posting with negative hate. Even the lowest grade moron knows that free speech comes with necessary guard rails. And someone who persistently attacks others online has no right to remain anonymous and hide like a coward in their parent's basement. This is indeed a crises worthy of being abolished.
I see what you're saying, but I think you're thinking about it backwards. You're assuming people will face negative consequences for their actions, and maybe some would, but there's already people out in public with their real identities harassing others with impunity.
Imagine you gather a group of like-minded people on Xitter, and you and your buddies pick a trans person, who is simply sharing how they're finally feeling like themselves, to harass publicly. And then they get harassment outside of Xitter from others via mail, phone calls, or email. Maybe somebody SWATs them. Maybe somebody finds where they work and vandalizes their car. All because it was easy to find out who they are.
Or imagine this scenario. You're an adult trying to find a job, but you live with your parents, because you can't afford rent anywhere. Your parents are Christian fundies. You are no longer convinced by Christianity, so you decide it's time to secretly leave the religion and find a supportive community online. Somebody from their church sees you've joined The Atheist Community of Austin, tells your parents, and they kick you out (this has actually happened to people). All of this could have been avoided if you were able to keep your identity secret.
Free Speech as a right is too permissive in the US, imo, but privacy is a right we should continue to fight for regardless.
That's true as well. Just because someone's identity is no longer anonymous is not necessarily going to deter them from harassing and persecuting others. Certainly fox news doesn't try to mask the identities of their bigoted loud mouth louts.
But I'm not saying that people should universally be banned from remaining anonymous if they are responsible and well meaning with their freedom. In the trans example you cite, I agree that you cannot expect humans not to target someone in vile ways, just because that person is somehow different (they really are not different) from themselves.
And I know people who have been kicked out of (so-called) "Christian" households just for coming out as gay (!) As if that was some kind of anethema or horror that just CAN'T be accepted, which just shows that these so called "Christians" are as evil and degenerate as anything they imagine gay people doing.
I'm not blind to any of these possibilities, I'm just expressing some ideas. Free speech certainly is too permissive in the U.S., but I don't believe we can curb the vile Idiocracy that's coming our way unless we expose the vermin who would kick people out of houses, target trans people, and otherwise hurt, harass or harm other people online or in real life.
If only because by exposing these dolts, we can perhaps get them some kind of professional mental help. They may not want it, but they certainly need it and our society can't continue without them getting the help they need.
I
Stupid time
How about abolishing fox news, then?
We have people on Fox News, NewsMax, Daily Liar, talk radio, Alex Jones etc who lie all the time and spread misinformation and their names are verified. Doesn't seem to stop them, dipshit.
For those keeping score:
Foreign bots on social media: bad
Foreign money being used to finance political campaigns, lobbying, etc.: totally fine
(Note: I agree bot farms are bad, but that is a very low effort and bad faith argument for what she is arguing for)
Imagine rhetorically competent fascists. That's terrifying!
The common rabble can't see through their flimsy lies as is. They'd be completely out of their depth if republicans took even just an introductory class to discussion and rhetorics.
She's just pandering to the Elon crowd.
Meanwhile Trump calls everyone left of Hitler "vermin". Yeah, anonymity definitely seems like something they wouldn't want, but we all really need.
I don't think she thinks it's going to stop it. The idea is to limit it. There were media personalities spewing lying shit before the internet. And I think it's hard to argue we aren't going backwards in terms of how much people buy complete nonsense, and the only thing I can reasonably attribute that to is the rise of the internet. It's that fake news is easy to make and even easier to disseminate.
I'm not sure if getting rid of anonymity on the internet is the answer, but it's a discussion that worth having, and not just dismissing with insults.
She's not a serious person. I will insult people who promote her ideology.
Nah, dude. It's totally worth dismissing with insults. It absolutely will not prevent misinformation online, but can be used to track people, particularly useful if you think some political views make people "vermin".