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Curt @beehaw.org

What if Everyone Knew Who You Really Were on the Internet

Let’s say the internet gets so bad that it becomes almost impossible to carry on a civilized conversation on a social network or to avoid a flood of anonymous emails. The people become fed up and can’t take it anymore. A revolution takes place and a miracle happens: every one is required to get a real id that can be traced back an actual person. This id is then required to do anything on the internet.

How many people are going to still post death threats, character assassinations, or make racist or sexist comments. How many people are are going to email you saying they’re a Nigerian prince that wants to give you money. It would sure go a long way to cleaning up some of the cesspools that make up social networking and the garbage pit that is email today.

Knowing who you are cuts both ways. A woman trying to hide from an abusive boyfriend or husband would want to keep her identity unknown. People facing political persecution would like to keep a low profile.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle to setting up ids would be verification. How do you prove someone is who they say they are when documents can be easily forged and fake identities created. You could use finger prints or eye scans, but the effort to set up the infrastructure to do so would be massive.

Then there is the issue of maintaining the information in a safe and secure manner. We couldn’t rely on any countries government. They wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to use it to track people. It would have to be an independent agency.

Is setting up such a system unfeasible? Even if all the hurdles could be overcome and a real id system could be created, is that something we would want? Are we better off with the way it is today and just live with its ills or relying on mods and spam filters to keep thing somewhat under control.

I’m aware that Web 3.0 is making strides in this area. It remains to be seen if it will be viable.

24 comments

  • How many people are going to still post death threats, character assassinations, or make racist or sexist comments.

    Plenty! People like that aren't ashamed. They're proud to be in the group of people who actually count as human in their worldview.

    is that something we would want?

    The only effect would be to stifle everyone else. If everything you say online is tied to your real identity, many people would have to be the most bland, professional, worksona version of themselves to protect (a) their ability to earn income, and (b) their safety. People talking about their experiences with abortion would put themselves at risk of harassment, eviction, prosecution, and violence. Someone seeking support as they discern their gender identity is now outed to family, employers, people with social and/or economic power over them. When anyone from a marginalized group dares to post, it'll be just like speaking in real life: if someone's facts and tone are less than perfection, they (and the entire group which they're assumed to represent) will be dismissed as intellectually inferior or too emotional.

  • I was the victim of a cyberstalker about a decade ago. This person was convinced that I was really someone else that she had a beef with. Her reasoning? We both like taking photos. (Apparently, I'm the only one posting photos online. All those pictures you see online? That's all me. No wonder I have no free time!)

    I couldn't argue with her to let her know that she was mistaken because she had it on "very good authority" that I was lying about who I was. Namely, "God told her." And I'm not exaggerating here. She literally thought that God talked to her and told her stuff like who was committing crimes.

    Oh and I was guilty of those crimes according to "God." I won't name those crimes because they're heinous, but suffice it to say she thought I was doing unspeakable things to kids. She was threatening to call my employer, the police, and everyone who knew me to tell them about what I was doing.

    Luckily for me, all she had to go on was "TechyDad." I blogged at the time, but didn't post my exact whereabouts or my real name. The guy that she thought I was wasn't as lucky. She contacted his employer (a school in New Zealand) and everyone with the same last name as him that was on Facebook and near him. All to tell them what he did to kids. (Again, her source was "God." He didn't really do anything and he had to have quite a few awkward conversations to clear things up.)

    I finally got rid of the stalker by grabbing her IP address (from one of her comments) and modifying my htaccess file to report 404 Page Not Found for only that IP. She crowed on Twitter about how she singlehandedly took me down and then moved on. (I and her other targets would report her to Twitter, but she'd constantly have dozens of other handles ready and waiting and would switch to them the second her main one was banned.)

    To my knowledge, she's still out there stalking people.

    Now, how would this have been different had she had my real name? Well, with a little work she would have been able to look up my location. (My name's pretty common, but she'd find me eventually.) Then, she'd locate my employer, my address, and other information. She could send me packages or mail harassing me. She could contact my local police to swat me or just to report my "crimes." She could contact my employer to report me and try to get me fired.

    Now, I eventually did tie my real name to "TechyDad." I wrote a book and didn't want to publish under "TechyDad" so I used my two name. That being said, it was my choice. I definitely wouldn't want it to be required for me to use my real name everywhere.

  • How many people are going to still post death threats, character assassinations, or make racist or sexist comments.

    Have you seen twitter and what named public figures say all the time and the comments from verified named accounts below?

    I don't believe we should have to link our personal info, but I do think we should have somewhat consistent ID that are confirmed linked to a person in order to gain some form of trust.

    When you can just spin up random throwaways you can say whatever you want at no cost of time or money to you.

  • I suspect a lot of innocent people would get hurt.

  • Everyone knowing your identity? The drawbacks would far outweigh the benefits. However, there may be a path to the benefits of a Real ID sign-up system that mitigates the possible harms.

    First of all, let's get this out of the way - this "minimal harm" approach would only be feasible if the government could either reach some level of technical competency or farm out the task to heavily restricted private corporations that do have that competence. If we presume that's the case (unlikely), the question becomes whether the people would be willing to accept it. If we presume the majority of citizens also want such a thing (a tall order to be sure, I certainly don't want it), then the question becomes what sort of system would be able to maximize privacy, and thus safety, while still requiring your real identity to be involved in creating online accounts? What would that system look like?

    Even in the grandest, best-possible-case scenario I can think of, it still comes down to "Can I trust my government to not take more information than they're allowed to, and can I trust that they will not abuse the information they do obtain?" For many, I suspect the answer to both questions is no.

  • Plenty of people are terrible using their real Facebook or Twitter accounts. L

    I think this would be difficult in the US. The US doesn’t have a national id except for the passport, which probably a majority of people do not have. There is a strong cultural resistance to a national id, I expect this would translate over to the internet very strongly, so any centralized verification system would be unpopular from the beginning.

  • Fuck no. Who wants to post online with a flawless prestine character projecting you are the sane one. If you deviate even a little from the norm you would be considered an outcast or worse be targeted for stupid things. Real people would show up at your doorsteps for stupid reasons which could be life threatening to many people (this has happend to many people in real life due to doxxing). Your employer could fire you for that comment you made in support of a certain group which didn't align with their ideology.

    Living in a state of constant public surveillance would mean people are forced to act nice not actually be nice.

  • It's hard to say since there are major security issues with that. I think it'd be better if we weren't anonymous but we're not really 'there' yet mentally and culturally and it'd be used for nefarious purposes.

    I do often wish I knew who I was talking to for real because I'd have vastly different behavior if I'm talking to a 15 year old kid, a 30 year old redneck or a 50 year old doctor for example.

  • For me?

    I try to be civil and professional on the internet, and when I use this username I am speaking as myself. And this is largely the only username I use. And it can be tracked back to the real me.

  • Lack of anonymity hasn't stopped middle-school and high-school bullies since even before the internet. Some people don't grow out of that kind of behaviour.

    Such a system is conceivable, but it's not one I would wish for. I'm not the type of person that wants to be like a famous Twitter user. I'll make my contributions to this platform under my pseudonym, thank you. With some effort you could probably sleuth enough to find, dox or stalk me, but why waste your time to be an annoying wretch of a person to do that? Having real linked IDs would make these issues worse.

  • Marginalized people would suffer far, far, far more than the bad actors. ☹️ Many people who have been doxxed already go through this, and it’s still near-impossible to stop an online harasser even if you have proof of who they are. It would become dangerous for us to be online at all if this “miracle” were to come about.

  • Is setting up such a system unfeasible?

    yes. not only would such a policy be messy to implement & partially unenforcable on the current internet for various reasons (look at what's happening with porn site here in the usa, where some states are literally trying to add a real id system & it's failing) it'd also be a law that hurts us well-meaning people (specifically, marginalized sections of populations that have a reason to take privacy seriously, such as lgbt people in non-gay friendly locations, for example) moreso than trolls. our privacy is already eroded enough imo, so if a real id system were to come out i'd just quit using the internet. & i'm sure a large chunk of the internet would do the same.

    you assume that such a system would stop all death threats & racist/sexist comments & make the internet a safe place but... why would it? bad people are shameless. if a real id system catches on, but moderation doesn't change, it's more likely that these people will just put up their real names & continue doing what they're doing. there are a lot of people who are already not ashamed whatsoever of having those comments attached to their identity right now, i mean look at how many

    <real name>

    s are on twitter & facebook & all that willingly posting hateful comments with their real name today.

    look i get what you're going for in spirit & why you want this system to be a thing. but the reason so much toxicity is on modern social media in the first place is simply because companies allow it, either by not spending enough on their moderation staff or, in cases like reddit, just by turning a blind eye to it. so, why not just be direct? why not regulate the companies rather than the consumers? imo a law that requires tech companies to take a zero-tolerance policy to hate speech & scams, as well as to actually spend enough on their moderation staff to allow that, would be much cleaner, safer & effective than a real id system

  • The first thing that pops into my mind are all the LGBT+ people I know who live in places where they are at risk, and online forums are their safe space. From what I've seen on Facebook, a large number of bigots and trolls seem unashamed to act as such even when their identity is known, so I feel like sacrificing privacy and anonymity would cause far more harm than good.

  • The cons definitely outweigh thr pros imo. And based on the number of people I've seen lose their jobs over social media posts, nothing much will change.

  • You could use finger prints or eye scans, but the effort to set up the infrastructure to do so would be massive.

    I am not so sure whether that's true. If people accept that, it could be done on a large scale, and the interest by federal states and technology companies is already as I assume.

    Even if all the hurdles could be overcome and a real id system could be created, is that something we would want?

    No. There are too many drawbacks of such a system. For example, the commodification of biometrics and other personal data by private tech companies would further decrease human dignity. Biometrics could too easily lead to discrimination as many biometric features reveal pathological and/or biological conditions. For examples, a certain range of fingerprint patterns can be related to some vascular diseases.

    If your property is secured by biometric data, there is also a danger that thieves physically assault and intimidate the property owner to get access to the property. The result could be an irreversible damage to the owner that could by far exceed the value of the property they want to protect. In 2005, for example, thieves chopped off a man's finger to steal his car which was protected by a fingerprint recognition system.

    If a person's biometric data is compromised, it cannot be reissued like a password could. That would leave this person vulnerable for future identification processes and their potential misuse.

    I could elaborate much more on this, but I guess you got the point. If we continue turning human beings into data points by using biometric data, we dehumanize the person imo. The issue goes far beyond privacy and surveillance as it is much more about human dignity and individual autonomy. In the end, it is a threat to democracy.

  • Fifteen to 20 years ago many people thought that the anonymity of the internet provided a permission structure for people to act incivilly. But if anything, the rise of social media has disproven that. People post the most incredibly toxic shit on Facebook or Twitter, often under their own names, right now. It's not the relative anonymity, or lack thereof, that dissuades people from toxic behavior. It's a collective action problem that rewards whatever the community (however defined) doesn't rise up to stamp out.

    Require a real ID (which sounds vaguely Orwellian where it doesn't sound nebulous) and you'll still get Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder and your uncle yelling transphobic trash on Twitter and Facebook and elsewhere. Places like Reddit and the fediverse are rapidly becoming outliers.

    And as pointed out in OP, requiring all accounts tied to an identifiable person would be a disaster for people in abusive relationships, or who have a stalker, or other endangered persons. (Thinking back to Google Buzz and the ways it enabled online harassment and abuse before Google mercifully cut it showrt.)

    The current, semi-anonymous, system is possibly the worst system devised, with the possible exception of all the others. No system is going to solve a collective-action problem. We, the collective, have to step up and fix it ourself.

    (My understanding of Web 3.0 is limited to the crypto space, which seems inherently scammy; if there's more to it than that, and I should be aware of it, I'd love to be educated.)

  • I forget which EU country, maybe Norway?? has digital ID card for citizens issued by government, so you can prove your ID for online and other purposes.. We have a rudimentary form here in British Columbia as well. Currently it is not fully integrated with all web like the EU, but for accessing Social services, BC Govt sites , banking login alternate authenticator, and including Federal Tax site, you login via your BCEID. Verification for issuance is in person or via the app that prompts you to video yourself while speaking words and doing actions that pop up on screen, then later a human verifies the video matches what was asked, as well as other ID info. This could be expanded on to be like the EU one where it is like a private key and public key system to have a true online identifier.

24 comments