Some of the worst shitbags in the world are online proudly under their own names.
Anonymity isn’t the problem. Instant mass communication between creatures with plains ape brains is the problem. We are not cognitively equipped for this shit.
Requiring people to use their real name would take out a lot of the noise, the false and misleading info, and the unqualified opinions that people are blasting out into the ether, and then other people who don’t know any better find it and feel with their ape brains that their own malformed opinions and emotions are validated.
I don’t think this country used to be as insane as it is now. And I attribute the insanity to bad faith actors amplifying bad faith messaging on social media.
As to your last point, we are definitely not cognitively equipped for what we have. Can we equip ourselves now, after the fact?
Requiring people to use their real name would take out a lot of the noise, the false and misleading info, and the unqualified opinions that people are blasting out into the ether, and then other people who don’t know any better find it and feel with their ape brains that their own malformed opinions and emotions are validated.
But requiring all internet users to identify (somehow, let’s leave the implementation aside for now) would also mean that anyone living in a repressive regime would be even more fucked than they are now, and it’d mean that even people living in at least nominally democratic countries but with a nonzero amount of violent conservatives would be an easier target, since there’d be no pseudonymity.
As to your last point, we are definitely not cognitively equipped for what we have. Can we equip ourselves now, after the fact?
Frankly I doubt it. The cat is out of the bag, and I really don’t know how we can unfuck this situation – at least without significant amounts of social upheaval and bloodshed in the interim
Some of the worst shitbags in the world are online proudly under their own names.
Anonymity isn’t the problem. Instant mass communication between creatures with plains ape brains is the problem. We are not cognitively equipped for this shit.
You make good points.
Requiring people to use their real name would take out a lot of the noise, the false and misleading info, and the unqualified opinions that people are blasting out into the ether, and then other people who don’t know any better find it and feel with their ape brains that their own malformed opinions and emotions are validated.
I don’t think this country used to be as insane as it is now. And I attribute the insanity to bad faith actors amplifying bad faith messaging on social media.
As to your last point, we are definitely not cognitively equipped for what we have. Can we equip ourselves now, after the fact?
But requiring all internet users to identify (somehow, let’s leave the implementation aside for now) would also mean that anyone living in a repressive regime would be even more fucked than they are now, and it’d mean that even people living in at least nominally democratic countries but with a nonzero amount of violent conservatives would be an easier target, since there’d be no pseudonymity.
Frankly I doubt it. The cat is out of the bag, and I really don’t know how we can unfuck this situation – at least without significant amounts of social upheaval and bloodshed in the interim