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Comment by jadedhacker | Hacker News Reader

Hate to be that guy, but while people being somewhat shittier anonymously is a real thing, there are whole cadres of incredibly horrible people that will post horrible stuff under their real names and be proud of it. Losing anonymity means losing protections for actually vulnerable people. The shittiest people are often the ones with the most secure positions in society.

I think our online personas are just a reflection of our culture. Our culture sucks, so our online personas suck.

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> Losing anonymity means losing protections for actually vulnerable people. The shittiest people are often the ones with the most secure positions in society.

Case in point - Google forcibly merging Google+ comments into Youtube comments.

It didn't end trolling or harassment on the platform at all... people were are are perfectly willing to be vile under their real names, but it did expose a lot of people's personal information and real names to that cesspool against their will.

Also, Usenet. A lot of people posted with headers including their real name or an email containing their real name, yet it wasn't exactly a bastion of civility because of it.

must be liberating how easy it is to be racist/troll etc under your real name in Youtube, because everybody else is doing it. Real name, fake name, pseudonymous or completely anonymous, it seems it doesn't matter - herd behaviour washes away everything.

The way I see it, the web being primarily text based makes empathy difficult, which makes irate and rude behavior easier. It's easy to forget that there are real people on the other side of these text boxes.

Not just text, but temporal and geographic distance as well. There's plenty of Youtube reaction videos going back and forth of people just bashing each other, like any other flame war.

Also, let's not discount the effect an audience has. I would hazard that most negative public comments are actually crafted more for the benefit the author gets from the public reading it than the purported target. What's a little hurt feelings of one or a few when you get that buzz of doing something that shocks or amuses 20,000 people?

i guess text has always been harsher thats why books are so interesting

This information does not have to be made visible to other posters - just to verify that you're a unique human at account creation.

You could still call yourself KatDude420.

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