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> I think the basic unit of democracy is the citizen, and the citizen is not a private person. Being a citizen means participating in public life, and public life brings with it, trust, accountability and reputation.

I disagree with this, mostly for the reason that the requirement for trust, accountability and reputation to exist in a society is different person to person when conditioned on wealth. If I have massive wealth, I can participate in society and democracy entirely anonymously. I vote, which is anonymous, and that's it. I have no requirement for trust, accountability and reputation.

Not only that but trust, accountability and reputation are all subjective measures based on who is measuring them. Mark Zuckerberg is trustworthy, accountable, and has high reputation for some folks at FB, while a large number of other people would disagree with that. Who's opinion matters? Has his measures of trust, accountability and reputation changed over time? Additionally, trust, accountability and reputation don't matter to him if he's still one of the richest people on earth.

I agree with you about voting.

But if I'm speaking, reputation usually matters. People want to know whether to assign credibility to what I say, and knowing who I am plays a large part in that.

Now, HN is an interesting example of that. Anyone can read my comment history (unless I create a throwaway for one post), but nobody knows who I am (unless I make my name and/or email address public). Still, I can build up a reputation here, either good or bad. And I do the same for others. "Oh, user X usually has interesting things to say. I was maybe going to skip this comment, but because of who wrote it, I'll read it." Some users get that extra benefit of the doubt, because with me they have built up credibility over time.

This happens in politics, too. Consider the Federalist Papers. At the time, the writers were not known, but they built up a consistent, solid argument. We respect them now, not because of who the writers were, but because of the quality of the material. (If anything, we respect the writers more because of what they wrote, not the other way around.) So this can work in politics - people with a reputation, and still anonymous.

But then there's Q. Q has built up a reputation (both good and bad) while remaining anonymous. But my personal conspiracy theory is that Q was a Russian disinformation campaign. ("Was" is perhaps too optimistic - I would expect Q to re-emerge as we get to the 2022 or 2024 elections.) I would really like to know who Q was, in order that people would have a better basis for judging what Q says.

Hackernews is an interesting example, as it is HEAVILY moderated, and some would say that this leads to a much higher level of commenting quality.

for most topics, I'd say the quality of conversation is high, but for some topics HN is pretty much an echo chamber. Some unpopular opinions for some topics are down voted pretty heavily, and very quickly.

Sharing an unpopular opinion on certain topics often leads to immediate downvoting of completely unrelated posts made earlier.

"You said something I don't like. Let me just click on your profile and downvote everything I can". Happens surprisingly often

> Consider the Federalist Papers. At the time, the writers were not known

Everyone knew who wrote the Federalist papers. It was an open secret. People may not have known the specific author of a particular passage or argument, but among the elite debating the constitution (who were the target audience) there was no disguise or mystery regarding the people who were 'Publius.' This gets trotted frequently out as one of the few examples of anonymous political speech having a potential benefit, but given the fact that it was pseudonymous at best I welcome additional examples of actual anonymous political speech that was of any consequence.

Q seemed to be an 'Operation Trust' / операция Трест campaign. The idea is to undermine resistance by pretending there is already one in place and that the secret resistance with a plan that will be eminently successful. It undermines actual resistance. The parallel being Trump supporters being the resistance that didn't do anything (other than make fools of themselves) with the belief that there was a secret plan to keep Trump in power. In this scenario Q would have been created to undermine Trump and his supporters. A large part of propaganda is to make your enemies look foolish. I'm reminded of a Voltaire quote: "I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord make my enemies ridiculous. ' And God granted it."

> I think anonymity is appropriate for whistleblowers or transparency activists,

I guess the state should get to decide who qualifies?

That'll work out swimmingly.

No, it obviously should not be the state that decides something like this. This is journalists' work.

The most difficult part of whistleblowing is proving that any of this stuff is happening. If I started posting on HN about a black market for human baby meat, you probably wouldn't even see it: pg would ban me almost immediately as a troll, and he'd be right to do so. But what if there actually is one?

(and I'm not even really anonymous; if you want to, you can find my real name)

A journalist who knows the real identity of an anonymous informant has the ability to prove that they are who they say they are, and that the stuff they're trying to blow the cover of is actually happening. You don't know the identity of the informant, but there is still a real-world identity and reputation tied to the information, which is at least supposed to mean that if they're full of crap, you don't listen to them next time. There is, simply put, a chain of custody for reliable information.

100 million people is not a "community".

Even 100 thousand is not a "community".

You're right that anonymity is not how you build proper communities. But proper communities can only operate on a scale much smaller than any social media.

Now, a Facebook group might be a community - but then surely it should be up to its members to decide how to deal with anonymity?

What if it's members are secretly 70% shills and bots, and the community itself is somewhat of an illusion

Then the remaining 30% should probably just go elsewhere?

But how would you know? What if you're looking for a new community and the one you find is already compromised but from all outsider views seems to be a healthy source of expertise on a topic?

I find it very doubtful that a community that's mostly bots would "seem to be a healthy source of expertise" from the outside. If you're only looking at the materials that the community itself publishes (i.e. group description etc) - then sure, but that's not doing one's due diligence.

But even if you can't see it from the outside, it's not like it's a one-way door.

Regardless, what do you suggest as a remediation? By definition, if it looks good to the outsiders, how could the outsiders meaningfully moderate it?

>I find it very doubtful that a community that's mostly bots would "seem to be a healthy source of expertise" from the outside. If you're only looking at the materials that the community itself publishes (i.e. group description etc) - then sure, but that's not doing one's due diligence.

What about one human and 100 bot slaves that help his content gain the appearance of social agreement and importance? I also think the bar for the appearance of expertise is basically nothing if you're new to the area.

I'm a fan of removing anonymity from sufficiently large platforms personally.

There are many hypothetical scenarios that can be cherry-picked. And many not-so-hypothetical ones - e.g. trans people getting harassed on Facebook, today, due to its "real name" policy.

Besides I don't see how you'd meaningfully implement it in the first place - i.e. how would you distinguish bots from actual people? Require ID? Surely you can see the potential for abuse inherent in that. Especially outside of liberal democracies (although they are by no means immune to that, either).

I think such takes have to contend with the fact that the biggest social media cesspool is the one with the least anonymity: Facebook.

This is a really interesting point. While some "social media" hubs are much more toxic (think 8 chan), their reach is largely neutered because the upside just isn't there for the average citizen.

I think anonymity, non-anonymity, and pseudonyms are all pretty nuanced, and don’t have as linear an impact on the discourse as is commonly represented. We all know of anonymous forums that are utter cesspools, such as 4chan. We’ve also probably been part of forums and social media sites where pseudonyms were the norm, yet everyone jealously protected their good name and comported themself according to the norms and expectations of that community. Scale, social cohesion, moderation quality, and other site decisions have a huge impact on how people behave, possibly bigger than whether or not people use their real names.

> It might stifle free speech but in my book it does not stifle democracy, and reducing the latter to the former is a mistake.

Curious: how do you have democracy without free speech?

To me, it seems that free speech is a prerequisite for democracy. If it does not exist, then how can ordinary citizens enact change?