Hacker News Reader

Comment by shusaku | Hacker News Reader

I think that people of certain generations need to be taught the beauty of a burner account. You get to say whatever you want, and are invulnerable to criticism. The downside is there’s no ego boost to seeing your name in the news or using your fame to get impressions. But that’s the double sided sword of reputation.

When I was growing up on the internet, everyone understood the value of pseudo anonymity. But then Facebook came along and everyone is shocked that attaching your name and face to your random thoughts is a bad idea.

And while a burner account is vulnerable to doxing, at least that’s universally viewed as going over the line. And maybe as an owner of a social media platform, Musk could prevent doxing with better privacy tools.

View on HN

> doxing, at least that’s universally viewed as going over the line.

Not really. When the user database of Parler was dumped, the media covered that event quite widely and favorably.

They would and have cover that event if any major user database was leaked.

But unless you have some evidence I've not seen any news organisations deliberately reveal PII data.

The first result of the "Parler user data" search for me is this publication

https://gizmodo.com/every-deleted-parler-post-many-with-user...

containing a direct link to the dump.

Isn't this only public posts? The article mentions a leak that contained private information but doesn't link to it.

https://tracker.archiveteam.org/parler/#show-all

But that's public post data not PII user data.

I think you've not been paying attention then. Journalists love doxxing their ideological enemies:

- Scott Alexander

- Richard Hanania

- LibsOfTikTok (can't remember her real name)

And that's just in, like, the last 18 months or so.

They also love to widely report on cases where allied organizations do it, thus pointing everyone to the dumps. For example the home addresses of the entire German AfD political party was dumped online by Hessen Antifa and this was widely reported in German media (who they got the info from wasn't).

There is absolutely no code of honor in news organizations or NGOs. Their goal is to silence anyone who opposes them and they use their positions to do that.

What about legal threats from government representatives when they don’t like your speech and attempt to force the social media platforms to reveal your burner identity?

Devin Nunes attempted to doxx a “cow” for example: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/devin-nunes-subpoena-ai...

Devin failed and the cow goes on.

i'm hyped for federated social media if for no reason other than that it forces the free-speech people to confront the world in which they unambiguously have free speech, and find themselves ignored more than before.

but that only works for the everyday free-speech libertarian, not the actual egotistical. i watched the CTO of a prominent defense contractor cry "censorship" when they weren't allowed to present at an open source tech conference unless they removed all company branding from their slides. as if the arms dealers are the ones at the wrong end of the power struggle; as if Elon Musk with an audience of tens of millions is the victim of society. i don't know what to call that view toward individual liberties except for literal delusion.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com