The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the right to anonymous speech is inherent in the first amendment [1] [2]. See also The Federalist Papers or Common Sense, without which the US might not exist at all.
Free speech absolutism that ends up in creating an environment where real speech is drowned out by lies is not valuable to me. It’s like the paradox of tolerance.
You may as well advocate for no one to be allowed to drive cars because of the possibility of someone getting into a car accident.
Or (in case you're a fan of the second amendment) - advocate for guns not being allowed to be sold to law-abiding citizens because of the possibility of the gun later working its way into the hands of someone who would use it for a mass shooting.
Freedoms exist with the understanding that both positive and negative consequences can result from them. The argument is that the good vastly out-weighs the bad and are worth preserving.
Cool, ignore my point about technology changing the situation. I assume you’ll ignore Jefferson talking about how the constitution should be changed every 19-20 years because the world changed.
> You may as well advocate for no one to be allowed to drive cars because of the possibility of someone getting into a car accident.
That’s the literal reality with mandated car insurance. If you don’t have car insurance you can be banned from driving. What was your point here?
> Or (in case you're a fan of the second amendment) - advocate for guns not being allowed to be sold to law-abiding citizens because of the possibility of the gun later working its way into the hands of someone who would use it for a mass shooting.
I’m not an advocate for the 2nd amendment since the majority of people I’ve met advocating for it as a defense against tyranny are full throated proponents for the tyrannical leaders because they don’t like the cultural norms of anyone outside their tribe. I can’t think of a single 2nd amendment advocate who is ready to stand up to the government against rights violations and would be happy to hear from you of an example.
> Freedoms exist with the understanding that both positive and negative consequences can result from them. The argument is that the good vastly out-weighs the bad and are worth preserving.
Yea, the freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Freedom of speech to explicitly lie like Steve Bannon organized and many others using the “flood the zone” strategy seems to the be at the end of my nose. If you are actively lying to manipulate me or others knowledge of reality, that is not feee speech, that’s Machiavellian manipulation.
The Constitution doesn't have a "except when technology gets advanced enough" clause either. I checked.
You wanting the Constitution to change is something else entirely - and that's not what you're advocating for.
> That’s the literal reality with mandated car insurance. If you don’t have car insurance you can be banned from driving. What was your point here?
I fail to see what car insurance analogizes to here.
>Yea, the freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose. Freedom of speech to explicitly lie like Steve Bannon organized and many others using the “flood the zone” strategy seems to the be at the end of my nose. If you are actively lying to manipulate me or others knowledge of reality, that is not feee speech, that’s Machiavellian manipulation.
Speech is not violence. Comparing it to violence diminishes the suffefing and harm faced by people who have been a victim of violence.
You have the freedom to pay attention to whatever you want to - as do media outlets and political consultants.
Why should the entire country suffer because the media frequented by political-news-saturated people is so easily disatractable? They have the option to just...not...cover irrelevant nonsense.
It's not the option they choose to take though. See: The reflecting pool news cycle.
I’d prefer a pragmatic solution and there is no pragmatic solution that gives us privacy back given the government and megacorps ability to pierce the vast majority of forms of privacy. The only thing anonymous speech is getting us currently is being manipulated by bad actors who are lying about their position.
I fundamentally do not want a world where I get the bad ends of both sides of semi anonymous speech where the government and megacorps know everything about me, but I just have to trust the account I am speaking to isn’t a bot or a worker in some foreign psyop shop, or even domestic psyop shop, lying to me.
I do not value free speech if it functionally disabled via the amount of lies permeating it. Free speech is useless if it’s nothing but a sea of “flood the zone” lies with the intent to make the truth unknowable, like how Russia or actors like Steve Bannon have manipulated the public square to be.
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From: On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder, Chapter 1 title & intro
Do not obey in advance.
Most of the power of authoritarianism is freely given. In times like these, individuals think ahead about what a more repressive government will want, and then offer themselves without being asked. A citizen who adapts in this way is teaching power what it can do.
https://ia801505.us.archive.org/11/items/on-tyranny-twenty-l...
I am not under the impression I have any sort of privacy on the internet anymore, other than from other regular civilians.
What I have to deal with is bots, foreign actors, and domestic actors all flooding the zone with lies that I cannot discern from the truth but that companies and the government can.
Making posting a non anonymous activity equalizes the playing field between me and governments/corporations.
If you are arguing that we should keep this thin skin of anonymity that doesn’t stop the bad actors, then I assume you just want them to keep power or that you don’t actually believe that they have managed to track our behavior.
Also anonymity can actually improve social media polarization (see Chris Bail’s research)
Also again, the corporations and governments(for certain levels of government like the members of the Five Eyes) can pierce this veil of anonymity, the people who have a lot to lose already are risking it by speaking.
Edit: this also isn’t a newly diagnosed phenomena, I remember seeing this satirical description of the behavior as a kid back when Web 2.0 and social media was starting to change the internet[1]
[1] https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/green-blackboa...
If you were correct, there would be no need for them to push these new laws. The fact is, you will have less privacy after these identification requirements are fully enforced.