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And much more privacy-destroying

Depends, are you pretending to be a famous, well known person? Isn't your privacy gone anyway? Are you an artist on deviant art with a handle? Well we need to make sure you are that same artist. There is no need to reveal your real name. The real deviant art artist wouldn't want some imposter making money here.

You don't have to use facebook. You don't have to verify at all, if you are not pretending to be anyone special.

I agree totally. In those cases makes perfect sense.

I recognize that the norm is to cross link as much as possible but I oppose it. To put on my tinfoil hat, part of why we do it is having been duped into it. It all comes down to tracking for advertising.

In my view the losses outweigh the gains for the average person. A few days ago a prolific poster threatened to reveal the address and bank account of another user. It becomes easier to unearth sensitive private information the more public information is available.

When you state 'it all comes down to tracking for advertising', and then go on to point out an example where there is a threat to dox someone, I think you are too generous with goodwill.

It all comes down to POWER, and tracking for advertising is but one way to use that power. SWATting is another, and it happens. There are also far more dangerous ways our personal information can be used against us. It was John Yoo (or John Yee, can't remember off the top of my head, but counsel to George W. Bush during his presidency, IIRC) that provided a legal opinion that the executive (President) had lawful authority to crush the testicles of a child in order to interrogate a parent.

As far as I know, both Obama and Trump have become the inheritors of this 'lawful authority', and I am confident that there is a reason that Yoo felt it necessary to provide that legal opinion.

It could not be a good reason, and there are a lot of other bad actors out there with even less constraint than the USG might feel appropriate. Anonymity reduces the power such bad actors have over us.

Knowledge is power, and our data has power over us.

You're correct, thanks for pointing that out! 😅 Oops.

I guess you could say it comes down to power as a way to tie the two. In this case information is power: your spending habits, postal address, favorite yogurt, what you look like naked.

Looks like you were right the first time, it was John Yoo who said

'If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?', to which Yoo replied 'No treaty.' Cassel followed up with 'Also no law by Congress—that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo', to which Yoo replied 'I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that.'

So yea, I hadn't heard of that, but in a way it doesn't surprise me, though perhaps it should.

Anonymity reduces the power such bad actors have over us.

Knowledge is power, and our data has power over us.

Absolutely. So thanks for pointing out my non sequitur.

And also the best option for the growth of the platform.