UK Home Secretary wants to ban anonymous social media accounts, is determined to bring "big changes"

[Master Disaster]

First off, this topic is very close to the line. Please don't make this a political debate, I'll deliberately not post the politics and stick to the relevant facts only.

 

In the wake of the stabbing of a UK MP by a radicalised UK national, home secretary Priti Patel has just said that she intends to outlaw the anonymity of social media accounts in the UK though how she intends to pull this off is anyones guess.

 

Quote

She told The Independent that police investigations into racial abuse and threats against her had repeatedly foundered because of social media companies’ insistence on protecting anonymity. And she said: “Persons inciting violence and racial hatred online should know that they will no longer have this cover.”

 

Speaking two days after 69-year-old Sir David was killed in a knife attack at a constituency surgery in his Southend West seat, Ms Patel said she was determined to introduce “big changes” to the law surrounding online hate.

 

She said many MPs had suffered “appalling” online attacks and warned: “We can’t carry on like this.”

Source - https://www.entrepreneurnews.co.uk/facebook/david-amess-priti-patel-could-ban-online-anonymity-to-stop-relentless-abuse-of-mps/

 

Honestly, I'm not totally against this. I actually agree that far too many people use the anonymous nature of the internet to say disgusting things knowing there's nothing anyone can do about it.

 

Where I am concerned though is how they intend to pull this off and how long will it be before the powers designed to stop online abuse are applied to other things. AFAIK if the UK (or indeed any) police get in touch with a social media platform and ask for someones info they get it, how much further are they going to go? A forced register that everyone who wants to participate has to sign? Government issue online passes?

 

I have this horrible feeling they're going to use this tragedy to try and take control of the "free" internet.

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

Yea while there are noble intentions... I can see this being circumvented simply by moving to the dark web... which is where many of these organized crime/terrorist organizations have presence in anyways. 

 

The dangers of anonymous accounts does need to be addressed because they involve not just terrorism. But bullying, luring, etc. But I don't think anyone has even a clue on how to effectively tackle that without just gunning every single one of them down. 

[Kronoton]

Only way to pull that off is with GreatWallOfChina approach, and that would only fly if you copy everything else "Chinese".

 

So no, not gonna fly in an effective way. Might be able get some kids doing some trashtalking,  the real problematic ones will just go into darker corners of the web.

 

Solution would need to address the issues way before they get out of hand, but that would require changes all through society. Changes those holding or wanting to hold the strings will never agree too.

[Master Disaster]

2 minutes ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

Yea while there are noble intentions... I can see this being circumvented simply by moving to the dark web... which is where many of these organized organizations have presence in anyways. 

 

The dangers of anonymous accounts does need to be addressed because they involve not just terrorism. But bullying, luring, etc. But I don't think anyone has even a clue on how to effectively tackle that without just gunning every single one of them down. 

Yep and the trouble with politicians is they rarely understand the things they're messing with and like to make sweeping changes without talking to experts first.

[BuckGup]

How exactly do they plan to do this? Its the chinese children ban all over again. Within a week kids were using their grandparents IDs to bypass it. 

[BlueChinchillaEatingDorito]

3 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Yep and the trouble with politicians is they rarely understand the things they're messing with and like to make sweeping changes without talking to experts first.

Though that being said in this particular case, the experts might not know of a better solution either. You could suggest banning anonymous accounts for anyone that's currently being monitored for suspicious activity (Which leads to the argument is the Government just going to put everyone under the sun as suspicious? Another argument for another day I suppose). But apparently the person who stabbed Sir David wasn't even on the radar of MI5 from my understanding so already we have someone who would've slipped through. 

[suicidalfranco]

from the country that arrests people for what they post online, makes sense

[YoungBlade]

Apart from the fact that it's actually impossible to enforce this, it would also seem pretty pointless. The only people on the Internet who use anonymity that you need to fear are criminals, and criminals don't care about the law, so they'll just find ways to circumvent it. It's the same problem with banning encryption: because open source encryption algorithms exist, any criminals who want to use encryption will just use it.

 

Additionally, anonymity on the Internet can also be used for good. To keep away from political things where this truly matters, but that isn't allowed to be discussed on the forum, let me use a benign example to get the point across: someone wants to get career advice about possibly leaving their job, but don't want their boss to know that they've sought such advice, so they post anonymously to a site like reddit. If their boss knows their usual online handles, and those handles are linked to their identity, then it would be impossible to hide this from their boss.

 

The result is that only good people end up being hurt by a law like this.

[porina]

Having some authentication process to create an account doesn't necessarily follow you have to post as that identity. Just that the account has some link to a person's actual identity. So if you want to call yourself chunkylover53 you could, but somewhere in the back end will be your IRL details. The potential for hacks leaking data associating that with actual identity is another problem.

 

Anyone seriously using social media probably has multiple recovery options associated, such as mobile number. So arguably there isn't that much anonymity. One possible direction might be to steer users to authenticate regardless, with the less validated you are, the less you get promoted, and even offer block settings to depreciate such further. That way "anonymous" accounts might still exist but be more limited in functionality.

[SansVarnic]

6 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

Honestly, I'm not totally against this. I actually agree that far too many people use the anonymous nature of the internet to say disgusting things knowing there's nothing anyone can do about it.

I am only going to point this out. This is not an easily regulatable thing, especially with today's political medium, level of ignorance of said medium and so on so forth.

It is a Pandora's box.  Tread very carefully my friend.

The only good way to do this is to create rules/laws that can protect the receiver. A crime of feelings is not a crime of action. Speaking your mind is one thing but making threats, plausible ones, is another.

 

6 hours ago, IAmNotASmartMan said:

This is a tough one, because at this point, it seems humans haven proven they can't really be trusted with internet anonymity.

Agreed.

[Master Disaster]

11 hours ago, IAmNotASmartMan said:

This is a tough one, because at this point, it seems humans haven proven they can't really be trusted with internet anonymity. Our real life actions are strongly documented for all sorts of reasons, most of us are happy with that, a sacrifice worth making.

Passing that law is going to be a lot easier than the seemingly impossible task for social media companies to enforce it though. Probably just creating a new market for fraud, fake ID to get into bars, fake online ID to get into Twitter.

I suspect this is more a move to pressure social media companies to agreeing to be more open in certain exceptional circumstances, which, I think they should be anyway, I want my countries laws to be realistically enforcable. Definitely a complicated topic though.

 

I honestly believe the powers that be in the UK have wanted to take internet freedom away for a very long time, as others have said, the problem isn't the willingness, its the ability to do it.

 

It does make me worried though, this is the same bunch who thought forcing people to register for a porn pass was a good idea.

 

The fact its unenforceable doesn't make it better, it just means they'll have to try to change the way things are enforced.

 

5 hours ago, SansVarnic said:

I am only going to point this out. This is not an easily regulatable thing, especially with today's political medium, level of ignorance of said medium and so on so forth.

It is a Pandora's box.  Tread very carefully my friend.

The only good way to do this is to create rules/laws that can protect the receiver. A crime of feelings is not a crime of action. Speaking your mind is one thing but making threats, plausible ones, is another.

Totally agreed. I'm not saying I think this is a good idea however I very much do agree that something has to be done about online abuse. When you hear stats like 75% of school aged girls in the UK are regularly subject to online sexual abuse (including threats of rape) its alarming.

 

Unfortunately there is no easy solution without essentially dismantling the internet as it currently is.

[SorryBella]

12 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

intends to outlaw the anonymity of social media accounts in the UK though how she intends to pull this off is anyones guess.

Time to increase the stakes of data protection to the people with still unproven possibility that itll reduce crime!

 

Not now, not until we figure out a far better security protocol than what we have now.

[FruitOfTheLum]

I'm not terribly worried about this. The UK government has attempted to 'police' the Internet a number of times over the years, and has always failed to do so because it fails to grasp the enormity and complexity of what it's attempting. 

 

Either you go full China, which I don't think even our current government - a bunch of tinpot populists though they may be - is prepared to do, or you simply fall at the first hurdle. 

[Sauron]

12 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

AFAIK if the UK (or indeed any) police get in touch with a social media platform and ask for someones info they get it, how much further are they going to go? A forced register that everyone who wants to participate has to sign? Government issue online passes?

They already require passes to access "adult" content so... maybe? I don't really like the idea. As far as I know, the police already has access to all the means necessary to track down these people if they really want to. If it's made too easy then it'll be more likely to be misused. Besides, there's no guarantee an anonymous account sending UK politicians death threats is even a UK national...

28 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

Totally agreed. I'm not saying I think this is a good idea however I very much do agree that something has to be done about online abuse. When you hear stats like 75% of school aged girls in the UK are regularly subject to online sexual abuse (including threats of rape) its alarming.

I'd start with actually prosecuting the abusers, in a lot of cases the identities of these people are known and yet the justice system is painfully slow or overindulgent in its response. In fact, the Tories especially are known to downplay that sort of thing when they're not using it as an excuse for draconian measures. It's also funny to me how on one hand they incessantly whine about "cancel culture" and "censorship" when they're banned for blatantly breaking the terms of service but, on the other, they are more than willing to enforce actual government censorship against their political opponents.

[LAwLz]

13 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The dangers of anonymous accounts does need to be addressed because they involve not just terrorism. But bullying, luring, etc. But I don't think anyone has even a clue on how to effectively tackle that without just gunning every single one of them down. 

Yes, because as we all know, bullying, luring, terrorism etc were all things that were invented because of online anonymity and never happened before the 90's.

And as we all know, platforms like Facebook that do not have any anonymity are completely bullying-free. I am sure anonymity is the issue... 

/sarcasm

 

 

I wonder if the UK politicians pushing for this law will exempt themselves from it, just like they did with the investigatory powers bill.

I mean, surely once they realize this bill might not allow them to anonymously edit Wikipedia articles anymore then they will probably exempt themselves from it.

[Arika]

13 hours ago, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The dangers of anonymous accounts does need to be addressed because they involve not just terrorism. But bullying, luring, etc. But I don't think anyone has even a clue on how to effectively tackle that without just gunning every single one of them down. 

I can't help but notice you're using an anonymous account on this forum. i have my doubts that you really are a blue chinchilla eating a dorito IRL So why aren't you using your real name and a photo of yourself? what are you, a terrorist?

 

welcome to the world of slippery slope arguments.

[cj09beira]

the world is slipping into a authoritarian mess, sad pikachu noises.

[jagdtigger]

Why am i not surprised that this is being pushed by an old geezer who dont have a clue about how things work on the internet.....

[williamcll]

Big F for telegram and signal then.

[Video Beagle]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

Why am i not surprised that this is being pushed by an old geezer who dont have a clue about how things work on the internet.....

Pritti Patel is not an old geezer. She's Gen X...we came of age with the internet and developed it and built it.

As for what she knows....well, that gets into the political side of things, so we'll leave that her age isn't an issue.

 

RE: Anonymous accounts...yes bad people use anoymous accounts to do bad, because that's what bad people do.  But endangered people use anonymous accounts as well, because for them to not be anonymous might mean they can't get help they need or learn things others might not want them to learn...things like "they're not alone".

[leadeater]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

I can't help but notice you're using an anonymous account on this forum. i have my doubts that you really are a blue chinchilla eating a dorito IRL So why aren't you using your real name and a photo of yourself? what are you, a terrorist?

 

welcome to the world of slippery slope arguments.

Well.. sometimes I eat lead... probably. At a minimum drank it from the water supply.

 

But yea I was thinking the same thing with our forum accounts here. But of course I don't think it has to mean using your actual name as your display name, just linking it to a real identity. However I don't think security is really there for such a thing, mega corps epic fail at it quite often so I don't have high hopes that every place on the internet that would be subject to such requirements would be able to keep that information secure.

[Master Disaster]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Well.. sometimes I eat lead... probably. At a minimum drank it from the water supply.

 

But yea I was thinking the same thing with our forum accounts here. But of course I don't think it has to mean using you actual name as your display name, just linking it to a real identity. However I don't think security is really there for such a thing, mega corps epic fail at it quite often so I don't have high hopes that every place on the internet that would be subjects tp such requirements would be able to keep that information secure.

One valid defence on the part of social media is the "its too big to police" argument. I get it, sure when you have multiple billions of accounts and multiple millions of concurrent users it pretty much is impossible to catch every single offence.

 

I still think its a poor defence though, if they cannot (and in some cases will not) police their platform then they should be forced to break things up into smaller chunks that can be managed easier. They should be forced to implement systems where reports of this nature are ALWAYS sent to a human who at least has the power to flag, remove the post and escalate to a higher tier. They should be forced to spend a certain percentage of their revenue on hiring more human moderators. Lastly they should be forced to ALWAYS forward these types of thing to the relevant authorities.

 

I'm talking threats of harm, murder, sexual assault, really bad racism/right wing stuff, terrorism, suicide, obvious declining mental health etc etc.

 

On the flip though, I also think society is far too quick to get offended these days. Really dumb things start huge online arguments, we've had white actors apologising for playing black characters in comedy roles (the best thing about this was the black community laughing and basically saying we really don't care), cancel culture is real and its another thing that needs to be stopped.

 

As someone said earlier, having your feelings hurt is not an actionable offence.

[CarlBar]

1 hour ago, Master Disaster said:

One valid defence on the part of social media is the "its too big to police" argument. I get it, sure when you have multiple billions of accounts and multiple millions of concurrent users it pretty much is impossible to catch every single offence.

 

I still think its a poor defence though, if they cannot (and in some cases will not) police their platform then they should be forced to break things up into smaller chunks that can be managed easier. They should be forced to implement systems where reports of this nature are ALWAYS sent to a human who at least has the power to flag, remove the post and escalate to a higher tier. They should be forced to spend a certain percentage of their revenue on hiring more human moderators. Lastly they should be forced to ALWAYS forward these types of thing to the relevant authorities.

 

I'm talking threats of harm, murder, sexual assault, really bad racism/right wing stuff, terrorism, suicide, obvious declining mental health etc etc.

 

On the flip though, I also think society is far too quick to get offended these days. Really dumb things start huge online arguments, we've had white actors apologising for playing black characters in comedy roles (the best thing about this was the black community laughing and basically saying we really don't care), cancel culture is real and its another thing that needs to be stopped.

 

As someone said earlier, having your feelings hurt is not an actionable offence.

 

it's not about the fact that they're so big as single entities. it's about the amount of social media content generated overall. Youtube for example if it was paying at $15 an hour would need to spend a half a billion dollars per year just on people watching video's, (never mind everything they would need to pay in equipment and other people supporting that).

 

Social media generates many times as much content as youtube does. Reviewing even a tiny percentage of all social media posts would cost 10's of billions of US dollars, maybe more. Nobody can afford to do that, the services would all have to become subscription based, (or more likely just close), if that happened.

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, Video Beagle said:

Pritti Patel is not an old geezer. She's Gen X...we came of age with the internet and developed it and built it.

Her statement says otherwise.....

[Spindel]

BOOOOO!

 

A law that directly breaks the rules from the 90ies (not that most people adhere to them nowadays anyway).

 

One of the most important rules of early internet:

"Never use your real name or any information that can be connected to you as a person or where you live"