We are living in a world where your government can track you and end your way of life based on what you say. That’s enough motivation for anonymity for anyone, especially those who never have been in the public limelight before. Think about all the countless lives ruined by Facebook posts, deservedly or not.
I am not monetizing my participation here. Nor am I judging anyone who wants to stay anonymous if they choose to.
But are we "citizen(s) of a functioning democracy "? I question the functional part for all of us at this point and has it ever been a true democracy for people of color, women, the queer and disabled?
I started out naively on Facebook sharing content in 2015, (mostly standing up for gradualism and against the radical agenda of MAGA) under my own name, then came the disgusting threats and rampant sexism, some of the worst of it from members my own MAGA family. I quit FB in 2017 familial relationships forever frayed by the digital gang bang that I experienced as a liberal woman there.
So I built my Twitter profile where I fled with a pseudonym. I identified at first as a woman and my comment section was often enough crashed by mansplaining, harassment and the occasionally stalking by RW trolls, so I stripped my gender and because my basic profile, profession and often my voice skews male I was able to freely navigate in the social media world. I have never shared photos of humans or other identifiable data, a fact that I've been very glad about after the onset of data mining. After quitting Twitter when Musk stunk it up, I did the same profile masking on Bluesky. It seems only prudent now.
I tend to agree with you in the main but it's not so simple for people that are not as equal as others given the dangers that are inherent on social media. I think that should change once people monetize their feeds. FWIW.
Of course. It's the same reason I won't pay for an anonymous newsletter. Real relationships require trust on both sides, forged by humans - this includes societal ones. Building trust requires risk, anonymity is unable to build trust.
The danger in what you argue, and I am not saying that your point is wholly invalid, is that even though you are careful to distinguish between political speech in democratic regimes and dissent, journalism and whistleblowing in autocratic ones (or just in general; see Deep Throat and Watergate), if democratic countries start requiring real names even just for political speech, autocratic countries will collapse the distinction in the other direction and claim that they're just doing the same when they further crack down on anonymous dissent, journalism and whistleblowing. (Germany's head of government, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, already wants to end online anonymity: https://reclaimthenet.org/friedrich-merzs-push-to-end-online-anonymity-has-a-troubling-subtext)
If you are merely arguing that as a social convention we should discount political speech made by anyone posting anonymously, that is a fine argument to make, of course. I am not saying I agree with it necessarily, but it is certainly one worth considering.
(There were also, of course, the Anti-Federalist Papers and the Federalist Papers, published under pseudonyms; I concede that they were published before the enactment of the current US Constitution, but the Revolutionary War had concluded by that time and the United States would adopt the Bill of Rights amendments in only a few years' time.)
Yep THIS!!!! Haven’t even read it but read five words and had to respond. When I started on here back in idk when February? I was scared to put my real name once I was aware of what was going down but knew there was no way to speak with conviction of my name wasn’t attached. 🙏
I am opposed to an unregulated digital ID requirement for internet access, which is essentially the endpoint of such requests for personal information disclosure. The US Constitution 1st amendment does not require digital IDs to exercise free speech. This is because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and information as to real identities such as digital ID information can and will be used against you by people with power and money.
Corporations are not people -regardless of the hack Federalist driven SCOTUS decision- and should require digital IDs and publically available documentation of political entities funded as part of their incorporation licensing. Individuals are also required to report donations of money to political candidates above certain amounts. Note that dark money is currently anonymous via 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups. The threat to democracy is dark money, not the dark thoughts of average citizens. Maybe go after that first.
Most of us with social media avatars do provide a description of our backgrounds as a credibility reference. Those of us who are women often use social media avatars to avoid digital and physical stalking arising from high rates of online misogyny, as well as adverse experience with stalking in the workplace.
I tend to evaluate arguments based on their merits, not who said them, unless the argument is AI written (vs AI data supported) - in which case I tend to discount it no matter who authored it.
In addition, if one works for a corporation and is not the CEO etc, some people prefer to keep a separation between their work for a corporation- which is generally required to be apolitical- and their personal politics as individuals. The vast majority of companies today scan social media against your employment name, and can & will use that against you if your political views (even if kept out of the workplace) offend a client etc.
This would mean Substack authors running a business (ie paid subscriptions) would be required to disclose corporate names. As well, legal remedies already exist in cases of restricted free speech (hate speech, etc.)
Because the more information you cede to Palantir, the better they will be able to predict your next move in order to make money off that knowledge. This is a key Palantir objective. The more characters missing from a data information sequence, the higher the data errors and the lower the prediction accuracy.
And because you never know what’s going to happen to that information or how it’s going to be used. For instance, all that 123 and me DNA data was up for sale. Anyone wanting to eliminate people based on DNA data will be able to do that much more effectively as a result.
There are many good reasons for privacy laws. Europe has very good protections in this area, unlike the US where market objectives are often seen as more important than individual privacy.
The digital commons is predominantly a wasteland of ignorance, biases, conspiracy, and contempt. Anonymity serves its purpose well for the majority that operate as “citizens” looking to join in the facsimile of connection in our online lives. Keyboard warriors and digital philosophers find the ability to self publish without editorial control intoxicating. Online platform ecosystems are often intellectually lazy and unserious.
This is what happens when almost anyone can broadcast. It becomes mostly noise, and no name inherently categorizes what is written and said as part of this torrent of opinion. What place does noise from a crowd play at a large physical political rally? How do we evaluate individual voices? What are the relationships and influences these disparate messages have upon others? Unless a reporter pins down an individual participant to go on the record with a name attribution, even the loudest voice remains anonymous.
We expect our digital world to behave and act similar to the historical analog one. It does not. Getting in front of the camera, putting a full name on opinions, or prioritizing IRL activities indicates one is interested in stepping out of the wasteland and viewed as more than noise.
All of the hopes placed on the internet to bring us together are increasingly, and counterintuitively, pulling us apart. The digital medium is the problem. Real, full names will not alter the trend line of division or societal balkanization.
Not to mention I posted things I was freaking out about on Facebook in January due to being displaced from the fires so had time to read project 2025 but got blackballed by a lot of friends
You could use a pseudonym or stay anonymous and still be honest and forthcoming about what you have to gain or lose if your argument succeeds or fails. It’s the dishonest deployment of anonymity in public discourse which deserves scorn, or the concealment of material information about a speaker even whose identity is known in one light, e.g. an ex-Pentagon talking head on Lockheed’s board who appears on a news show to talk about war without telling the viewer of his connection to a military contractor that gains from perpetual wars. The worst example is the government agent posing as an unaffiliated third party in a chat room to steer or sabotage a political discussion (Cass Sunstein called it “cognitive infiltration”). I take your point, which is extremely well said. I just think it needs a typology.
The problem with this is that others have no way to authenticate your claim when you are "forthcoming about what you have to gain or lose." It is a known fact that people (and bots) pose as members of marginalized groups, as experts with credentials they don't have, as all manner of people. The crux of the issue is lack of verification that this is true, and the propensity for disinformation that undergirds the whole discussion. There is no verification or accountability. https://elizabethsillecklarueesq.substack.com/p/dear-writers-you-do-not-have-to-debate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1h269a
True enough. I do not deny it. Readers are naturally free to make their own judgments but I still think there are valid reasons today to remain anonymous without it being disqualifying. It’s more nuanced than Mike’s broadsheet, although again I do not disagree that anonymity in political discourse is abused more often than not. The precedent for the abuse, at any rate, was set as much by the NYT editorial board as by the average ignoramus or troll.
One of the commenters here responded to Mike’s argument that, because we do not live in a society in which we could be killed or maimed for speaking out, we cannot use that excuse to avoid revealing our identity. Mike has argued elsewhere, as Michael Parenti did in the 1990s, that we do not have to wait for the jackboot to be right on our necks before we can say we are living under a tyranny. It’s quite alright with me if honest people who want to contribute to the public debate do not want an inchoate fascist junta, as opposed to a full-fledged one, to know who they are. Increasingly it seems that staying invisible will be more necessary to sustain democratic communications at all, and to organize a democratic movement against the junta (which wants to require us all to register our identities as a condition of being online), depending on how much violence is used against dissenters. I see a counterargument to this notion if one contemplates the effects of courageous outspokenness on the reversal of injustice in certain situations. Nevertheless.
Perhaps it’s arguable in other cases that are less extreme, for example, for those with young children who simply do not want to lose their jobs (this includes me - does Mike have children?), that their anonymity is outweighed by the public obligation to identify the position from which they are speaking. My jury is still out on that question when children are involved. But the point remains.
Need to distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity. Anonymous publication stands or falls by itself (and usually falls). If I post under a pseudonym, then the credibility of what I write will be largely determined the credibillity (or lack of credibillity) of what I've written previously. That's been true since the days of the Federalist Papers and probably earlier
In the current circumstances of the Internet, that will typically matter more than whatever credibility I might gain or lose from my job title, public achievements etc. It's true that whether or not you are using a pseudonym you should be honest about conflicts of interest.
As regards privacy, the same argument as yours was made in relation to the secret ballot (an Australian innovation) and rejected. There are times when it is appropriate to show your face, and that's the case for some in the US, but
We are living in a world where your government can track you and end your way of life based on what you say. That’s enough motivation for anonymity for anyone, especially those who never have been in the public limelight before. Think about all the countless lives ruined by Facebook posts, deservedly or not.
I am not monetizing my participation here. Nor am I judging anyone who wants to stay anonymous if they choose to.
But are we "citizen(s) of a functioning democracy "? I question the functional part for all of us at this point and has it ever been a true democracy for people of color, women, the queer and disabled?
I started out naively on Facebook sharing content in 2015, (mostly standing up for gradualism and against the radical agenda of MAGA) under my own name, then came the disgusting threats and rampant sexism, some of the worst of it from members my own MAGA family. I quit FB in 2017 familial relationships forever frayed by the digital gang bang that I experienced as a liberal woman there.
So I built my Twitter profile where I fled with a pseudonym. I identified at first as a woman and my comment section was often enough crashed by mansplaining, harassment and the occasionally stalking by RW trolls, so I stripped my gender and because my basic profile, profession and often my voice skews male I was able to freely navigate in the social media world. I have never shared photos of humans or other identifiable data, a fact that I've been very glad about after the onset of data mining. After quitting Twitter when Musk stunk it up, I did the same profile masking on Bluesky. It seems only prudent now.
I tend to agree with you in the main but it's not so simple for people that are not as equal as others given the dangers that are inherent on social media. I think that should change once people monetize their feeds. FWIW.
I am a single woman. I don’t use my full name to avoid stalkers & predatory behavior. I’m sure I am one of many.
Of course. It's the same reason I won't pay for an anonymous newsletter. Real relationships require trust on both sides, forged by humans - this includes societal ones. Building trust requires risk, anonymity is unable to build trust.
"Common Sense" was published anonymously.
And Mr. Payne almost certainly would have attributed it to himself if he had the protection of the First Amendment. I think that's the difference.
The danger in what you argue, and I am not saying that your point is wholly invalid, is that even though you are careful to distinguish between political speech in democratic regimes and dissent, journalism and whistleblowing in autocratic ones (or just in general; see Deep Throat and Watergate), if democratic countries start requiring real names even just for political speech, autocratic countries will collapse the distinction in the other direction and claim that they're just doing the same when they further crack down on anonymous dissent, journalism and whistleblowing. (Germany's head of government, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, already wants to end online anonymity: https://reclaimthenet.org/friedrich-merzs-push-to-end-online-anonymity-has-a-troubling-subtext)
If you are merely arguing that as a social convention we should discount political speech made by anyone posting anonymously, that is a fine argument to make, of course. I am not saying I agree with it necessarily, but it is certainly one worth considering.
(There were also, of course, the Anti-Federalist Papers and the Federalist Papers, published under pseudonyms; I concede that they were published before the enactment of the current US Constitution, but the Revolutionary War had concluded by that time and the United States would adopt the Bill of Rights amendments in only a few years' time.)
You go Mike ❤️🔥
I can’t agree more: and thanks for a great elucidation
Yep THIS!!!! Haven’t even read it but read five words and had to respond. When I started on here back in idk when February? I was scared to put my real name once I was aware of what was going down but knew there was no way to speak with conviction of my name wasn’t attached. 🙏
If I meant I’m a bad texter …
I am opposed to an unregulated digital ID requirement for internet access, which is essentially the endpoint of such requests for personal information disclosure. The US Constitution 1st amendment does not require digital IDs to exercise free speech. This is because power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, and information as to real identities such as digital ID information can and will be used against you by people with power and money.
https://assets.aclu.org/live/uploads/2024/10/ACLU-Digital-ID-State-Legislative-Recommendations-version-1.0-October-2024-1.pdf
Corporations are not people -regardless of the hack Federalist driven SCOTUS decision- and should require digital IDs and publically available documentation of political entities funded as part of their incorporation licensing. Individuals are also required to report donations of money to political candidates above certain amounts. Note that dark money is currently anonymous via 501(c)(4) nonprofit groups. The threat to democracy is dark money, not the dark thoughts of average citizens. Maybe go after that first.
Most of us with social media avatars do provide a description of our backgrounds as a credibility reference. Those of us who are women often use social media avatars to avoid digital and physical stalking arising from high rates of online misogyny, as well as adverse experience with stalking in the workplace.
I tend to evaluate arguments based on their merits, not who said them, unless the argument is AI written (vs AI data supported) - in which case I tend to discount it no matter who authored it.
In addition, if one works for a corporation and is not the CEO etc, some people prefer to keep a separation between their work for a corporation- which is generally required to be apolitical- and their personal politics as individuals. The vast majority of companies today scan social media against your employment name, and can & will use that against you if your political views (even if kept out of the workplace) offend a client etc.
This would mean Substack authors running a business (ie paid subscriptions) would be required to disclose corporate names. As well, legal remedies already exist in cases of restricted free speech (hate speech, etc.)
It's 'safe' to assume Palantir already knows the name behind every pseudonym. Why hide?
Because the more information you cede to Palantir, the better they will be able to predict your next move in order to make money off that knowledge. This is a key Palantir objective. The more characters missing from a data information sequence, the higher the data errors and the lower the prediction accuracy.
And because you never know what’s going to happen to that information or how it’s going to be used. For instance, all that 123 and me DNA data was up for sale. Anyone wanting to eliminate people based on DNA data will be able to do that much more effectively as a result.
There are many good reasons for privacy laws. Europe has very good protections in this area, unlike the US where market objectives are often seen as more important than individual privacy.
The digital commons is predominantly a wasteland of ignorance, biases, conspiracy, and contempt. Anonymity serves its purpose well for the majority that operate as “citizens” looking to join in the facsimile of connection in our online lives. Keyboard warriors and digital philosophers find the ability to self publish without editorial control intoxicating. Online platform ecosystems are often intellectually lazy and unserious.
This is what happens when almost anyone can broadcast. It becomes mostly noise, and no name inherently categorizes what is written and said as part of this torrent of opinion. What place does noise from a crowd play at a large physical political rally? How do we evaluate individual voices? What are the relationships and influences these disparate messages have upon others? Unless a reporter pins down an individual participant to go on the record with a name attribution, even the loudest voice remains anonymous.
We expect our digital world to behave and act similar to the historical analog one. It does not. Getting in front of the camera, putting a full name on opinions, or prioritizing IRL activities indicates one is interested in stepping out of the wasteland and viewed as more than noise.
All of the hopes placed on the internet to bring us together are increasingly, and counterintuitively, pulling us apart. The digital medium is the problem. Real, full names will not alter the trend line of division or societal balkanization.
Prioritizing IRL might.
Absolutely. I have been writing about this for years. The most recent here: https://elizabethsillecklarueesq.substack.com/p/dear-writers-you-do-not-have-to-debate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1h269a
Not to mention I posted things I was freaking out about on Facebook in January due to being displaced from the fires so had time to read project 2025 but got blackballed by a lot of friends
You could use a pseudonym or stay anonymous and still be honest and forthcoming about what you have to gain or lose if your argument succeeds or fails. It’s the dishonest deployment of anonymity in public discourse which deserves scorn, or the concealment of material information about a speaker even whose identity is known in one light, e.g. an ex-Pentagon talking head on Lockheed’s board who appears on a news show to talk about war without telling the viewer of his connection to a military contractor that gains from perpetual wars. The worst example is the government agent posing as an unaffiliated third party in a chat room to steer or sabotage a political discussion (Cass Sunstein called it “cognitive infiltration”). I take your point, which is extremely well said. I just think it needs a typology.
The problem with this is that others have no way to authenticate your claim when you are "forthcoming about what you have to gain or lose." It is a known fact that people (and bots) pose as members of marginalized groups, as experts with credentials they don't have, as all manner of people. The crux of the issue is lack of verification that this is true, and the propensity for disinformation that undergirds the whole discussion. There is no verification or accountability. https://elizabethsillecklarueesq.substack.com/p/dear-writers-you-do-not-have-to-debate?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1h269a
True enough. I do not deny it. Readers are naturally free to make their own judgments but I still think there are valid reasons today to remain anonymous without it being disqualifying. It’s more nuanced than Mike’s broadsheet, although again I do not disagree that anonymity in political discourse is abused more often than not. The precedent for the abuse, at any rate, was set as much by the NYT editorial board as by the average ignoramus or troll.
One of the commenters here responded to Mike’s argument that, because we do not live in a society in which we could be killed or maimed for speaking out, we cannot use that excuse to avoid revealing our identity. Mike has argued elsewhere, as Michael Parenti did in the 1990s, that we do not have to wait for the jackboot to be right on our necks before we can say we are living under a tyranny. It’s quite alright with me if honest people who want to contribute to the public debate do not want an inchoate fascist junta, as opposed to a full-fledged one, to know who they are. Increasingly it seems that staying invisible will be more necessary to sustain democratic communications at all, and to organize a democratic movement against the junta (which wants to require us all to register our identities as a condition of being online), depending on how much violence is used against dissenters. I see a counterargument to this notion if one contemplates the effects of courageous outspokenness on the reversal of injustice in certain situations. Nevertheless.
Perhaps it’s arguable in other cases that are less extreme, for example, for those with young children who simply do not want to lose their jobs (this includes me - does Mike have children?), that their anonymity is outweighed by the public obligation to identify the position from which they are speaking. My jury is still out on that question when children are involved. But the point remains.
Yes, he has children, or so he has said
Need to distinguish between anonymity and pseudonymity. Anonymous publication stands or falls by itself (and usually falls). If I post under a pseudonym, then the credibility of what I write will be largely determined the credibillity (or lack of credibillity) of what I've written previously. That's been true since the days of the Federalist Papers and probably earlier
In the current circumstances of the Internet, that will typically matter more than whatever credibility I might gain or lose from my job title, public achievements etc. It's true that whether or not you are using a pseudonym you should be honest about conflicts of interest.
As regards privacy, the same argument as yours was made in relation to the secret ballot (an Australian innovation) and rejected. There are times when it is appropriate to show your face, and that's the case for some in the US, but
“On the internet no one knows you’re a dog.” Wasn’t that the guiding ideal?