I'm curious about something... I've seen reports that when places started using Facebook comments, they found that the lack of anonymity didn't prevent trolling, in fact, it made everyday people more hostile.
Is it just about identity? Would that do anything more than just removing the occasional death threat, instead of actually addressing the more pervasive trolling?
I might disagree wildly with you in a number of cases but I try to be reasonable in how I argue my points.
I stay away from pages that use Facebook comments because I don't want to be part of the problem with fake profiles and I don't want everyone to be able to trace everything I ever said back to me.
Not because I intend to say something unreasonable. Not because I fear law enforcement but because I will apply for jobs in the future. And I might want to visit arab countries in the future. Or Israel, who knows?
I think this is a reasonable position. I expect and respect if you do the same - even if I disagree wildly with your opinions I don't want you to get in trouble for them bext time you fly into a country were your ideas aren't so correct.
Or next time a president goes rogue like Erdogan.
I think full name policies scare away lots of reasonable people.
The ones who stay either don't think that far, or don't care or use a fake Facebook profile. I guess none of these attributes correlate well with insightful and polite.
There are going to be people who are terrible and will continue misbehaving without concern for others....the basic problem with the internet as it currently exists is that it has almost entirely modeled our physical world's societal processes but unfortunately lacks a way to easily hold people accountable online for their behavior. Most of the stuff people feel free to do online that is detrimental to others, they would never do in the physical world. Distance obviously does give safety to bad behavior, I can sit in NYC and insult you in SF without worrying about physical altercation.
One way to address this problem is to give service providers an easy way to enforce their terms of services. This would have the effect of also making those service providers honest, in other words if you claim to want to create a welcoming space for all your users but you refuse to take effective actions against those who violate your terms then your hypocrisy is laid bare...Today twitter can claim they can't verify everyone's account, but if that was not an excuse anymore, then they'll have to effectively deal with those who violate their policies even if it means losing certain users.
I have found the opposite to be the case. A newspaper I read had a problem with their comments. The comment section on every story was pretty active but almost always quickly devolved into partisan trolling and bickering and name-calling. They switched to Facebook comments to show real names and there was a dramatic change. Now, most stories get no comments. The few that do are civil.
Given that identity is the basis for most trolling, I'd say identity is a poor proxy for trust. Despite what Facebook and the CIA / NSA may want us to believe, there's no evidence that a lack of anonymity/privacy leads to greater accountability.
I'd argue that it's reputation, the prevalance of impunity with present systems, and the problem of introducing consequence for misbehaviour, which is the core.
These can be changed without requiring full identification and disclosure. And there's a very long history of principled (and some unprincipled) pseudonymous discussion.
Identity can prevent abuse if it can be used as an effective way to keep the trolls out. In the real world if you know behaving badly can get you permanently banned from a place you'd like to have access to, that keeps you in check.
Similarly if it was possible for service providers to effectively penalize (from suspension to permanent banning) abusers in a way that they can't easily circumvent (ie create a new account), that'll be effective.
Is it just about identity? Would that do anything more than just removing the occasional death threat, instead of actually addressing the more pervasive trolling?