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UK social media users could get power to block anonymous accounts (theguardian.com)
6 points by HeckFeck on Feb 25, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


Quora has a super-powered anonymity feature designed to be truly private. No court order can get information that doesn't exist.

It was used primarily for harassment. They kept defending it on the grounds of somebody needing information and absolute secrecy, but the instances of that were somewhere between negligible and nonexistent. It also meant that they couldn't be blocked, because there was no account associated with it. Harassers could return with impunity.

People complained for years, and they finally got rid of it. (For questions, which get broad distribution. Anonymous answers are still allowed.)

At the same time they relaxed account requirements, so pseudonymous accounts are allowed. They're so relaxed that there are some abusers, but even the small overhead of creating an account has dramatically reduced the incidence of abuse.


Maybe we need to disconnect the UK from the public internet so their governments idiocy does not spread to the rest of the free world. So many destructive ideas keep getting raised. The world needs to tell them sod off.


Here, here. Next up, similar transparency requirements on the sources of advertising and the ability to equivalently block brands, please.




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