Online forums are letting "criminal activity go unchecked"

[NickFitz]

the SJW's (an even nastier bunch)

Oops! You've just given away the fact that you're a fourteen-year-old boy

Go back to 4chan and bleat to your fellow idiots about ethics in video game journalism, there's a good little chap

[unixman]

Oops! You've just given away the fact that you're a fourteen-year-old boy

Go back to 4chan and bleat to your fellow idiots about ethics in video game journalism, there's a good little chap

Lol. I have never been on 4chan and don't play video games. You obviously have some strong emotions about both. Whatever man, peace.

[Halo Jones]

The troll "problem" is really just an "anonymity" problem. If a way could be found for everybody's online comments to be accompanied by their name and address (somehow), abuse would virtually come to a halt. I am not quite sure if this would be a good thing or not. People are ashamed if their dodgy online behaviour comes to light, becomes known to their families, peers, employers. One of the McCann trolls was sadly driven to suicide by impending exposure ("sweepyface")..

Anonymity is a big issue, the flip side of which is Privacy – I believe that, generally, Privacy is a good thing – there are too many people who want to find something “wrong”.

EG a friend who is a head teacher was heavily criticised & accused of being a pervert for having holiday snaps on his FB profile that included women in swimwear (we won’t mention is was not even the teachers profile, but hey ho)

Maybe a solution is that you can create a profile with any name you chose – but they have to be linked to some form of ID & this link can only be given to Official Persons with the correct jurisdiction, such as police investigating.

Obviously there is a lot of “back of house” work that would need to be done & many technical issues to iron out.

I feel that this would give individuals privacy but with the link there people might start acting in a civilised manner.

[Troll]

I feel that this would give individuals privacy but with the link there people might start acting in a civilised manner.

Who gets to decide what is a civilised manner - the Mods ? we have seen their randomness in applying bannings on this forum (I'm not sure there is any defined other than what takes their fancy at any particular time)

The rest of it sounds too Big Brother for me so it would stop me registering (that may or may not be a good thing)

[bobspud]

Anonymity is a big issue, the flip side of which is Privacy – I believe that, generally, Privacy is a good thing – there are too many people who want to find something “wrong”.

EG a friend who is a head teacher was heavily criticised & accused of being a pervert for having holiday snaps on his FB profile that included women in swimwear (we won’t mention is was not even the teachers profile, but hey ho)

Maybe a solution is that you can create a profile with any name you chose – but they have to be linked to some form of ID & this link can only be given to Official Persons with the correct jurisdiction, such as police investigating.

Obviously there is a lot of “back of house” work that would need to be done & many technical issues to iron out.

I feel that this would give individuals privacy but with the link there people might start acting in a civilised manner.

It already works that way... All devices have a machine address if you piss the wrong people off then you will quickly realise how easy it is to find you within a few foot of where you are standing. In fact, finding you is not the problem it starts with web logs and ends with covert requests to your communication provider and bingo you have some new and interesting friends that would really like to get to know you better. and thats exactly the way it should be.

Its a pain in the arse to do it and that makes its use totally proportionate. I am looking at buying a new house and it turns out the property has a bit of a shared drive issue. It took me about 30 minutes to find the name of the hidden owners their financial details and pretty much all their online persona's so that when I meet them later I know that the guys dad was one of the Italian prisoners of war that settled after they were released. I also know that he's a builder and has folder more companies than one would consider prudent and has a few CCJ's about to land on his head...

However when we see clueless people like Maria Miller spouting tripe like its a shame that twitter is full of nasty little ******* so it would be great if they were all exposed, it shows a gross lack of understanding and worse a lack of guidance from the people that surround her.

The problem is we have become puritanical to almost record levels. We see posts on linked in wondering why Tattoos are enough to lose a person a job interview. We have some poor sod being vilified in the news over his right to date someone that was also a sex worker. (FFS did anyone think about protecting the lady in questions privacy? ) and for some reason we have lost the ability to remember that the guy thats teaching our kids can be good at that and still enjoy being a porn star at the weekend in their OWN spare time.

We are all more than one person inside and all have little foibles that need to be expressed occasionally. Having been in the position to see firewall and audit type logs in many organisations its surprising who gets up to what.

There should be NO laws demanding the end to anonymity. If people are truly doing something rotten then we already have ways to catch them.

[BrilloPad]

Foot and hand fetish scam leads to police warning in New Zealand | World news | The Guardian

[cojak]

Who gets to decide what is a civilised manner - the Mods ? we have seen their randomness in applying bannings on this forum (I'm not sure there is any defined other than what takes their fancy at any particular time)

The rest of it sounds too Big Brother for me so it would stop me registering (that may or may not be a good thing)

It's a fine line between freedom of speech and common decency.

[SimonMac]

It's a fine line between freedom of speech and common decency.

Freedom of speech is a myth, the US have the constitution and the 1st Amendment, but no such equivalent exists elsewhere in the world

[Troll]

It's a fine line between freedom of speech and me having PMT

FTFY

[unixman]

I don't want freedom of speech curtailed. Anonymity I'm not sure about. I like the wild/free/anonymous/fun nature of the Internet. I like that everyone can have a say, instead of just a few people hogging the megaphone all the time, as they did for decades with TV/radio/newspapers. The Internet often hits back at fanatics and extremists, which is great, and even the anonymous trolls sometimes do a good job with that.

The professional Twitter Trolls, by "abusing" hard won freedom of speech, will only succeed in breaking it for the rest of us. All they are doing is helping Theresa May and various MPs to cancel our free speech. Not so much "use it or lose it", more "use it badly and lose it".