Posts tagged anonymity

People often say that online behavior would improve if every comment system forced people to use their real names. It sounds like it should be true – surely nobody would say mean things if they faced consequences for their actions? Yet the balance of experimental evidence over the past thirty years suggests that this is not the case. Not only would removing anonymity fail to consistently improve online community behavior – forcing real names in online communities could also increase discrimination and worsen harassment. We need to change our entire approach to the question. Our concerns about anonymity are overly-simplistic; system design can’t solve social problems without actual social change.

via https://blog.coralproject.net/the-real-name-fallacy/

The key idea in Zerocoin is that each coin commits to (read: encrypts) a random serial number. These coins are easy to create – all you need to do is pick the serial number and run a fast commitment algorithm to wrap this up in a coin. The commitment works like encryption, in that the resulting coin completely hides the serial number . At the same time this coin ‘binds’ you to the number you’ve chosen. The serial number is secret, and it stays with you.

http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-anonymous.html

“As regards illegal activity—people will break the law regardless of whether we know their names online or not. Laws already exist for those cases; we don’t need more. The general principles should not change simply because there is new, or widely misunderstood, technology.”

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323468604578245841828280344.html