Back in FidoNet days, some BBSs required identification papers for registering and only allowed real names to be used. Though not known for their level headed discussions, it definitely added a certain level of care in online interactions. I remember the shock seeing the anonymity Internet provided later, both positive and negative. I wouldn't be surprised if we revert to some central authentication mechanism which has some basic level of checks combined with some anonymity guarantees. For example, a government owned ID service, which creates a new user ID per website, so the website doesn't know you, but once they blacklist that one-off ID, you cannot get a new one.

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sleepybrett 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Smaller communities too.

I grew up in... slightly rural america in the 80s-90s, we had probably a couple of dozen local BBSes the community was small enough that after a bit I just knew who everyone was OR could find out very easily.

When the internet came along in the early 90s and I started mudding and hanging out in newsgroups I liked them small where I could get to know most of the userbase, or at least most of the posing userbase. Once mega 'somewhat-anonymous' (i.e. posts tied to a username, not like 4chan madness) communities like slashdot, huge forums, etc started popping up and now with even more mega-communities like twitter and reddit. We lost something, you can now throw bombs without consequence.

I now spend most of my online time in a custom built forum with ~200 people in it that we started building in an invite only way. It's 'internally public' information who invited who. It's much easier to have a civil conversation there, though we still do get the occasional flame-out. Having a stable identity even if it's not tied to a government name is valuable for a thriving and healthy community.

	▲	DrSiemer 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds good! A German forum I'm on allows members limited invites based on participation. The catch is, you are responsible for the people you invite. If they get in trouble, you will share a part of the punishment.

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benterix 7 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Honestly, having seen how it can be used against you, retroactively, I would never ever engage in a discussion under my real name.

(The fact that someone could correlate posts[0] based on writing style, as previously demonstrated on HN and used to doxx some people, makes things even more convoluted - you should think twice what you write and where.)

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016

	▲	postexitus 6 days ago \| parent [-]
		This is a subset of "I don't have anything to hide" argument - if we use our real names, I think we'll have more responsibility about what we say. Of course, that's assuming our seemingly democratic governments don't turn authoritarian all of a sudden, as a Turkish citizen, I know that's not a given.

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andoando 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

id.me?

Not government owned, but even irs.gov uses it