> abolishing anonymity on the Internet.

Firstly, you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.

On the Internet, especially forums such as HN, you are "pseudonymous". That is, you made up a name for yourself, and that's how you're known to others. At the very least, we are all identified by IP addresses, which are again, fairly stable and unique pseudonyms. There are nearly zero truly anonymous corners of the Internet, because anonymous communications are chaotic and anarchic.

Secondly, it was the NSF who mandated that everyone accessing the Internet must have an associated and authenticated account with an identity that is known to their provider. These rules went into effect in the early 1990s. Perhaps they have been discarded or observed only in the breach, but truly, nobody is a stranger on the Internet. Even if nobody knows you're not a dog, your ISP or your coffeehouse still know who you are, when you connected, what device and so forth.

So, please let us stop pretending there is "anonymity" here, or that there ever has been. Whatever you've done in the past, it will eventually be unmasked. Yes, people on Discord and Wikipedia alike are freaking out over this prospect, but it was always going to happen. We've been laying down a very permanent record for over 50 years. Eventually it will all be correlated with real identities, Facebook or not.

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iamnothere 4 days ago | parent | next [-]

My coffeehouse running an obsolete consumer router and accepting only cash actually has zero record of who I am.

	▲	ButlerianJihad 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> obsolete consumer router So your router probably belongs to at least 2 botnets, and I bet they have logs of your MAC, your browser fingerprints, and your comings and goings!
	▲	seethishat 4 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		How many cameras do you drive past and walk by to get to the coffee shop ;)

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icedchai 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The NSF "rules" stopped applying when the NSFnet was shutdown in 1995. Actually, earlier, since commercial providers (upstream ISPs like UUnet, Sprint, MCI, PSI) were not dependent on the NSFnet and did not have to abide by the AUP.

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Random_BSD_Geek 4 days ago | parent | prev [-]

o_O

> Firstly, you keep using that word; I do not think it means what you think it means.

I posted that word exactly once in this thread, and I was quoting someone else. But I like the Princess Bride too.

No idea what you're talking about with regard to the 90s. I can only tell you I was on the Internet then and it was not as you describe.

Regardless, there is a difference between "unmasked with a court order" and "everything you do online is tied to you for the benefit of ad brokers."

We can have reasonable privacy protections and still allow law enforcement to function.