23 Matching Annotations
  1. Nov 2022
    1. In 1951, Friedman was happy to describe himself as a neoliberal. But soon after that, the term began to disappear. Stranger still, even as the ideology became crisper and the movement more coherent, the lost name was not replaced by any common alternative.

      This achieves two aims: it conceils the existence of the movement and prevents infighting and fragmentation over definitions.

    2. Its anonymity is both a symptom and cause of its power.

      No need to defend itself or assert its authority. It presents as a force of nature, like gravity, beyond question, beyond understanding. When threatened it responds ferociously, claiming to be "freedom", "liberty", "decency" itself - goodness and light, Christ manifest. Clearly, it is fascism.

  2. Apr 2022
  3. Dec 2021
  4. May 2021
    1. #anonymity doesn't foster building #trust. There's a lack of #accountability

      counterpoint: some of the most raw + revealing accounts on Twitter are alts/anon. Yet they engage in trust-full interactions with others and (for the most part) remain accountable to ethical behavior/norms/etc.

      Wondering if there are ways to incentive that, even without a strong association to one's identity

  5. Apr 2021
    1. We’ve been working on a sort of SPLOT-type thing which is essentially slimmed-down backend for sites whose sole purpose is completing a writing assignment(s) for a single class. I like the TRU SPLOT approach and we’re going to use that in some use cases, but we wanted something that functions kinda like a SPLOT but begins to introduce students & fac to the real WP backend. We’re viewing it as a beginning on-ramp to later those students feel comfortable with their own WP blog with simplified options. Then onto more WP options and then maybe to full DoOO someday.

      While reading this, I'm thinking that I ought to build a SPLOT version of commentpara.de that allows a WordPress based anonymous commenting functionality for sending Webmentions.

  6. Nov 2020
    1. anonymous imageboard

      4chan is reasonably unique in the current online landscape, in that it permits conversation by totally anonymous users. This allows its users to post without much thought about their privacy status, which they often take for granted. This unique level of privacy fostered by anonymity, in a way, partially delivers on the Cyberspace rhetoric of the 1990s in that people can't be judged by their physical identities unless they offer identifying information up themselves. That's not to say that 4chan is a welcoming space for all (or even most) users, though, as it has been acknowledged, even later here in Ellis' article, that 4chan houses plenty of white supremacist tendencies, but, strictly speaking, as far as one's ideas go, they are judged purely based on their merit so long as no additional personal identifiers are offered. As Dillon Ludemann notes in his paper, /pol/emics: Ambiguity, scales, and digital discourse on 4chan, white supremacy, as well as other, "practiced and perceived deviancy is due to the default blanket of anonymity, and the general discourse of the website encourages users to remain unnamed. This is further enforced and embodied as named users, colloquially known as 'namefags,' are often vilified for their separation from the anonymous collective community" (Ludemann, 2018).

      Hypothetically, since all users start out as anonymous, one could also present their identity however they so please on the platform, and in theory what this means is that the technology behind the site promotes identity exploration (and thus cyberspace rhetoric), even though in practice, what most users experience is latent racism that depends on users' purposefully offered identifying information or generalized white supremacist posts that are broadcasted for all on the site to see.

      Work Cited:

      Ludemann, D. (2018). /pol/emics: Ambiguity, scales, and digital discourse on 4chan. Discourse, Context & Media, 24, 92-98. doi: 10.1016/j.dcm.2018.01.010

  7. May 2020
  8. Jan 2020
  9. Jul 2019
    1. Two years ago, when he moved from Boston to London, he had to register with a general practitioner. The doctor’s office gave him a form to sign saying that his medical data would be shared with other hospitals he might go to, and with a system that might distribute his information to universities, private companies and other government departments.The form added that the although the data are anonymized, “there are those who believe a person can be identified through this information.”“That was really scary,” Dr. de Montjoye said. “We are at a point where we know a risk exists and count on people saying they don’t care about privacy. It’s insane.”
    2. Scientists at Imperial College London and Université Catholique de Louvain, in Belgium, reported in the journal Nature Communications that they had devised a computer algorithm that can identify 99.98 percent of Americans from almost any available data set with as few as 15 attributes, such as gender, ZIP code or marital status.

      This goes to show that one should not trust companies and organisations which claim to "anonymise" your data.

  10. Nov 2017
    1. Whistle-blowers and dissidents might need to use a different platform.)

      The way that he casually mentions whistle blowers and dissidents is troubling to say the least. Also, will dig up studies, but removing anonymity hasn't really shown to decrease trolling or other bad behavior. Also, "privacy" anyone?

      http://theweek.com/articles/632929/problem-internet-trolls-isnt-anonymity

  11. Jul 2017
    1. Anonymous cyberbullying was found to be the form ofbullying rated as most severe. This means that beingthreatened or humiliated by an unknown bully that useselectronic forms of contact is especially severe. One reasonmay be that in such a case potentially anyone could be thebully, while in traditional bullying if the bullying isanonymous the circle of potential bullies is much smaller.Another possible explanation may be that negative feelingsarising from the anonymity are enhanced by the mediumsince such messages can potentially be received anywhereand at any time (Slonje and Smith2008), thereforeinducing a state of constant fear and helplessness. In sum,anonymity reduces the perceived control over the situation,especially in the context of cyberbullying. This may lead toincreased feelings of helplessness, resulting in a higher riskfor depressive symptoms (Asarnow et al.1987; Seiffge-Krenke and Klessinger2000). Therefore, besides publicity,anonymity may explain associations between cyberbully-ing experiences and depressive symptoms (Machmutowet al.2012; Roth and Cohen1986).
  12. Mar 2017
  13. Sep 2016
    1. the risk of re-identification increases by virtue of having more data points on students from multiple contexts

      Very important to keep in mind. Not only do we realise that re-identification is a risk, but this risk is exacerbated by the increase in “triangulation”. Hence some discussions about Differential Privacy.

  14. Jun 2016
  15. screen.oxfordjournals.org screen.oxfordjournals.org
    1. At the same time, however, 'literary' discourse was acceptableonly if it carried an author's name; every text of poetry or fictionwas obliged to state its author and the date, place and circumstanceof its writing. The meaning and value attributed to the text de-pended on this information. If by accident or design a text waspresented anonymously, every effort was made to locate its author.Literary anonymity was of interest only as a puzzle to be solved as,in our day, literary works are totally dominated by the sovereigntyof the author. (

      At the same time scientific authorship was becoming anonymous, literary authorship was no longer accepted as anonymous (this is something Chartier disagrees with emphatically)

  16. Apr 2016
  17. Feb 2016
    1. Some plural User subject that is conjoined by a proxy link or other means could be composed of different types of addressable subjects: two humans in different countries, or a human and a sensor, a sensor and a bot, a human and a robot and a sensor, a whatever and a whatever. In principle, any one of these subcomponents could not only be part of multiple conjoined positions, but might not even know or need to know which meta-User they contribute to, any more than the microbial biome in your gut needs to know your name.

      Anonymity is not a binary, it is the limit of dissolution into a coherent plural subject.

  18. Jan 2016
    1. Below I list a few advantages and drawbacks of anonymity where I assume that a drawback of anonymous review is an advantage of identified review and vice versa. Drawbacks Reviewers do not get credit for their work. They cannot, for example, reference particular reviews in their CVs as they can with publications. It is relatively “easy” for a reviewer to provide unnecessarily blunt or harsh critique. It is difficult to guess if the reviewer has any conflict of interest with the authors by being, for example, a competing researcher interested in stalling the paper’s publication. Advantages Reviewers do not have to fear “payback” for an unfavourable review that is perceived as unfair by the authors of the work. Some (perhaps especially “high-profile” senior faculty members) reviewers might find it difficult to find the time to provide as thorough a review as they would ideally like to, yet would still like to contribute and can perhaps provide valuable experienced insight. They can do so without putting their reputation on the line.
    1. One of the drawbacks of anonymity on the Web is romance scams. Scammers set up fake personas on social media. They often use photos stolen from a real person's accounts

      When the same person has their photos stolen repeatedly, Facebook could prevent this easily. But they don't.

  19. Dec 2014
    1. The Dissent project is a research collaboration between Yale University and UT Austin to create a powerful, practical anonymous group communication system offering strong, provable security guarantees with reasonable efficiency.