Why Anonymity is Good [NSFW]
I see a lot of people bashing anonymity and privacy, and they think that humans don't need it. Well here is an idea then:
- Ladies why don't you film when you change your tampons and publish it on social media?
- Guys why didn't you film when you were jerking off to your highschool crush and publish it on social media so that the entire school could have laughed at you?
No? Then you need privacy. I just can't fathom the idiots who are against privacy, or don't care about the technology that is taking these privacies away from you. You know things like these:
- https://www.wired.com/2014/03/webcams-mics
- https://www.wired.com/2016/11/great-now-even-headphones-can-spy
- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rebecca-abrahams/your-computer--phone-came_b_5398896.html
- http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-turn-android-iphone-into-spy-camera-or-baby-monitor/
- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2211108/Could-phones-camera-secretly-taking-pictures-right-Hackers-use-lens-steal-private-data--build-3D-model-home.html
And the list goes on and on and on....
Seems like the Snowden revelations were ages ago, but looks like nobody cares, people just pretend and ignore, but your privacy is fading away.
So privacy is obviously needed, otherwise we are slaves, and although our privacy is going away, the government is increasingly more secretive, and their transparency is shrinking. So they don't want ordinary people to have privacy, yet the government keeps everything hidden from the people.
I would take it 1 step further and say that anonymity is necessary as well. Why? Because, it's a form of protection against different forms of threats. Be that protecting against human right violations, censorship, excercizing freedom of speech, by being anonymous, people can protect themselves.
Wouldn't Criminals abuse it?
Well most of the criminals out there are outspoken criminals, yet they are still untouchable, so it really can't get any worse than that. Besides anonymity is not meant to protect criminals, criminals rarely use it. It's more important for activists, journalists, investigators, protecting trade secrets, and doing business without revealing yourself to the competitors.
In short, anonymity has much more benefits than drawbacks, and it's increasingly needed in the blockchain, where privacy is nonexistent. Why do we need to spend billions of dollars to protect important people from kidnappers, when if they were just anonymous, then nobody would target them.
The only way to protect yourself from threats is if you don't stand out from the crowd. If you go dressed heavily with jewelry in a poor village, you will obviously attract a lot of unwanted attention. But if you go there with torn clothes and worn shoes, then nobody will give a damn about you, despite being rich.
The art of blending in is the most important. No mafia, no kidnapper, no extortionist will target people if everyone looks the same on the surface. Sure you might have 1 billion $, but if you act like you were a casual person, then you will be more safe than if you were to attract a lot of attention to yourself.
And this is true for all kinds of threats, by blending in, the risk will be minimized.
Upvote, ReSteem & 
I think the problem is that people think about anonymity in a wrong way. Law, rules change!!! What is good/legal now, might not be permitted in the future. Nothing is just good or bad, forever. As such law can be very very bad and as such anonymity is a way of fighting it.
It helps to draw a distinction between 'criminals' who threaten or hurt other people, and 'criminals' who violate the edicts of the state. So a clown in blue cotton throwing a flashbang into a baby's crib, he's the first type, then you have Ross Ulbricht, he's the second type.
Guess which one is in jail for the rest of his life.
I would not even consider somebody a criminal if he didn't initiated force in the first place.
If there is no victim then there is no crime. The state can't be the victim, it is the perpetrator.
Yeah the American public has been duped into thinking privacy comes at a cost of crime. Crime will exist either way.
It might actually decrease crime, because it gives ability for whistleblowers and private investigators to do their job with less risk. If the risk is smaller then more people will join.
Whereas now only cops can do this, who can be easily corrupted or bribed, and then we wonder why is there so much crime in our society.
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Too simple. It is equivalent to saying left is better than right, or up is better than down. The question isn't which is better - anonymity or transparency? That question is invalid just like 'How long is a piece of string?'
A better question to ask & answer would be something like
What are the sets of advantages and disadvantages of anonymity and transparency in a given context & is there a way to use parts of each to cancel the weaknesses and retain the strengths.
Look at PGP encryption for example. With its private/public key it is able to mask identity for some uses and prove identity for other uses.
Your breakdown of the problem is too simple and only has advantage in some contexts.
However, nice job tabling the discussion - it is an important topic. Thanks.