Anonymous online political advocacy cannot be reconciled to democracy
Democracy in the West has been weakening for exactly as many years as anonymous political debate online has been mainstream
Nikki Haley has a good point!
Democracy cannot be reconciled to anonymous political advocacy. Who is a citizen? Do they have the right to advocate for a policy in some particular country? What is their real relationship to that country? How do we know?
Democracy in the West has been weakening for exactly as many years as anonymous political debate online has been mainstream. In the past, Democracy has always been about citizens standing up in public and using their public identity to advocate for whatever cause they believe in. A person’s truth needs to be advocated by that person, using their legal name, or it needs to be published by a journalist who has verified the story. The point is, society needs someone, somewhere, to use their real name and stake their reputation on a story, someone who can be hit with a libel lawsuit if the story is untrue and published with malicious intent. This is the only way to fight disinformation.
Anonymous accounts allow bots to influence political discussions, therefore anonymous accounts make us vulnerable to foreign influence (as well as non-political commercial fraud, which is also bad). By contrast, sunlight is the best disinfectant: when we need to expose spies and corruption, we hold public hearings, we bring things into the light, because getting the facts out to the public is essential. Democracy will not survive in a world where most political commentary is done with anonymous accounts.
In totalitarian regimes, it is true that anonymous accounts allow enemies of the regime to advocate against the regime, but the regime can also use anonymous accounts to spread suspicion and paranoia among the enemies of the regime, making democratic action difficult by forcing every democracy activist to doubt every other democracy activist.
Many essays have been written arguing that anonymous political advocacy is good for democracy, but where is the evidence? We can see how anonymous accounts can spread disinformation that weakens democracies, but on the other side, is there a single unambiguous case where an autocratic regime was overthrown thanks to anonymous online advocacy?
Every time I make this argument, someone responds by listing a dozen autocratic regimes where people use anonymous accounts to advocate for democracy. (examples: Iran, Turkey, Iraq, etc). Yes, but that same autocratic regime is also using anonymous accounts to spread disinformation and nasty rumors about democracy advocates. Are there clear, unambiguous cases where anonymous accounts give democracy advocates an advantage that the regime does not have?
Put differently, if anonymous accounts empower democracy activists, but anonymous accounts empower autocratic regimes even more, then on balance anonymous accounts weaken democracy.
In the mid to late 20th Century, democracy had momentum behind it. It was winning everywhere. But the trend has gone into reverse, and the Internet has been part of the reason why the trend has gone into reverse. Do we take action or do we simply let democracy die?
Democracies began to take shape in these nations, at these dates:
Italy, 1943
Germany, 1945
Greece, 1974
Spain, 1975
Portugal, 1975
East Germany, 1989
Poland, 1989
Czechia, 1989
Slovakia, 1989
Romania, 1989
Bulgaria, 1989
Latvia, 1991
Estonia, 1991
Lithuania, 1991
Ukraine, 1991
Parts of Yugoslavia, 1990-1995
You see the pattern? In 1960, most of Europe was under a dictatorship. Right now, most of Europe is at least nominally some variation of a democracy.
Right now things are going in reverse. We’ve seen democratic backsliding in Hungary, Poland, Turkey, Israel, Brazil and many other countries. At what point do we get serious about addressing some of the issues that have weakened democracy?
What about democracy activists living in a dictatorship or gay people in a traditional culture?
Personal responsibility is the sub-structure on which democracy is built. Personal responsibility is undercut by anonymity. But when we talk about ending all anonymous accounts, people then raise reasonable questions such as:
If a person is an activist fighting for democracy in Iran, Syria, Russia, North Korea, or any other dictatorship, forcing them to use their own name will endanger their life, so how can they get their story out to the world?
If a teenager is trans (or any other in-danger demographic), growing up in a conservative culture, forcing them to use their own name, when writing online, might endanger their life, so how can they participate in online conversations?
All of these questions came up when Facebook introduced its Real Name policy.
There are two main answers:
When activists need to get information to the public, or to the international public, they can contact journalists, including journalists in other countries. This is the answer that our society has relied on for more than a century. This applies to many types of people, including people in the government leaking information, or whistle blowers in the corporate world, or criminals betraying their criminal organization, or democracy activists in a dictatorship. It’s always the same answer: these people can contact a journalist, and that journalist can then attempt to verify the information they’ve been given, and then the journalist can publish the story if they think the story is true. The point is, society needs someone, somewhere, to use their real name and stake their reputation on a story, someone who can be hit with a libel lawsuit if the story is untrue and published with malicious intent. This overall strategy, of relying on journalism, has worked for us for most of 200 years, and it has kept our democracy strong. There is no democracy without strong journalism.
To foster communication among demographics who are in danger, such as trans teenagers, non-profits can set up forums where everyone is anonymous. Again, there is no problem with individuals being anonymous if some larger organization is willing to stake its reputation on what is being said. Again, what society needs is someone that can be held accountable when things go wrong. For instance, if a malicious actor enters an online chat and encourages trans teenagers to commit suicide, then either the non-profit has to be ready to take responsibility for that, or they need to know the real identity of the malicious actor. But someone, somewhere, has to be willing to take responsibility for bad behavior online.
But people are only honest when they are anonymous?
Feelings don't matter. Feelings are useless and change all the time. A person can be angry one moment but calm an hour later. Or they can be sad but then later they can be happy. They can lash out in anger and say things that an hour later they might regret. Feelings mean nothing. All that matters is what a person is willing to put on the line when they carry real risk (when their reputation is at stake) because then they will consider their words carefully. If someone with a public identity, using their legal name, offers criticism, that carries some weight because they are taking a risk in saying what they are saying. It is the risk they take that gives their words meaning.
There is no reason to think people are more honest when they are anonymous. It is much easier to lie when you are anonymous. You pay no price for lying when you are anonymous. And every bad actor in the world knows this. And Russia and China and all of our enemies take advantage of this fact. The great troll farms of Russia thrive because they can lie freely, when we let them post online anonymously.
Democracy depends on citizens who take responsibility
What our society cannot endure is the for the online world to be a zone free of all responsibility. A democracy demands a high level of responsibility from its citizens. There is some perverse sense where humans under a dictatorship enjoy a specific kind of freedom: freedom from responsibility. In a dictatorship, if society is a mess, it is reasonable to blame the dictator. In a democracy, if society is a mess, then every citizen has to blame themselves, because it is up to them to fight for the society that they want.
Democracy is based on personal responsibility. Every citizen has a voice, under their legal name, because they are full human beings, enjoying their true rights in a free society. Anonymous online accounts are an escape from responsibility and therefore represent an attack on the sub-structure that democracy is based on. And so, no democracy can allow political debate to be shaped by anonymous accounts.