This isn’t your college or work place break room. If people are saying something you disagree with you can just say it and you won’t be fired or ostracized for it. Yeah, people will probably get angry and say mean things to you but those are just words which can be ignored. Offence is taken, not given.
This is mostly for the lurkers who upvote unpopular opinions but don’t comment. You can speak up - you’re not alone.
won’t be fired or ostracized for it.
Wanna bet?
Of course you can. You’re not free from consequences of what you said though. The internet remembers EVERYTHING. Especially on federated platforms like lemmy. Some of my first messages on newsgroups in the 1990’s are still floating around the internet.
Although, what are the odds someone goes to the length to match writing style and personal details that you let slip while using a pseudonymous account against an online presence where you are identifiable?
I’m sure it’s possible, especially if there’s a reason you might be targeted, but I imagine it’s still pretty challenging and time consuming
That’s old style thinking. If that type of matching isn’t already automated and running, it will be soon. They’ll click a button and find you everywhere if you’ve left enough breadcrumbs, so there won’t be any lengths to go to. And as someone who has gone through the cybersec exercises of hardening browsers against fingerprinting, knows what VPN can do and more importantly what it CAN’T do, etc, I can say there are precious few people in the world going to the lengths required to stay truly anonymous. It basically has to become your top priority and constant focus if you want to be successful.
I guess a better question then - when is the juice worth the squeeze?
Like, I’m sure that government agencies have an interest in tracking who is making what comments pseudonymously online, but it would take a lot of effort, computers, money, energy, etc to constantly scan and store information for everyone, right?
Which is where we get into different levels of security - I’m going to try harder to hide my identity if I were to pirate a movie vs browsing Wikipedia.
I guess the question is: who is motivated to collect what information, and what needs to be done to make that identifying information useless for them to connect the dots?
but it would take a lot of effort, computers, money, energy, etc to constantly scan and store information for everyone, right?
You are describing PRISM and it’s been running since 2007.
When they realized how much storage it was going to take the US Government built the UDC at Camp Williams in Utah.
Well shit.
I’ve often been banned, blocked, or mass downvoted for saying something unpopular.
Never say anything you aren’t willing to stand behind. Because it won’t go away. And with authoritarian regimes coming to power… you gotta be cognizant of the potential consequences
But generally, I agree with you. The further we get away from groupthink the better we are for it. When we self-censor out of fear of disapproval we are perpetuating the cycle and making it more likely the next person doesn’t speak their mind.
Just because everyone believes something is right, does not mean it is. The majority has been wrong in the past and it will be wrong in the future.
For the past 10 years or so I’ve pretty much assumed that at some point a superintelligent AI or similar will be able to find everyone’s online profiles and link them to the actual person behind them. Then we’ll all be held accountable for the things we’ve said in the past. That’s why I never lie or say something I don’t actually believe in. I’m not proud of every comment I’ve posted but those are my actual beliefs and what ever people will be able to dig up I can stand behind and explain reasoning.
If people are saying something you disagree with you can just say it and you won’t be fired or ostracized for it.
But you can be banned which is pretty much the online equivalent to being fired or kicked out of school.
And then because it’s lemmy, you can make a new account on a different instance. Just pretend to be someone else.
