[Edit, typo in topic i know :(]

Hi all,

I have come to the conclusion that with the current rules/systems governing the internet at some point it will become impossibe to determine if an anonymous user is a human user or an automated (AI) user.

I think it is already impossible to determine for simple comments on social media. I don't know when but eventually AI will be good enough to hold a basic conversation compared to the average social media user - lets face it, its not uncommon to encounter total idiocy and to discount that as a dumbass user.

There are reports of governments using social media to sway public opinion. My wife just texted me that she noticed that NASA get lots of trolls but ESA get very little. Just another piece of circumstancial evidence to throw onto the already massive pile.

The only solution I see to this problem is to prevent (and make illegal in some cases) public comments without associating with a social security number (or some other form of real world identification). This would also cut down on police work which is currently using up valuable time that could be spent investigating real world crimes.

As it stands we have a comparable situation to standing in trafalgar square with a loud speaker but nobody can see you - you have some cloaking technology. If you want to use the internet then social media noise is completely unavoidable, in the same way it is unavoidable for school children who are being bullied on social media. "Dont like it - Dont use it" is not acceptable and it is obviously not acceptable to say "well, dont go to trafalgar square if you dont like the invisible people with loud speakers".

Yet there are people who claim anonymous public posting is some sort of right - it is not - it is just how it has been until now. To my knowledge there has never been a public agreement/constitution that declares the right to spout your opinions publicly while the listener is prevented from obtaining your identity. There have been some court cases and ruling but as is clear the government is benefiting from anonymity. In any case it should be clear to the listener if the user has chosen to remain anonymous or not.

I think if a private forum like GameDev wishes to allow anomymous posting that is fine but I think most places would adopt the rule "anomymous posting is forbidden" pretty quickly as the most popular sites would be the ones where you know you are talking to humans.

The places it would be illegal are news outlets, government press releases, official feeds. It would be clear to the users which parts of the internet are open to anonymous users and which are not.

I realise it would take a lot of technical changes to the internet and global agreement but tbh, its going to happen as soon as people start complaining when they realise they have been chatting with bots on youtube comments.

There will always be outlets for anonymous posting (in the case of safety) but in general, just like I dont listen to the views of people if I dont know who they are IRL I will stop visiting sites if I can't confirm that I am actually interacting with a real person.

The only solution I see to this problem is to prevent (and make illegal in some cases) public comments without associating with a social security number (or some other form of real world identification). This would also cut down on police work which is currently using up valuable time that could be spent investigating real world crimes.

That generates at least another two new serious problems:

1. First, how do you know a social security number is correct? Is there an international standard for these? No. Check digits? Easy to forge, much easier than writing a believeable chatbot. Does the majority of living people on the planet even have a social security number? I highly doubt that. Think of all of Africa and 90% of Asia.
2. Do you want some definitively non-trustworthy random site on the internet to know your social security number? I certainly don't. Heck, I don't even trust Gamedev.net enough to have them execute Javascript in my browser.
3. Apparently, I can't count to two.
4. Assuming the random social media site is trustworthy (which it isn't) what happens in case of a security breach? Stealing your worthless Facebook password is one thing. Stealing your unique human identifier is another.
5. Do I even want to make Police work easier? It has been proven again and again that Police / Secret Service only works against the innocent, good citizen, not against criminals. They rarely, if ever, catch a criminal (and if they do, the judge sets them free the next day). They rarely, if ever, prevent a known hard criminal offender from further harming innocent people even when they have evidence of criminal behavior and concrete knowledge of immediate danger (look at Manchester last week, or Berlin some moths ago). Why would I want to help these people further invade my privacy as an innocent person than they already do?

The better solution, in my opinion, would be to simply say "fuck social media". It's not good for anything anyway. This week, it's been on the news that according to some study blah blah 20% (or was it 30%, I forgot) of young people feel isolated, lonely, alienated. Go figure, if they'd just put away their fucking cellphone and scratch posting stuff on Facebook for a few hours per day, they might risk interacting with real humans. Problem solved.

The only solution I see to this problem is to prevent (and make illegal in some cases) public comments without associating with a social security number (or some other form of real world identification). This would also cut down on police work which is currently using up valuable time that could be spent investigating real world crimes.

That generates at least another two new serious problems:

1. First, how do you know a social security number is correct? Is there an international standard for these? No. Check digits? Easy to forge, much easier than writing a believeable chatbot. Does the majority of living people on the planet even have a social security number? I highly doubt that. Think of all of Africa and 90% of Asia.
2. Do you want some definitively non-trustworthy random site on the internet to know your social security number? I certainly don't. Heck, I don't even trust Gamedev.net enough to have them execute Javascript in my browser.
3. Apparently, I can't count to two.
4. Assuming the random social media site is trustworthy (which it isn't) what happens in case of a security breach? Stealing your worthless Facebook password is one thing. Stealing your unique human identifier is another.
5. Do I even want to make Police work easier? It has been proven again and again that Police / Secret Service only works against the innocent, good citizen, not against criminals. They rarely, if ever, catch a criminal (and if they do, the judge sets them free the next day). They rarely, if ever, prevent a known hard criminal offender from further harming innocent people even when they have evidence of criminal behavior and concrete knowledge of immediate danger (look at Manchester last week, or Berlin some moths ago). Why would I want to help these people further invade my privacy as an innocent person than they already do?

The better solution, in my opinion, would be to simply say "fuck social media". It's not good for anything anyway. This week, it's been on the news that according to some study blah blah 20% (or was it 30%, I forgot) of young people feel isolated, lonely, alienated. Go figure, if they'd just put away their fucking cellphone and scratch posting stuff on Facebook for a few hours per day, they might risk interacting with real humans. Problem solved.

I completely agree with all of your points. The practicalities suck ass. Though the authentication system would not be under the control of the website you are visiting which ticks off some of your points. You would be redirected to a trusted site (probably an internationally recognized non government body) and the site you are visiting would get a token.

My main concern is with exploiting anonymity to falsly represent a loud minority of people to sway public opinion. This was done IRL during WW2, I dont think I have to explain the horrific behaviour of people when it appears acceptable to behave in a certain way.

I dont actually care about social media in any other case.

Simply have a little green triangle next to the user name to identify posts which are guaranteed free human users.

I think if a private forum like GameDev wishes to allow anomymous posting that is fine but I think most places would adopt the rule "anomymous posting is forbidden" pretty quickly as the most popular sites would be the ones where you know you are talking to humans.

The site used to allow it, but for different reasons. Most of those reasons have gone away, and if a person has one of those rare reasons (you know who you are) the person can contact the staff and explain why they need a second account. Problems solved.

I dont listen to the views of people if I dont know who they are IRL I will stop visiting sites if I can't confirm that I am actually interacting with a real person.

Do you know if I am a real person? Do I know if you are a real person? Probably both are 'no'.

My view is that if you get value out of it, then continue. If you don't get value from it, stop. If I'm asking a question I don't care if a human answers or an AI answers, as long as the answers and reasoning are sound I don't care who does it. Same with other fields; I don't care if my doctor is a human or has an AI behind a mask, all I care is the diagnosis is accurate and the treatment works. If I'm playing a game I don't care if it is a human or an AI, all I care is the game is fun and presents a good challenge with a reasonable chance of victory.

For me, social media is a way to connect to very specific people and very specific groups. I don't 'browse' social media, nor is it an entertaining thing for me. If I want entertainment I'll read books or play a game. I don't waste my time with quizzes or clickbait articles, but I do read about how someone just released a game, or just got a new job, or is in the hospital after a car crash, or is having a baby, or whatever social things apply. If an AI looks at a person's life to see what events should be posted, I don't really care, as long as it is relevant to my actual social groups.

My main concern is with exploiting anonymity to falsly represent a loud minority of people to sway public opinion

Signs of internet immaturity. When the internet becomes mature, users will stick to their ideologies and values in life rather than be swayed by the opinions of others simply because they are loud. [Note this is different from the effect of fake news]

It has been proven again and again that Police / Secret Service only works against the innocent, good citizen, not against criminals. They rarely, if ever, catch a criminal (and if they do, the judge sets them free the next day). They rarely, if ever, prevent a known hard criminal offender from further harming innocent people even when they have evidence of criminal behavior and concrete knowledge of immediate danger (look at Manchester last week, or Berlin some moths ago). Why would I want to help these people further invade my privacy as an innocent person than they already do?

[A bit off topic] Maybe its because::

- the criminals are too clever for the police OR....

- the criminals are so desperately evil that they don't care for their lives OR....

- budgetary cut backs don't allow the police to function efficiently. And even when they do...

- human rights lawyers are able to find loop holes to force the Judge to let their clients off

[there you go, reasons for you to know that law enforcement agents are actually on your side, to trust law enforcement and know its not their fault they get beaten most of the time :(]

This could as well loosely apply to difficulties in policing online dubiousity

My main concern is with exploiting anonymity to falsly represent a loud minority of people to sway public opinion

Signs of internet immaturity. When the internet becomes mature, users will stick to their ideologies and values in life rather than be swayed by the opinions of others simply because they are loud. [Note this is different from the effect of fake news]

that doesnt really work out so well when people (social media is a multibillion $ industry) are interacting with said content from a very young age. Fake news and fake comments are coming from the same source. Mob mentallity is a real thing IRL and online.

I dont listen to the views of people if I dont know who they are IRL I will stop visiting sites if I can't confirm that I am actually interacting with a real person.

Do you know if I am a real person? Do I know if you are a real person? Probably both are 'no'.

due to site history, fairly strict moderation (compared to news comments / facebook / youtube) and the fact that AI isnt that sophisticated (yet) I am 100% certain you are a real person with real views.

But in a few years If I (or an impressionable child) reads the comments section on one of the mentioned social media sites all bets are off and I really think allowing our society, especially children in it, to be mislead by opinions that do not reflect that of actual society is very dangerous.

Fake news, bots / fake accounts - this is all under the same banner of misinformation and manipulating the opinion of the masses. We need to know the source of the information and people need to understand that the source is important.

It seems like the same techniques SSL certificates use could be used for this.

But really the solution is to stop being so trusting when you see words on the interwebs. Does the content make sense? Check the assertion against other information and look for contradictions. Learn to spot clearly subjective opinions and obviously biased information and complete lack of evidence.

Most lies fall apart very quickly once you attempt to validate them.

No authority system for flagging content as "authentic" is foolproof.

Any system can be manipulated, gamed, subverted, or outright ignored until it goes away.

The true solution is as Nypyren says. Learn to do your own critical analysis and verification. Learn to be skeptical as far as is appropriate for the medium.


This is only a serious "danger" to you or others so far as you allow it to be. Train people you know to be critical thinkers. Do your part to engender an attitude of healthy skepticism and properly-placed trust in society, and we'll all come out ahead.

I've come to the conclusion that if the reply seems to have no understanding of the topic, terrible spelling and grammar, and just tends to repeat itself no matter what you ask, then you're speaking to a human.

Then again, I've spent a lot of time lately debating the anti-vaxx crowd..

Well yea, swaying public opinion with fake news/automated trolls is an issue these days. We continuously hear about it all the time (think the whole US elections, some even say Brexit and the French elections too). The problem isn't really anonymity either: the problem is that you can't really tell fake from real. Then there's the case of real accounts that can be hijacked and used to spread an opinion. Imo there's two issues here to deal with: fake/bot accounts and fake news. I don't think the first one is ever truly fixable. You might be able to use SSL or public key/private key type encryption to potentially implement some sort of authentication system, but there are a lot of practicalities getting in the way of doing something like this. And even if done, there's still ways around it.

The second one is a bit less ambiguous but still tough to fix. Fake news isn't technically protected speech. If you are deliberately spreading lies about something/someone, it's basically slander/libel and that is illegal in many countries (if not all). The hard part is

a): proving it's actually libel/malicious intent

b): catching the guy behind the net

It's essentially a freedom of speech loophole in some ways because once the said thing is propagating thru a network quickly enough, some/many of the people on that network who are propagating falsehoods will believe it to be absolutely true.

More moderation and smarter moderation is probably another good solution. Tech gets better on both ends, so if some sort of falsehood is propagating through a network, it will be possible to potentially trace the source of it, and check it against some sort of verification system.

It seems like the same techniques SSL certificates use could be used for this.

But really the solution is to stop being so trusting when you see words on the interwebs. Does the content make sense? Check the assertion against other information and look for contradictions. Learn to spot clearly subjective opinions and obviously biased information and complete lack of evidence.

Most lies fall apart very quickly once you attempt to validate them.

No authority system for flagging content as "authentic" is foolproof.

Any system can be manipulated, gamed, subverted, or outright ignored until it goes away.

The true solution is as Nypyren says. Learn to do your own critical analysis and verification. Learn to be skeptical as far as is appropriate for the medium.


This is only a serious "danger" to you or others so far as you allow it to be. Train people you know to be critical thinkers. Do your part to engender an attitude of healthy skepticism and properly-placed trust in society, and we'll all come out ahead.

I don't disagree with the solutions posted. I may be in a minority here, but imo most people are just not that smart, to be blunt. Handholding has never been a great solution, but it's better than nothing. Plus there's just the fact that, as RiveraKid stated, as tech gets better, it's going to be much tougher to tell false/fake stuff from real. More is needed than we currently do.