Oddbean

Nice to see this post provoke so many responses — obviously it hit a nerve. But almost all of them were already addressed in the post itself. 1. No one should be doxxed. This is an attempt to persuade people to post voluntarily under their real-life identities because it’s more based and will lead to an environment with less censorship. 2. This isn’t an argument *against* privacy. Privacy is essential. It’s an argument against the expectation of privacy *when posting in the public square.* Your finances, your personal communications should obviously be private. Here’s the post — pretty sure these two points were clear: https://chrisliss.substack.com/p/anonymity

Sounds nice but... The core group here is for now made up of bitcoin plebs. Bitcoin plebs have jobs and their transactions privacy to protect. Even bitcoin developers should protect their privacy as past law actions have showed. Some people have lots of things to loose by going public. + most people don't live in democracies, that becomes dangerous when exposing yourself... Tbo, I think most accounts I follow are probably public... not sure but probably more than half.

In my case many of the things I posted don't allign with my employer's values lol. And I like my privacy also in my real life, whenever I can I protect it. Real identifies are not for everyone, if you have nothing to gain and only stuff to loose there's no reason in going public. Main thing, most bitcoiners want to be faceless unless they're influences or involved in business that require an online face.

You should by all means protect your privacy. But when choosing to post to the *public* square, that is not a private communication. And mployers only get away with driving everyone into the closet about dissenting values because everyone permits it. Maybe even the employer himself agrees with you, but because of no one standing up has to pretend not to! And if the employer really would can you over a dissenting view in your off-work capacity on social media, that is not really someone you should be working with in the long term.

There are definitely valid reasons for anonymity. Snowden, Assange, Satoshi, that level. Maybe BTC devs too. But the average person in a western country should post under his real name IMO because not doing so empowers the censor and doing so encourages others to stand up for the truth.

Case by case is the way. Plus people can use multiple identifies, real and anonymous. I think people naturally choose to expose their identity, because they want recognition, fame, validation. If they don't, they have reasons for that :). In my case there are a few. I also have accounts with my real identity on different social media platforms, but there, when I rarely post, I don't mention anything related to what I post here. That guy is someone else...

The "real" me is a lot nicer and more lovable, i wanna be a mean anon 🙄 nostr:nevent1qqs8eynvv4sfrdn7kh3lg3zf7025q2ndwj6f7jw5r7n4h45aqkrsnccpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyp4d8c4rfqvtz57grayvtr6yu5veu760erd7x7qs5qqdec7fpdm5qqcyqqqqqqgjajnxw nostr:nevent1qqs8eynvv4sfrdn7kh3lg3zf7025q2ndwj6f7jw5r7n4h45aqkrsnccpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyp4d8c4rfqvtz57grayvtr6yu5veu760erd7x7qs5qqdec7fpdm5qqcyqqqqqqgjajnxw

Exactly, imperfect! Hence the need for a TTP. This is not freedom, as most bitcoiners understand it. Without anon/pseudo/nymity there is no freedom because you are constantly at the mercy of an unfairly stronger opponent. This is why Bitcoin severs the link between the reputation and the "real" person, but attaches it to its speech instead. Restoring this link, what you are advocating for, is undoing Satoshi's work.

That's what Twitter is for, not nostr. :⁠-⁠) I don't want to sound like I'm nitpicking but Bitcoin is also speech posted in the public square, just like this post. You can't have it both ways. I subscribe to the idea that people should have the freedom to selectively reveal themselves to the public, this is why I post publicly, but zap anon'ly.

@Chris Liss The main issue is that liberals are insane and dangerous. Going after people's employment is one thing, but they will go take pictures of people's kids to post online and sometimes even murder people over disagreements online.

It’s why people are gravitating here, most are embracing the censorship resistant bliss. The majority are not hiding behind a nym, they’re using it to create a community that might not be so easily done if using their given name. Pen names have been around since the age of the newspaper. Just because this is a decentralized platform, I don’t think we now need to trade in anonymity for anyone to have a voice. The fact that we are now interacting with ideas that aren’t attached to a name, face, position, or social status speaks volumes. Long live #nostr #bitsof₿eth

If you have a good reason to use a nym (you’re a whistleblower, e.g.) great, but otherwise, I don’t see what it does except imply you don’t want to be connected to what you’re saying IRL. And I don’t really see how nyms create more community than real identities, or erase status. There are famous nyms and not famous ones, ones with lots of followers and few. And you definitely don’t *need* to do this, but I’m suggesting one should because the things people are saying (most of them at least) are perfectly fine to have connected to your identity, and we should normalize that being okay rather than being terrified the State will get us or some future employer will not hire us on account of it. It just makes that state of affairs more and more real IMO.