"Likes" Enhancement

[potato_hamster]

Aeolus451 said:

Hiku said:

You're not explaining how I was supposedly wrong.
Allowing for more honesty does not mean it doesn't also allow for more dishonesty. The two are not mutually exclusive.

But I will tell you what you are wrong about, and why:

"the only reason why someone would want no anonymity online is so they can hunt down anyone who's offensive, has a dissenting opinion/guilty of wrong think, etc in order to punish them and dissuade others from being open about what they think. It's authoritarian and will always bite you in the ass."

If someone makes a post about how great Suikoden 2's story is, I'd love to know who feels the same way. There are many times when I've wanted to say that "I agree" with someone, but because I had nothing more to add, I didn't do it because I didn't want to spam up the page. But if there's a like button, I'll hit like.

 I already explained why you're wrong. I'm not trying to change your opinion but to show a side of this to others who might be on the fence on this. Anonymity allows for the highest degree of honesty. That's self-evident. People are multifaceted. They have a multitude of opinions and sides to themselves that they wouldn't show under normal circumstances. It's not dishonest in any way to express those opinions or side of oneself under a cloak of anonymity. It's a means of protection from mob mentality. People can still like a statement even if the post was intended to troll or to be mean.

So you want to know who likes a post about suikoden? Sure..... That's so benign that it must absolutely be true. I'm not buying that especially since you already said the opposite in the reasons why you think anonymity is bad. You know as well as I do that we talk about alot more than just innocent video games posts and that's what we're actually talking about in terms of liking posts.

But as I've already told you, Anonymity also allows for the highest degree of dishonesty. That is also self evident. They can pretend to have any opinion, thoughts, feelings, say whatever they want, act in whatever way they want, and face literally no consequences for it. It can be completely dishonest to express an opinion you actually don't have to hurt someone else, and it also means that mobs can form and actions can be made more extreme because of anonymity. Look at 4Chan. Look at trolling in general. Look at how many anonymous threats internet users get. This happens because these users are anonymous and because there will be no consequences for their actions. Sure anonymity allows for absolute honesty, but it also allows for absolute toxicity. It's very much a double edged sword.

Just take this site here. Imagine every user had to use their real name on their user accounts. Just imagine how many less moderations would be made in the run of a day But since we do use user names, you're already anonymous, therefore whether you know the usernames of those who like posts is completely irrelevant. It's not like a user liking a post automatically means that they agree with the opinions expressed within that post anyways, so why does it matter to you if the usernames are displayed with the likes?