Authors hit by bad reviews on Goodreads before review copies are even circulated

I'm probably going to get downvoted for this, but most if the Internet should not be anonymous. Anonymity has led to bots, awful cases of trolling and abuse. There should definitely be ways to communicated peer-to-peer anonymously, but posting on Social Media should not be one of them.

Here, have an upvote from this anonymous coward.

I'm all for anonymity, but anonymous identities should be taken with extreme skepticism.

I'd really like to see a hierarchy of trust. Get some certs signed by a reputable bank who has seen you in person, high trust. Self-signed certs, much less trust. Completely anonymous, you get basically shadowbanned; people who want it can go looking for it.

The Internet is an information flood (and so much worse now that we have LLMs). Filtering it has always been the key challenge. We should be able to filter on source, while still allowing people to say whatever it is they want. We just don't have to read it.

There is a zone of shade between full anonymity and exact identification. There could be a service that provide time limited anonymous tokens that still provide guarantee that you're not a bot. So you can claim you're a real person without having to reveal _who_ you are.

People will post terrible lies in national newspapers under their own photograph and byline. Accountability is .. not evenly distributed.

Environments where reprisals are possible simply have different dysfunctionality from ones where they generally aren't. And you can see how catastrophic suddenly turning on reprisals is, known as "doxxing".

I agree.

What's more, governance processes for the forum shouldn't be anonymous at all. I mean flagging, voting, moderator action etc.

That's arguably the most important conversation here. Most in need of illumination by public discussion.

But so often (in these social media forums) it is taken one step beyond pseudonymity to full anonymity. Hidden from all eyes.

Why? I never heard a good argument.

> People will post terrible lies in national newspapers under their own photograph and byline.

As an extreme example, (multiple) POTUS have gone on national TV and flat out lied to the US without consequence.

You've just introduced some new problems of scaling up identity theft and getting people otherwise uninterested in social media sell their account to spammers.

Well, you're posting anonymously on a social media site to claim that people shouldn't be allowed to post anonymously on a social media sites. If you're not even willing to do it, why should anyone else?

Also, there are social media sites with real name policies; in what way are they better?

Should people's votes be public in general?

There's a good and well known argument against that already. Don't distract from my point.

I don’t know if it’s the whole internet but what about a company or service that did this? The benchmark to a review on Amazon and Goodreads is really low. It seems like we want/need the Costco model where you pay a fee to take part and then maybe the product inventory is more curated and reviews are attached to real authentic buyers.

Counterfeit goods on Amazon is a meme, everyone knows. There are YouTube channels that make a sport of it. Once the market just accepts that, it seems impossible to elevate something like reviews

To me it seems like there is only one key to a well working social site: fair moderation.

Fair moderation encompasses a well defined vision on what to moderate, and good definitions of that - what is tolerated and what not. Enforcement needs to be swift and fair. There needs to be a barrier of entry, to combat cheating the moderation by quickly re-joining.

If these are successfully upheld, bots, trolling, and abuse has little chance. Not being anonymous can raise the barrier of entry, but it's very far from a working solution; see how horrible people act of facebook, with their name and photo attached. And this site, for example, has very little publicly visible badness going on, because of how effective the moderation is.

You ask a very fair question. I don't show my real name on HN because nobody else does. Just like taxation, it only works if everyone follows the rules. If only some users provide their real names, there is still the opportunity for trolling, etc.

Secondly, I don't try to use my account to spew FUD. I'm not claiming to be anyone I am not. I don't say "I'm an expert on privacy with 20+ years experience" or falsely claim to be a well know industry leader in this field.

Lastly, I really try (especially on HN) to be nice. I'll state ideas and some facts I know, but I really try to stay clear of being mean. I do this because the rage/hate I see spewed on the interwebs is just sad and I really believe its a product of people being able to hide behind anonymity.

I dont know any social media sites with real name policies, but I do know from personal experience that people are much more civil when they cant hide behind a mask.

I would like to live in a world where everyone thinks about the repercussions of their actions, on and off line. IMHO, if everyone was their true self, it would be better - case and point, the fake book reviewer would probably not have posted their fake review.

> it only works if everyone follows the rules.

That means it will not work!