this post was submitted on 14 Jul 2023
217 points (97.8% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35678 readers
1552 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I know at this point a lot of it is related to money, but there was a transitional time that led to this point that I'm still confused by.

What details changed about online spaces that made many folks more comfortable sharing so much under their real names between the "Be careful!" times to where we are now?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Can confirm. Before FB, almost nobody told their real name online. Nowadays you can easily find out who is a racist and who believes in conspiracy theories just by looking at what they post. Usually there’s also their real name and face attached to the post so that you can be sure who you are talking about.

How did this happen? FB made it normal and almost obligatory.

Why did it happen? So that FB could make more money. Simple monkey brain people like to socialize and share stuff with everyone, and FB is simply exploiting that vulnerability.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I mostly avoided it so my memory may be off here, but weren't there still a fair number of folks that posted to MySpace using parts of their real name and, imo slightly worse (in terms of privacy), using photos of themselves as profile pics? Real names are one thing but photos of yourself are just a dead giveaway.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Neither is very useful until you can correlate it with something else. Like, it takes a lot more effort to find someone in meatspace than in a database. Though, the number of databases with your face in them is a number that goes up faster every year.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

That's true, although as I recall there was often enough additional info even back then that someone determined enough could become a concern.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You aren't wrong. There were also plenty of software-related mailing lists back in the day where folks used their real names regularly. And even if someone did go by a handle, their real name was often known anyway.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yeah. and there were a lot of tech type folk that had a blog on domains that required 'real names' and more, that was quite often public.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Can confirm. Before FB, almost nobody told their real name online. Nowadays you can easily find out who is a racist and who believes in conspiracy theories just by looking at what they post.

And more importantly, if you post something the racist conspiracy theorists don't like, they know your real name and what you look like. So it makes anyone who doesn't like unwanted attention from violent lunatics keep quiet, thereby emboldening the violent lunatics.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh, rats! You’re right. Didn’t think of that at first.

However, that thing is’t too different from the “mainstream” vs. “the others” situation we’ve had for millennia. Previously, it wasn’t acceptable to let your neighbors know you don’t conform to the generally accepted sexual norms or that your gender identity doesn’t match your biological gender. Not too long ago in Germany you couldn’t publicly support people from different ethnic backgrounds. There was even a period of time when it was believed that women don’t even have a soul. Arguing against that would have labeled you as “one of them” as opposed being an outstanding member of the “mainstream”. It’s just that whatever “mainstream” happens to mean seems to change from place to place and decade to decade.

The current era of diversity and acceptance is truly exceptional when you look at the big picture. Interestingly, using your name and your face in online conversations seems to bring ups back to to age of self-censorship. If your reputation is on the line, you better try to blend into the mainstream, even in online conversations.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Even if you're entirely within the mainstream, you don't want to risk upsetting some dangerous bigot. Or worse, a dangerous bigot with a following.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Simple monkey brain people like to socialize

I got told off on kbin for saying 80% of the world's population are idiots... and then I realized who I was talking to.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

All humans have this vulnerability, and it’s part of the human experience. We think of ourselves as highly advanced, but in reality, we aren’t that different from creatures we consider inferior.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I actually think it's somewhat of a human trait... the need to brag and show off yourself. Some people (most) have it, some don't. I am really interested at what an IQ test would show about those that post their lives on social media, or do influencer things, whatever. And do the same one on people thay use social media like Reddit or Lemmy. I think the results would favor the ones that use link agregators. But, as I said, this is only a theory I have, it's not proven or anything, but I would like to actually know. If the results are more or less equal, than that would mean that it's just a human trait and nothing more... which would surprise me, but you can't argue with science.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I am really interested at what an IQ test would show about those that post their lives on social media, or do influencer things, whatever.

You may already be aware of this, but in case not, IQ isn't a necessarily a great way to evaluate intelligence.