Anxiety: Nothing to Do but Embrace the Dread - <AUTHOR> http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/07/13/nothing-to-do-but-embrace-the-dread/ <comment><USER2> Personal history for anyone suffering from serious anxiety:

Anxiety destroyed my 20s. It kept me home-bound. I rarely went out and would have attacks at the grocery store all of the time. Early on I hoped that things would come to a head and that I would eventually be immune to it, and stronger for it. But that never happened. I was afraid to seek help because I assumed they'd put me on meds that would dull my thinking. Looking back, that probably would have been fine. At every turn anxiety held me back. A stupider but freer me would have been welcome.

After a lot of self-analysis and experimentation I discovered that about 70% of the problem was the Pepsi I was slugging down every day. For my body, sugar and caffeine together are like crack. I switched to diet and dropped about half of my daily anxiety in a few months. I eventually cut the caffeine out altogether. Daily anxiety almost entirely dropped, with occasional spikes for stressful situations. A friend told me to look into choline. I'm not a supplements guy, but it turns out eggs have plenty so I started eating eggs every morning. I also started running which has had a huge impact on my mood. After a while I rarely had anxiety. In fact most of the anxiety was from worrying that I was going to have an anxiety attack. I'm not cured - I don't like certain situations and those can still bring out an attack. The good news is that it's now at a point where I can fight back and "be brave", which I always though would fix it but never did. That actually works most of the time now. That was just impossible in the past.

I used to think that caffeine was making me smarter. It was definitely giving me bursts of ideas, but ultimately it didn't give me anything I wasn't going to have already. I was abusing a drug, not thoughtfully taking a medication.

I basically had to become enraged at how my life was going in order to do something about it.

The bottom line is to never stop trying to solve it. Try the meds, exercise, diet, meditation, electroshock, whatever. Try everything until you figure it out.

<comment><USER3> The only thing on that list that I have not tried is the electroshock :-(

<comment><USER4> Don't give up anyway! It's may be weak to say this, but it's the best I've got. Also, consider that "whatever" includes a whole lot of things.. it includes everything _but_ giving up :)

edit: I don't remember where I have this idea from, and it may be stupid, but it kinda stuck with me: if you can't find out how to solve a problem, try to find a way to make it worse, as that can give you hints how to overcome it. I have no idea how this could be applied to anxiety, not in general and of course not to yours; or wether that's a good idea even (surely might not be without friends or professional care around). But since you said you're all out of clues I thought I'd mention it anyway, even if it's just to bring people "out of the woodworks" which will tell me why exactly this is a bad idea (I really have the feeling it might be). I'll simply trust you'll not go off and do something dangerous with it; but maybe you can reverse engineer it a little that way.

<comment><USER5> this might not be what you are describing, but it sounds like exposure therapy: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yikes.

>Toss aside the bath water of anxiety and you will also be tossing aside excitement, motivation, vigilance, ambition, exuberance and inspiration, to name just several of the inevitable sacrifices. Get rid of anxiety? Even if you could — and you can't — why would you want to?

I would be extremely cautious with this train of thought. It is very dangerous, and by no means true.

<comment><USER7> I'd upvote this comment more if I could.

I've recently suffered from acute anxiety, and it was not pleasant. But I figured out what was causing it, changed my diet and exercise patterns, and it's not happening anymore. The rest of the good things in that list remain in place.

That said, the author is probably not intentionally misleading his audience; his personal experience points to the connection between those good attributes and anxiety, and he assumes that if you lose one you lose them all. It's an honest mistake, but a mistake nonetheless.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If anyone is looking to build technologies to help quantify, then diagnose and treat anxiety, stress, and depression, we're hiring at Neumitra. I'm a neuroscientist by training and a severe family history of mental illness led me down this path.

firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment><comment><USER9> Or you can get high: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hallucinoge...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=hallucinogens- could-ease-existential-terror)

I've found that the best way to handle anxiety to stop talking about it all the time, and just fill your mind with _living_. When HN gets in a spate of depression/anxiety discussions, it drags my mental health down.

It's almost enough to get me in support of the concept of Trigger Warnings.

<comment><USER10> "When HN gets in a spate of depression/anxiety discussions, it drags my mental health down."

Psychedelic experiences and meditation are closely interrelated.

Filling your mind with one thing instead of the other is a temporary solution. It's another form of avoidance.

Anxiety arises from an underlying emotional issue that someone is avoiding.

In the psychedelic and meditative states, it is entirely possible to feel oneness and love for all that is. That's fine. For insight meditators, this is a peak experience that is itself transitory. We'd call this the first "flowering". There is still much work to reach the "fruit".

Think about it. You're given the gift of unity consciousness, of love and light. But, the tendency after that is then select only _some_ of the experience as good, and to reject the rest as bad. The gift of the bliss and love is to teach you what it is like to be unconditionally accepting of all that is.

And unconditionally accepting includes the experiences of anxiety, depression, misery ... It's only when you accept the _experiencing_ that you can become a complete person.

So HN gets in a spate of depression and anxiety discussion. "It drags my mental health down." The practice at this point is to disassociate the apparent cause and effect and focus on what you are experiencing at the moment. "I feel that my focus is breaking apart." "I feel my mood going down." And you go deeper, observing the sensations that make that up: where exactly, in your body, are you feeling it? What color is it? What texture? What temperature? Any sounds, smell, or taste? Then you note it and let it go, go back to focus on living and breathing.

Over time, you gain the ability to mindfully observe anxiety or any other sensation as they pass through your awareness, yet you are not moved. It is in this way, the mystics would call "finding your center". It no longer matters that HN gets in a spate of depression and anxiety discussions. You are OK with that.

<comment><USER11> This is an incredibly well written reply; it sums up the basics of mindfulness in a very short space. Have you written any more on the subject?

<comment><USER10> Huh, thanks.

Much of the language and frame I use comes from Daniel Ingram's "Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha". You can check that out if you want more. If you've got some meditative experience, that has some good stuff. If you're coming in from entheogens, that is a great book to read after a couple breakthrough experiences. One note though: Ingram is considered controversial by a number of people for some reason.

As for my own stuff, I have written a cheatsheet at some point: [http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat- sh...](http://www.quora.com/Meditation/Whats-a-nice-little-cheat-sheet-on- mindfulness-meditation/answer/Ho-Sheng-Hsiao)

... though I will be updating it soon from the things I've been learning from practicing pranayama and yoga.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For me, meditation beats anxiety. I meditate every day, more or less. I can skip a couple of days of meditation but then anxiety starts rising. Soon it's sitting on me 24-7. I get more and more upset and I start thinking crazy thoughts. So I meditate and the anxiety goes away.

I do samatha and vipassana.

</comment><comment><USER13> From my own explorations, I've come to the conclusion that my anxious mind was a product from my parents. My dad is a fly off the handle, every small thing is a disaster. My mother is a chronic worrier.

It wasn't until I moved to CA where I had a chance to remove myself from it did it start to make sense.

Our emotional responses are learned and engrained from our earliest years. I see it in my parents when I go to visit but now that I'm aware of it I try to stay calm and grounded.

<comment><USER14> Actually, there's a lot to do with genetics and brain chemistry. Whether or not your fight-or-flight reaction (your amygdalae) kicks in has a lot to do with nature. Nurture is also important - meditation can help you regulate it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> This book has not only helped me with back, neck, and shoulder pain but anxiety too.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Divided-Mind- ebook/dp/B000SEHJOI/r...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Divided-Mind- ebook/dp/B000SEHJOI/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital- text&ie=UTF8&qid=1373942557&sr=1-2&keywords=divided+minds)

Turns out simple breathing exercises can lower most of my anxiety.

[http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/three-breathing- exercis...](http://www.drweil.com/drw/u/ART00521/three-breathing- exercises.html)

</comment><comment><USER16> I tend to think that anxiety is neither emotion nor reason. Rather, it's an indication that one or both of them is not being engaged in properly.

<comment><USER10> Anxiety is an emotion. It's an experience. It isn't reason, though one might come up with any number of reasons, rationalizations, and justifications to attempt to describe the experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've found it helpful to learn not to fuel thought trains. ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)[1] is helpful for that: It's basically about developing an understanding that thoughts and feelings are not real, and that they are not dangerous. A thought is the voice in your head, feelings are sensations in the body. Nothing more. It also has techniques that makes it easier to detect them.

By the way: Gut flora may play a role in anxiety[2], at least for some. It seems to play a role in many different mental, as well as physical, illnesses.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Trap-Struggling- Living/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Happiness-Trap-Struggling- Living/dp/1590305841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1373970942&sr=8-1&keywords=happiness+trap)

[2] [http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/gut- feeling.aspx](http://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/09/gut-feeling.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER18> Anxiety is a naturally occurring process that has been essential to human survival. Some individuals have managed to place a completely different judgement on anxiety and we call those people thrill seekers while other individuals feel paralyzed with fear. Where one sees dread the other sees a potential for a state of euphoria. Conquering anxiety is not at all to do with removing it but with managing our perception of the experience. Embracing anxiety is not so much with accepting dread but to understand this naturally occurring system of defense and ultimately desensitizing ourselves to the dread associated with the experience.

<comment><USER19> Perhaps. Although, that is easier said than done.

<comment><USER10> Meditate. Breath. No one said this was easy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> In some sense anxiety is an inability to one region of the brain to tame activities of the other(s). There could be a whole set of possible causation, but the idea is quite simple - a brain is a muscle, so it could be "changed" via exercises. This is the reason why meditation works is a grossly oversimplified, naive wording. So, yes, the way of out of chronic anxiety and anxiety disorders in general is not in medication or running away, but in contrary, go toward it and getting to know it by knowing oneself. This is how people survive on the war - by conquering extreme fear and anxiety.

</comment><comment><USER21> I wasn't a normally anxious person before but 2 distinct traumatic events that happened in the last 2 years has now made me super anxious. The weird thing about anxiety is that it's like both sides of your brain are fighting for control of your body.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's a fantastic book that may help with anxiety: Claire Weekes - Self Help For Your Nerves.

It teaches you how it's just a physiological response that feeds off itself.

Understanding this can help you to break the cycle.

</comment><comment><USER23> Feel the fear, and do it anyways.

<comment><USER19> Unfortunately, during a panic attack, that may not seem like an option at the time. And, if you force yourself to do whatever it is you're trying to do at the moment, a panic attack could result in fainting or something, which may not be desirable. Anxiety, and "the fear", are both normal, but an attack is something hard to describe and triggers the flight response usually, for me.

<comment><USER10> Yep. Anxiety is literally the flight response, an avoidance.

It's less about doing and more about actually resting your awareness on the anxiety, and on what it is you are avoiding. The actual "doing" can come later; it is hard to do anything without presence of mind.</comment></comment></comment>


The Miracle of WD-40 - <AUTHOR> http://www.subtraction.com/2012/01/10/the-miracle-of-wd-40 <comment><USER2> Cringe. _Please_ use contact cleaner for electronics (Servisol is a good brand). WD40 may well eat plastic & rubber seals (although nitrile rubber, eg. o-rings, should be safe). It's a light oil spray and water displacer. It's not a substitute for proper lubrication - it will wash grease & oil OUT of bearings for example. For brass hinges, locks etc. use graphite dust (soft pencil lead if you have nothing else, but graphite is cheap). Oil will attract dust and other crap and make the problem worse over time.

<comment><USER3> This individual speaks sense. If you've ever had to degunk an edge connector which some muppet has sprayed WD40 on you will understand. When you wipe the PCB, the traces come off as well...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Don't do this.

If you've ever seen the mixing desk in a big recording studio or concert venue, you'll understand that maintaining buttons and knobs is something of a preoccupation for sound engineers.

The solvents in WD40 will clean switches quite effectively, but WD40 leaves behind a lubricating residue which isn't very conductive and will attract dirt. Using WD40 as a contact cleaner tends to be a vicious cycle - you end up using WD40 to remove the old WD40 gunk.

The best thing for the job is Caig Deoxit. It's not especially cheap, but neither is an iPhone 4. WD40 claims to do a million jobs, but Deoxit does only one - safely clean electrical contacts.

</comment><comment><USER5> During my army service, I spent 3-4 years being an AN/TPQ-37 tech. Its a high- voltage, high power, immensely complex Radar. Even though it is such a beast, and could take a lot of mistreatment, we had one "do not use WD-40" rule tattooed into our brain. On the long run it always caused much more damage than help!

DO NOT USE WD-40 WITH ELECTRONICS.

We used to use Freon and silicon based lubricants - but I'm not sure these substances are legal anymore.

<comment><USER6> Freon is heavily regulated these days. Very hard to get unless you know someone who works with it regularly (like a car mechanic).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> > the home button — the sole physical button on the device's face

Isn't this a bit silly. The most expensive phone on the planet has one big button you barely use and they can't build it to last a year even after 4 iterations of (almost) the same design. Older cheap phones have plenty of tiny little keys, they last for years and years and those keys you use all the time because you don't have the touchscreen. Maybe that's the solution, press your home button more often.

</comment><comment><USER8> It may work, but I wonder what else the WD-40 may be eating away. I'd probably try contact cleaner first.

</comment><comment><USER9> WD-40 is crap.

It's marketed as a combination cleaner and lubricant, and it's bad at both of those.

If you need a cleaner, get a cleaner, if you need a lubricant get a lubricant. WD-40 will wreck anything you use it on unless it's something that's impossible to wreck.

</comment><comment><USER10> I think it's most likely working as a lubricant. WD40 leaves a lubricating residue that in my experience works well on creaky door hinges. I never thought to use it on sticky buttons though!

<comment><USER11> i use the graphite of pencils on door hinges. also the soft eraser on the end is quite good at cleaning contacts on motherboards from grease and the like.

that and a non conducting pencil is handy for raising the guard on uk and irish power outlets to plug in 2 pin cables.

just that i find it easier to carry a pencil in my toolkit than risk a possibly leaking container of wd40 near the rest of my electronics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> You know what else fixes busted home buttons? AppleCare.

<comment><USER13> From the comments:

> I went into the Apple store, they at first thought it was a software problem > (just bs the were told to say apparently) and then wanted $150 for an out- > of-warranty replacment.

That's why it might not be worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I don't actually understand why this worked, but it did.

<comment><USER14> Probably because the solvent(s) in WD-40 are dissolving the gunk/oxidation that is causing the button to fail.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Deoxit, which is carried by Radio Shack under their own label, will probably do a better job of dissolving grime and oxidation, and with less chance of unintentional destruction of innards.

<comment><USER16> Why? If it's a rebranded WD-40, why will that work?

"unintentional destruction of innards" - can you give some examples? I've never had it destroy anything.

<comment><USER17> Deoxit is different to WD40. Deoxit is a contact cleaner while WD40 is a lubricant. They work in nearly the same way but WD40 leaves residue which will build up over time while deoxit completely evaporates.

WD40 will work but I wouldn't use it on anything I want to pass on to my children.

I've also heard some second hand horror stories of WD40 penetrating old IC casings and destroying them but I can't confirm them myself.</comment></comment></comment>


Being a Manager Is Lonely - <AUTHOR> http://www.ianbicking.org/blog/2015/01/being-a-manager-is-lonely.html <comment><USER2> This post is not so much about management being lonely (though it is, at all levels) as it is about the special loneliness of _middle_ management.

If you're a top manager, a founder or C-level type, you still have to deal with loneliness (since the power you have over the people below you in the org chart inevitably crimps any relationships you form with them), but you at least get the compensating benefit of being able, to some degree, to determine your own destiny: you make decisions, the company pivots to follow them.

Middle managers don't even get that; they're sandwiched between the people above them, who actually get to decide what the "company line" is, and those below them, who just have to follow it. Middle managers have to not just follow it, but _enthusiastically agree_ with it, even if they think it's stupid or counterproductive. (Or at least they have to do so whenever the people they manage are watching.) Failure to do so, to participate eagerly in whatever fad thinking the people at the top are high on this week, is what I used to hear described when I worked on an Air Force base as "a career- limiting maneuver."

And on top of that, they have to work in an environment where even the limited power they _do_ have to make a difference can be thrown out the window at any time. All it takes is for someone higher up the food chain to take an interest in your team and suddenly all the decisions you've made start getting overridden. Their reasons for doing so can be completely arbitrary, but that doesn't matter. If you're lucky, the person doing the overriding is at least generous enough not to do that to you in front of your team. If you're lucky.

This is part of the reason why the traditional career path of promoting senior developers into middle management is so destructive. The usual critique of that model revolves around programmers often not having the kinds of skills and experiences that make good managers, and that's true. But it's also true that middle management just generally sucks as a job, regardless of who you put in it.

<comment><USER3> The best-liked and most effective managers that I have worked with did not always show support for the company's decisions. Instead, they would say "we have to do this, but: (1) here is how I can make it as painless as possible for you (2) here is how we can make sure that you still achieve your personal objectives"

Sometimes (depending on the sensitivity of the issue) they would also tell the team what they were doing to try and get the decision changed.

I have been fortunate to work places where the higher levels of management welcomed dissenting opinions - maybe that is one of the key bits to look for when determining if a (traditionally-structured) company is a good place to be a mid-level manager.

<comment><USER4> Agreed - I don't think that all honesty has to go out the window just because you are in a management position. Communicating decisions is one aspect, but effectively implementing them in your team is a whole other thing. Honest discussion of concerns and what can be improved is important, and as much as management likes to think their poker face is awesome, employees are smart and see straight through bullshit.

Secondly, what I heard in your comment (and agree with) but don't see in the original post is anything about engaging to be an advocate for your employees up the chain, giving them an opportunity to tell you what they need, the questions they have, the things you can do. To a certain extent this might make you lonelier on the "who do I talk to?" side, but helps a great deal as a reminder of the purpose of the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Learn to say "no". I have a company that I managed. In the company I was the "boss", but my boss was our customers. You need to say no to customers often.

Before learning to say no life was miserable. After I did it was heaven. Learn to say reasonable noes to your customers, to your upper managers, to your partner,to your kids, and your life will be much better.

Forget the advice of that stupid blog. You should not always support upper management, you are not a drone. If you work in the army and they tell you to kill every civilian inside a village, you must say no.

When upper management wants to do something that is stupid and you will have to support and be responsible for it, you should say no(after you double proof that it is not you who is wrong).

Get a mentor you respect and admire. Create a mastermind of the best managers you could find. You will discover management is not what you think it is(or better said, it does not have to be that way).

</comment><comment><USER6> Leadership is lonely. There's always a boss behind the boss, even in the C-suite. Good managers can translate in all directions of a network graph, not merely from the nonlocal to the local.

The Manager Tools podcast gives insight into the language and thought processes of top-down thinkers. Useful for learning how how to work within and around such structures: [http://www.manager- tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-...](http://www.manager- tools.com/2013/04/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-1) & [http://www.manager- tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-...](http://www.manager- tools.com/2013/05/politics-101-chapter-3-myth-just-world-part-2) . This should be balanced by authors like Tim Ferris, Chris Malburg ([http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris- Malburg/dp/0425127...](http://www.amazon.com/How-Fire-Boss-Chris- Malburg/dp/0425127346)), or your favorite historical barbarian.

There's a Heinz von Foerster essay on free will within deterministic systems, _" Only those questions that are in principle undecidable, we can decide. Why? Simply because the decidable questions are already decided by the choice of the framework in which they are asked, and by the choice of rules of how to connect what we call "the question" with what we may take for an "answer.""_, [http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html](http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/4-2/text/foerster.html) & [http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the- park](http://kiriakakis.net/comics/mused/a-day-at-the-park)

Complex bureacracies (academia, airlines, government, large enterprises) illustrate that thinking humans are most valuable at the boundary of system determinism. Any human who just does what the "rules" or "book" or "computer" says, will eventually be replaced by a mindless algorithm/app. But airline customer service people in First Class, or executive assistants who have worked with the same CEO for decades, or great managers - define human free will and agency, with their decision-making capacity for handling the entropy of "irregular operations".

If we view large organizations as semi-deterministic programs for which we have lost the source code, how would that change our view of management?

</comment><comment><USER7> As a middle manager there will be some decisions that are yours to make, the higher you go in middle management, the more of these decisions there will be. An important part of your job is knowing which of these decisions is yours to make and not criticize people above you in the hierarchy for making decisions that they can make. Sure, push back a little before the decision is made to influence it, but once it's made you do have to back it. The key for me was to not focus on things I thought were wrong, but focus instead on the good parts of the decision. If there are no good parts of the decision and it happens too many times, may be time to move on.

</comment><comment><USER8> You need a mentor. Someone who is also a manager, you can trust implicitly, and you can talk to about your thoughts without it "getting back" to the people.

</comment><comment><USER9> totally agree. i think it's why many many many tech managers aren't technical. most truly technical people cannot put up with the cognitive dissonance required to convincingly say one thing while believing the opposite.

</comment><comment><USER10> "But their advice is clear: if you are asked your opinion, you must agree with the decision, maybe stoically, but you must agree, not just concede. You must speak for the company, not for yourself."

And this is why middle management is next to useless and why there have been so many cuts over the last 20 years. If you aren't honest with your direct reports then you will be seen as untrustworthy and/or clueless. Either way I'm certainly not going to feel inclined to be honest and straightforward with you.

</comment><comment><USER11> I don't like the manager / developer separation. I've had better results using lightweight strategies to let projects be more or less self-managing. Basically just creating a shared vision, giving responsibilities to people, letting them set their own goals, and then publishing to the group how those goals are progressing on a weekly basis. It doesn't take much time and people usually appreciate the communication.

</comment><comment><USER12> There's way too much black and white in the blog post and these comments here. It's more art than science.

The reality is as a manager you're an influencer and leader. You also need to have personal integrity or you'll just end up depressed. If you have no ability to influence upper management, you need to work on how to connect with your boss.</comment>


Updates for Hacker News directory - <AUTHOR> http://www.hndir.com/home/changes

<comment><USER2> I still can't get in. I have three emails with three different passwords, but none of them work.

<comment><AUTHOR> try "reset pass" on the login screen.

<comment><USER2> A PHP Error was encountered

Severity: Notice

Message: Undefined variable: successInfo

Filename: controllers/user.php

Line Number: 587

<comment><AUTHOR> one more time for luck :)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: NavNav – Curated UI Examples - <AUTHOR> https://navnav.co/ <comment><USER2> This is pretty awesome. Kind of like a better catalogue of code-pen examples. I'm always trying to find snippets for small UI components, but I can't stand browsing code-pen directly.</comment>


Dear Googles: G+/YouTube Anschluss – you've done outed me - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/115668950429167517685/posts/JcPQuXzXTgU <comment><USER3> I think anonymity on the internet is a great thing. It's a place where you can socialize and share ideas with strangers without having to give them your name/address/home phone #. You can even start honest, more controversial discussions and do some high-level reasoning that you couldn't necessarily achieve with close friends.

If Google won't allow that on their services anymore, I pray everyone leaves them & moves to services that understand this. The market giants think they can bully us into behaving the way they want us to rather than realizing that they are privileged by having our business. I would recommend giving business to alternative sites as much as possible to break internet monopolies that are setting the stage for these forceful policies.

<comment><USER4> The problem is that anonymity leading to great conversation is disproved by reality.

This move, though short sighted and ill advised, is precisely to combat the cluster fuck that is YouTube comments powered by anonymity.

I'm not sure what the solution is, but one look at the quality of anonymous unmodderated comments calls for one.

<comment><USER5> Personally I think the problem is the concept of comments in the first place. You see, way back in the day, if you wanted to respond to a post or whatever on the web you went to your own website and posted a response and linked to the source you were responding to. Comments sections on websites are data islands; comments and conversations held captive in walled gardens. Youtube is the biggest irony of all as it has the concept of video responses, yet they prefer you to respond in tiny teeny little comment boxes. I say scrap the comments section and prove a big red "record a video response" button next to each video.

Of course I appreciate the irony of my comment about comments appearing on a site with comments, but I've always regarded sites like hacker news and slashdot as "forums where the post is a link to an article".

I'd much prefer it if everyone has a wordpress site or equivalent and posted their opinions on that. At least the web would be more webby and you wouldn't have greedy centralised sites gobbling up content and demanding control of the conversation.

<comment><USER6> "way back in the day, if you wanted to respond to a post or whatever on the web you went to your own website and posted a response and linked to the source you were responding to."

Amen. I still do it this way most of the time. Too bad the Web has not standardized on a form of pingback - that would allow these distributed conversations to actually work. Right now we're stuck with looking at our referrer logs, and that is very clumsy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Having a Google plus account linked to YouTube with real name policy has not stopped the trolls and poisonous commenters. They have just carried on as usual. Now it has just made it easier with spammers, blackhats now able to leave links on their comments. Sure they can be deleted with an hour or so but that one hour is all you need to spread your payload.

The only people who the real name policy punishes is the real users. The ones who do everything right. The ones who do not wish to have their lives outed this way.

Now I'm gay, and have no problem being out online but at home in public is another problem. I've never moved from my Childhood home and I live in a small town, its pretty easy to know who I am, so I made it a policy to never link the two so I don't have to do deal with Homophobia on my Doorstep. Its a small town and news soon spreads. I don't have a Google Plus account and am moving away from Gmail for this reason. I never ever use a real photo online. Facebook is only used for minor things on an anonymous email address with a blank photo. Even then I hate it and do not use it for personal stuff.

If you are really concerned about privacy, just delete your Gmail, Google Plus account. Get your wallet out and move to a paid alternative where you will not have to worry about having your email connected to a social network. Buy a domain name, use a private whois service like at NearlyFreeSpeech.Net so you can move between providers over the years but keep the same address.

If you really must comment on YouTube, create a Google Plus profile on a brand new Gmail account for those exact purposes. Understand that anything you write online can be traced back to you. We are not anonymous despite if you never use a real name. Google knows more about you and your interests than any other entity and it has years of your surfing and searching habits in its database.

Edited to add, if you hate the comments on your own YouTube videos, just turn them off.

<comment><USER8> Agreed on all points, but I'd just like to add:

Never saw the issue with YouTube comments. Always was much ado about nothing. So people were immature - it's funny. So people were insulting - grow up, they're having fun.

This whole movement to control YouTube comments reeks more of management's personal embarrassment that their customers weren't as serious and high class as they. Again, grow up. Not everyone is like you - not even your customers.

<comment><USER7> On a point I agree but not everyone has a thick skin to deal with the constant abuse some YouTubers face and they shouldn't have to.

But ultimately I believe the whole policy of linking Google Plus account to YouTube was to clean it up so it looks good for advertisers. They do not want their brand associated with some of the homophobic, sexist and racist comments some were posting.

<comment><USER9> The thing is, Facebook already proved that hateful people will happily spout bigotry and threats next to their real name and a photo of themselves. I can't believe Google isn't aware of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Also, people are different in different situations. People are different on youtube than they are on tumblr than they are on pinterest than they are on twitter than they are with their family than they are at the DMV than they are at a night club than they are ....

People aren't a personality attached to a name they're who they want to be at any given time and personalities change.

This kind of forced identity is not only dangerous for at risk individuals but is plainly anti-social and anti-human-behavior.

<comment><USER11> This is rather insightful. Now I'm actively considering changes in my personality based on different social interactions. I wonder if enjoyment of various activities is contingent upon the personality one puts on while engaging in them. Which raises the question, what if any parts of our personality are consistent throughout all activities.

<comment><USER12> See also the movie "Zelig" by Woody Allen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've got an especially unique last name as well. So much so that I'm absolutely sure nobody in the world has my full name, and, as far as I'm aware, it's possible my dad and I are the only people in the united states with the same first/last name (of the 7 total on facebook, only 3 are in North America). My brother and sister are in a similar boat, thanks to unique spelling of their names. From my last name alone, I'm sure you could track me down with just that and the information that I've been on hacker news.

Probably because of that, I've always been fairly paranoid about using my actual name on most things online, but graduating from a college, participating in research, and having a facebook account pretty much made it impossible to ever be truly anonymous.

<comment><USER14> My daughter specifically avoided creating a Facebook account until she went to university -- however, one of her classes had meetings which were calendared and discussed on a private FB group, so she had to join in order to participate in the class.

She used an alias that would be recognizable to her classmates -- but, like you, she didn't want her legal name to be easily searchable by prospective employers, health-insurance companies, estranged family members, bad-breakup exes, etc.

But, yes -- having a unique name makes anonymity and privacy more complex. And it shouldn't -- it penalizes people for the name they were BORN with, just because they can't blend into a sea of Bob/Joe/Sue/Tran/Wei names, which are more common.

The ability to create a persistent pseudonym and to use it for unmuzzled online discourse is especially vital for people who would be all-too-easy to track down otherwise . . . but I think that it's still essential in terms of free-speech and privacy concerns for everyone.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Yeah, this issue actually drives me crazy. I liked using Google+ as sort of a blogging platform, and I constantly linked to a lot of videos from youtube. (I've never had a youtube account, never posted a comment).

So, the other day, I link to a video I found interesting, and I notice I'm getting a lot more comments than usual. Problem is, they are all along the lines of "OMG, Why are idiots continuing to use hash tags" or "WTF man, who gives a shit about this video"

Just pure vitriol, where before the people who actually followed me on Google+ were at least respectful. As a result, I've basically resigned to not posting anything from youtube anymore because there is no way to disassociate yourself with the people who visit youtube.

</comment><comment><USER16> Seems like an opportunity for a browser plugin designed to enforce pseudonymity. You can already create different pseudonymous identities via cookie management or different user profiles.[1]

The problem with this approach is that it's inconvenient to keep switching back and forth. And all it takes is one inadvertent click to irreversibly associate your two pseudonyms. This is where a plugin could help. Basically, it just comes with very basic set of rules -- if YouTube, I am X; if Gmail, I am Y; else I am Z. For bonus points, integrate with Tor.

Anyone know of something like this already? Might be a fun weekend project otherwise.

[1] [https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en](https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/2364824?hl=en)

</comment><comment><USER17> I'm honestly surprised they didn't learn their lesson with the whole Buzz fiasco. Didn't they get sued over basically forced social connections?

<comment><AUTHOR> Did they? Details please!

<comment><USER18> Google to Pay $8.5 Million in Buzz Privacy Class Action Settlement

[http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2050437/Google-to- Pay-8...](http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2050437/Google-to- Pay-8.5-Million-in-Buzz-Privacy-Class-Action-Settlement)

<comment><USER19> 8.5 million is just a rounding error for Google.

<comment><USER20> Well, the canary you put in a coal mine isn't very expensive either, but it ought to tell you something...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think Google is choosing a particularly terrible point to start alienating users of YouTube. It seems like everywhere I go online these days, the YouTube hatred is universal. It's regarded as uncool, boring, obnoxious, and just generally yesterday's news. This is merely an observation, however a few years ago I rarely saw the kind of negative sentiment toward YouTube that is now very common.

If I were a betting person, I'd say that YouTube's days as the champ of their segment of the online video world is nearing an end. They'll straggle on with massive volume, courtesy of the barrier to entry that is the cost of streaming zillions of petabytes, but their product will be strongly disliked, and competitors will flourish. I believe users are desperate for a _high quality_ alternative at this point.

I personally don't see that YouTube presents an overwhelming value proposition any longer, compared to the hassle that it's becoming. As it is now, I use a separate browser, in incognito mode, to view YouTube because they're scumbags about trying to force a connection.

<comment><USER22> The bandwidth issue is a small obstacle for a potential competitor (solvable by venture capital) relative to the issue of video copyrights and offensive content moderation.

<comment><USER21> I definitely agree on the copyrighted content problem.

The VC issue is interesting. It would probably cost... hundreds of millions of dollars in capital over a few years to compete with YouTube properly (requiring HD, long length video), given the time it will most likely take to get up to speed on revenues / build a functioning business model, and the speed at which adoption often happens these days with successful products (wake up tomorrow with 50 million users wanting to stream your brains out).

We live in the age of pervasive offensive Internet content. Reddit is half offensive content, and then there's Tumblr and Snapchat, which thrived partially due to 'offensive' content. I view that as a trivial problem.

Whatever replaces YouTube, will likely be built on the back of sensationalistic offensive content. Nothing sells like sex / sex appeal, and that will never change. Indeed, people get accustomed to it, and then it takes even more dramatic content to get that sensationalism buzz.

<comment><USER23> > _Snapchat, which thrived partially due to 'offensive' content_

Assuming you mean sexting, I think the percentage of sexually explicit images sent on Snapchat has been wildly exaggerated — by tech journalists looking for clicks, and by older folks not in Snapchat's target market who don't really get the point. Snapchat's appeal for everyday, non-sexual use seems to go over the heads of most tech people I know, but has been described eloquently by, e.g., Nathan Jurgenson[1] and Dustin Curtis[2].

Porn on Tumblr and sexts on Snapchat make for interesting headlines, but I'd hesitate to credit either as a major reason for the platform's success without actual numbers on its prevalence. To my knowledge those numbers don't exist.

1\. [http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/pics-and-it-didnt- happen/](http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/pics-and-it-didnt-happen/)

2\. [http://dcurt.is/photos-for-communication](http://dcurt.is/photos-for- communication)

<comment><USER23> Just found out some numbers do exist thanks to Survata: [http://survata.com/blog/is-snapchat-only-used-for-sexting- we...](http://survata.com/blog/is-snapchat-only-used-for-sexting-we- asked-5000-people-to-find-out/)

Their conclusion: a smaller percentage of Snapchat users use the service to sext than text-messaging users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The YouTube/Google+ integration would have been much smoother if it started by giving every existing user a G+ "Page" identity matching their YouTube name, and making that page their default YouTube identity. From the user's perspective there would be no risk of accidentally connecting their legal name to YouTube, and Google would have achieved their goal of a unified login system.

<comment><USER25> This. It's too bad Google conflated their technical goal of a unified login system with their policy goal of whatever-their-policy-goal-is — probably something to do with knowing more about their users and/or getting them to interact with social features more.

<comment><USER26> Which is pretty funny to me, because this flat-out guarantees that I will not use their social features. As a currently non-transitioning trans woman, there are a great many YouTube videos that I enjoy but absolutely can not have associated with my legal name.

<comment><USER14> I understand how unsafe and unsettled that must make you feel, and I hope that you are able to continue enjoying YouTube without endangering and/or outing yourself. Good luck.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> What is the frequency with which these prompts to connect show up? I use youtube daily, G+ not at all and I've only seen them twice. These instances were at least a few months apart. In both cases, I opted out of connecting my profiles and nothing has happened since. Are some people getting these prompts more often? Why? Maybe someone on the G+ team can explain this.

 _without deleting my entire G+ account and profile_

I don't use G+/FB but even if I did, I have a hard time understanding this mentality. I wouldn't think twice about deleting any of social media profiles and even in places like HN where it's not possible to delete profiles, I just throwaway old profiles and start from scratch. Maybe I'm just paranoid but the last thing I want are my random musings being psychoanalyzed by nutters on the internet.

And as far as Gmail goes, you should be backing it up offline so that you can take your data and leave any time you want. This literally takes only 3 minutes to setup if you already use Thunderbird.

<comment><USER28> The prompt used to show up everytime you log in. If you use multiple computers, an authenticator or multiple accounts, that is quite frequently.

Since YT comments are now G+ comments, I believe it now shows up every time you try to interact with anything, such as like/favourite/comment etc.

I turned my YT account into a G+ page when the option became available as a way to get rid of the prompts without using my real name on YT.

<comment><USER27> I just liked and commented and nothing happened. I even left the 'post on G+' checkbox enabled and it still doesn't show up on my G+ profile. I've setup youtube to use a pseudonym, btw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Google just did not get the point up to this date. They want to press us into their ad-network, but the way they do is just annoying. I am also planning now to drop my Google account, because it just does get to much. Every time, I have to log in, I am asked about telephone number or to "add some little extra information" \-- I nearly got trapped recently. Just at the second look, I saw it was not "just some extra information" but they wanted me to sign up for G+. I will not and I will never. Because privacy is more worth than some candy they will give to you in return.

Facebook and Google don't care about your privacy, but you should, if you don't want to be abused in the new world of lost paradise.

</comment><comment><USER30> She makes some great points, and I agree completely.

But in a sense, by making the great points, we who enjoy some small degree of privacy and anonymity on-line have already given up too much ground. We shouldn't have to make Very Serious Points about sexual harassment or hate crimes. As if a solution to those (quite real) problems would then make on- line anonymity moot.

The fact is, I _like_ being pseudonymous on the web, and as it's not a situation I've been abusing, _that is reason enough_ to allow it to continue to be possible. That's just the way a free society rolls. Freedom of choice is (supposedly) one of the core values of the nation that spawned Google in the first place.

<comment><USER31> nothing about this situation is causing anonymity to cease to be possible on the internet. It just makes it more difficult on a single video-sharing site, one run by a single for-profit company.

Freedom of choice has never before been more relevant. You as an individual in a free web (which Google advocates for strongly) have the choice to move to any number of other platforms if you prefer anonymity while sharing/viewing videos online. If enough people believe in anonymity, traffic and users will migrate to another site, and Google/YT will become less relevant and/or be forced to policy backtrack.

Whether you are for or against the new commenting policy, we should all try not to exaggerate what it means for society at large.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It was about two years ago I closed my G+ account because of that [https://jeena.net/gplus](https://jeena.net/gplus) and I just had a look at my G+ account (which I closed) and there are posts that I have been using hangouts and some YouTube comment too. So I assume it is not possible to really close a G+ account.

</comment><comment><USER33> So what is the next coup? Linking all the comments from the past that you wrote when you were thinking it was pseudonymous to your real name?

My only recommendation: Get out of such services as fast as possible.

<comment><USER34> At this point, everyone really needs to decide whether _all_ of their usage of Google services will be linked to their real-life identity, or none whatsoever (and migrate all usage of Google services linked to their real-life identity elsewhere)

Maintaining multiple distinct identities through various Google services is only going to become harder, and with shit like this I wouldn't trust even completely separate Google logins to maintain distinct identities in the future.

<comment><USER35> _At this point, everyone really needs to decide whether all of their usage of Google services will be linked to their real-life identity, or none whatsoever_

For a while I've lived under the illusion that if you sign out, log out from Google, you will be less prone to tracking. That was until I had to fool around with multiple Google accounts for some testing.

When I click "sign out" do you know what the default landing screen is? "Sign in"!

And do you know what that screen shows you? Every single google account you've ever logged into. They know who you are. Every single identity you've created.

So yeah. Logging out or using multiple accounts is no protection. They're still tracking you.

It's like brigade says here: Unless you're all out, you're 100% in as far as Google is concerned.

<comment><USER33> Delete Cookies, change IP, probably even switch browsers, block Analytics and G+ buttons. At least makes it a little harder for them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Instead of merging with your G+ account you can link it to a G+ page (and use your YT username or other pseudonym as its name). This is part of the "link your account" flow. I think this would fix her problem.

<comment><USER37> Except that's not the flow they gave her. The flow she got was "surprise, you're linked!"

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> I think it's time -- Google or elsewhere -- to realize that anytime you post anything on the Internet, it can and will be used against you by anyone who dislikes you.

So the strategy is to not make enemies or to not post things that you can imagine, even in the slightest, being used against you. Not sure which is easier...

Of course, it's not all or nothing. You should take the minor inconvenience of using multiple browsers, one for your public name and the one in which you want to, for some reason, gain a following through participation, a la one of the Wiggin kids

</comment><comment><USER39> Google is simply doing the noble thing. It is fucking-up so that it can pave the way for a better company to dominate. For a while. This is the way of Silicon Valley. Amirite Vic G.?

</comment><comment><USER40> I feel like some people who claim they want privacy really don't value their privacy, but instead value something else (I hypothesize that it's just control) that seems like privacy.

You can find this poster's name by using Google Image search to link to her Flickr then from there she has her domain registered with her full name and address. (this pattern is pretty common, by that, I mean, given some identifying information, you can find a lot more. Anonymity is only effective if you practice consistent inconsistency.) A pseudonym here, a handle there, these are all things that establish permanence and link together to make an identifiable entity.

Putting your real name into YouTube isn't the problem here. This doesn't mean there isn't a problem, but it's not quite the problem being stated here.

<comment><USER14> Thanks for pointing out that security vulnerability -- blessedly, I didn't use current legal name/address info for the website (I do my best to be cagey about that stuff online -- that's similar to, but not identical to, my actual name), but I'll have to look into obscuring the WHOIS information further. Pisses me off to have to pay for privacy, when that information shouldn't be public for private individuals who own a domain.

And, yes, I really do value my privacy -- but, since my own knowledge of trackback information is limited (and Google Image Search is much more recent than the creation of my personal site), it's less that I don't value my privacy, and more that I failed to foresee that using the same _profile photo_ (not even name/nym) on more than one site would create a security vulnerability.

I appreciate the heads-up, but, again, this only emphasizes the issues of Google (and the issue of requiring personal information to be visible on WHOIS to anyone other than government agencies) encroaching on personal privacy and the ability to _compartmentalize_ profiles between different services.

I'm a different person on G+, Flickr, FB, LJ, etc. -- I tailor my posts to the interest groups that I share in various locations (and my perception of my own privacy -- I realize that a subpoena would break the security of a friends- locked post on LJ, but it's at least a relatively private space to share more personal information, whereas my profile on G+ has been more deliberately forward-facing, because I was interested in engaging with people _outside_ my existing trust circle.

Putting my real name into YouTube actually _was_ the problem that sparked my original post -- but it's symptomatic of a larger issue, the deliberate contraction of the ability to create persistent pseudonyms and personae that are consistent within the bounds of a single social network, but aren't necessarily easily trackable/connectible by a random stranger.

(I will say -- finding this out did decrease my sense of safety, since it's obvious that my intent to compartmentalize by using different persistent nyms, and building reputation under each nym, which can vary based on platform, was insufficient to protect a casual observer from landing on what COULD have been my actual name and address, had I not deliberately decided to risk the loss of my domain by putting in information that was designed to trap spammers -- i.e., if I got something addressed to that specific name, I knew that it was coming from someone who had looked up the WHOIS info.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Maybe Google is trying to do us a favor, and spare us the illusion of anonymity when true anonymity is dead. That's my most charitable interpretation. Less charitably, they simply don't care how their policies happen to burn x% of their user base: "we'll you probably shouldn't be active online if you can't deal with a few stalkers."

<comment><AUTHOR> The latter is literally what they think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> One of the great features of the internet is the fact that you can remain anonymous under a username if you want to. I, personally, have never chosen to use a username that is not identifiable with me--but I realize there are people out there that want to (or need to) remain anonymous, especially if they post content (comments or even other content).

That's one of the great features of the internet itself, and honestly it's a shame that certain companies like Google wants to force using our real names on everyone.

It does make sense, though, that if a company such as Google owns multiple services or sites, they would want users to use the same accounts across multiple platforms. However, I don't see why you can't use different usernames or personas across multiple services: just log in using one account, but use several different public usernames (if you want to do that) across different sites.

</comment><comment><USER43> Why would anyone harass someone who's eating bacon in their profile picture? On the other hand, I think she nailed the description of the typical (90%) YT commenter.

<comment><USER44> Assuming your question was serious: Because she displays a very minor amount of cleavage in the picture, with a pleasant smile.

In other words, her picture is fun and completely unobjectionable.

Unfortunately, if that picture is shown outside of her private context it's also liable to generate hordes of crude come-ons from lonely men who see it while browsing Youtube. This is different from a facebook profile picture because she can't comment without showing it.

If you know any women who use OK Cupid, ask them how many creepy messages they have to filter through. Or if you truly want to be horrified, make a personals ad on Craigslist pretending to be a woman. You will get pictures of penises.

<comment><USER45> I understand her discomfort with harassers, but it seems to me that it's a trade between crude come-ons from people with real names attached and murder/rape threats from people without their real names attached.

I prefer a web where pseudonyms are allowed, but if anything, real names could reduce harassment.

<comment><USER14> What Amagumori said -- I can block/delete harassing comments (and do, on a regular basis), but I am far more concerned with murder/rape threats from _people who know where I live_.

I'm a big girl, I can deal with crude come-ons appropriately (which is to say, snort/fume depending on the content, then report, block, and delete.)

What concerns me is the unwanted linking of _trackable_ personal information, through a service that had been repeatedly declined by the user in question.

I'm thankful that I am _not_ in compliance with Google's "real-name" policy, or else I'd potentially have harassers showing up at my door -- and that's a shitty, uncomfortable, violated feeling to be experiencing, because Google broke my trust after I told them that I didn't _want_ to share that information, and they shared it anyway, without giving me a chance to opt out.

In this case, no actual harm was done. However, it illustrates the potential for harm very clearly -- when you require "real names" (and, in some cases, enforce that with requests for drivers-license scans, etc., as has happened a number of times since the G+ nymwars started), you _must_ respect your users' privacy choices about how they want those names to be shared with the public.

All it takes is one stalker, one violent ex, one deranged family member, and their real-name policy, combined with the collapse of walls that users set up for self-protection, is a recipe for preventable tragedy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> At least for now, you CAN delete only your Google Plus stuff without also removing your Gmail

<comment><USER47> That's fine so long as you trust Google to abide by their word on how they do or don't link or structure their services.

The point of the G+ article referenced by the OP that I wrote, is that I had _repeatedly_ responded "no" to the option of linking my (pseudonymous) YouTube account with my (pseudonymous) G+ account, strictly on the merits that I'd used the same (pseudonymous) Gmail account to originally register for both.

At the time I'd set each of these services up, they were a freestanding service. I'd created a Gmail account some years back recognizing that having a pseudonymous identity would be useful to me. I later created a YouTube account to be able to access the occasional restricted video. I've occasionally commented on and/or rated videos, but as those actions became increasingly public and accessible, I've periodically purged my content there under that account. And when G+ started up, having first created an account under my real name, I rapidly decided that I _didn 't_ want an "identity service", deleted that G+ profile (elements of it remain but I make very little use of them) and switched to a pseudonymous account as my primary persona on that service.

Now Google have, against my wishes, elected to merge the previously independent G+ and YouTube accounts. And for the life of me I can't figure out how to un-do that, or to disable the YouTube account entirely.

I also no longer trust Google to keep separate aspects of my online existence separate.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I am a Google fan, but this move by shoving something down everyone's throats isn't very Google.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ever since G+ started, two years ago, it's _totally_ Google. This is who Google is now.

<comment><USER48> I agree. And it's not as bad as we are portraying it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I am very positive this would be the perfect moment to start a kickstarer funded youtube clone! Yea, glad I inspired your next big project, thank me later! (But please don't forget to... I know you won't if you are a good hacker. I am not in the position to dedicate any time/resources to this project. Please ask me for some contact info when you are sure you will be diving into this. Please do it, and... good luck!)

</comment><comment><USER50> A comment I left a few weekends ago, which addressed the same topic but before the Youtube/G+ story broke: [0]

"Hijacking the top comment to talk about a big concern I have. This EFF article argues that there's a place for Anonymity on the Internet [1], and I think most of us agree (especially if we emphathize with those in Iran, China, Syria, and the like).

But what HNers must realize is the following: The mainstream Internet _can not become_ the Tor-visited Dark-Net (which restores anonymity) that many believe is inevitable WITHOUT losing its positive sociological impact. Sites like Reddit, Twitter, even HN rely on anonymity and also provide a great deal of such value. Here's a simple example of 'sociological impact': CNN (FoxNews, etc) pays attention to what the top links on Reddit are, because the site is in the public's face -- and: the people have a collective voice.

Next: Without the perception of anonymity, sites like Reddit will stop flourishing.

Let's go deeper: Reddit's culture thrives on "anonymity" in the form of throwaway accounts and people being themselves without representing themselves. Throwaway accounts (heard of 'Cation Bot' or 'AWildSketchAppeared'?) are a form of expression unique to environments which allow for anonymity (pseudonyms). Who's to say novelty accounts would be as risque or hilarious without anonymity? Certainly these sites flourish because users feel comfortable playing a part and taking a chance.

There are two issues at play which threaten anonymity on Reddit. Now obvious (in light of Snowden's leaks): 1.) Reddit usernames can, and probably are, being mapped to peoples' actual identity. ... Not as obvious: 2.) Users' up and down votes, even private messages, can also be sniffed with ease.

Reddit's' devteam has retreated from the idea of providing HTTPS for its voting/web API [2], so people's actions (aside from comments) can be mapped as well. I tried to raise awareness of this issue five months ago [3]. I know there's an argument to be made that SSL/HTTPS is useless anyway (just use Tor!, they say), but the bigger question remains:

Can a mainstream community such as Reddit exist in tomorrow's Internet? I'd say that such web-societies are fragile -- likely targets of dragnet surveillance and subversion, especially given their disruptive nature.

People and the press are paranoid about Facebook/Google privacy because its users (are encouraged to) identify themselves _explicitly_ , but the reality is no different with sites like Reddit - just the perception. Just think about how much more is shared on a site like Reddit by its members because of their pseudonyms! Few people aside from the avid Tor-using//r/netsec crowd have realized this.

Reddit is the internet "as we know it," and I feel the Internet is about to change.

In hindsight - Google's initial "no pseudonyms" policy for Google+ was prescient -- though the company eventually capitulated to popular demand for them. [4] Perhaps they wished to save each of us the unsavory realization that aliases exist in name-only (pun intended). :/"

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6652909](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6652909) [1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity- not-o...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-only- trolls-and-political-dissidents) [2] [http://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/l4n6y/reddit_chan...](http://www.reddit.com/r/changelog/comments/l4n6y/reddit_change_log_in_with_ssl_javascript_fixes/) [3] [http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit...](http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit_needs_fullsite_https/) [4] [http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames- pseudonyms-...](http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms- aliases-399584)

<comment><USER51> It's interesting that you would hold up reddit as an example of the "positive sociological impact" of anonymity on the internet, when OP specifically describes her desire to avoid "sexist, racist, homophobic, sophomoric, monosyllabic jerks"—precisely the sort of creature that reddit breeds. Though to be fair, the anonymity may not be to blame for reddit's culture, seeing as other internet forums with similar traditions of anonymity have managed to avoid attracting such unpleasant crowds.

<comment><USER52> But on reddit you can create an account called "fred_jones" or "slwkajbgj" instead of "Eleanora Rashid-Feldman" and avoid having that behaviour directed at you like a heat-seeking missile. GP is arguing that the douchebags only become a significant problem if your diversity[1] status is tagged to your profile.

[1] Women are the majority, so "minority status" => "diversity status"

<comment><USER53> _Women are the majority_

This is why I use the term "marginalized groups" rather than "minority". Black people were a majority in apartheid South Africa. But they were marginalized.

<comment><USER54> The term minority has a specific meaning in sociology not the same that it means in statistics.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_(sociology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Majority_\(sociology\))

Rather than a relational "social group", as the term would indicate, the term refers to a category that is differentiated and defined by the social majority, that is, those who hold the majority of positions of social power in a society. The differentiation can be based on one or more observable human characteristics, including, for example, ethnicity, race, gender, wealth, health or sexual orientation. Usage of the term is applied to various situations and civilizations within history, despite its popular mis- association with a numerical, statistical minority.

Blacks were still the minority in apartheid South Africa, just not the statistical minority.

<comment><USER53> Yep.

But in spaces like there, where people are unlikely to know things like that, it can be helpful to use terms like "margalized group" or "oppressed group", in order to stop a pedantic geek ( :) ) getting into a dictionary definition argument.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> What I am not getting here is this. I get why people may want to be anonymous. Google says - no can do, you can not be anonymous with us. We insist on identifying you. Why keep using Google services and complain instead of using some other service more respectful of one's privacy? It's not like one cannot live without commenting on youtube videos.

<comment><USER56> _> >Google says - no can do, you can not be anonymous with us._

Where does Google say that? Is it as direct as you put it, or is it to be inferred from a constantly changing variety of experiences with Google services and settings?

<comment><USER55> It says it by their actions which are not conductive to one's anonymity - <USER2> name policy, etc. It is clear that they goal is for users to have their real- life identity to be linked to their Google identity. Which may be not what the user desires - but that just means the product Google is selling is not for this user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> I mostly stopped using my Google account and created a new one with a fake name... for when I feel like leaving a comment.

</comment><comment><USER58> Public and/or anonymous data should be posted to a single global, anonymous, distributed storage system [1]. All other data should be stored on your personal system with 700 permissions, and require explicit pull requests from your system parties interested in using it.

This setup could offer a public, searchable medium that is safe for anonymous discourse, and includes plausible deniability, as well as a protected personal space with fine-grained access control. A brightnet/darknet system.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFFSystem](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OFFSystem)

</comment><comment><USER59> There are plenty of Google bots on this site. Do any of them care to comment?

</comment><comment><USER60> This is fascinating: is the internet not as male as we all thought? Is the default assumption that it's male and women have wrapped themselves in the safety of the net's ultimate default setting?

<comment><USER61> So far as I'm aware, at least since the early 2000s or so, women have contributed the majority of user-created content on the internet. They just don't visibly do it in the few relatively small echo-chamber places HN readers are likely to frequent, so HN readers end up assuming that the internet looks like what they see on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> Am I the only one who finds it ironic that she's posting her criticisms from Google+? I'm not trying to be snarky or funny. Does she genuinely value her Google+ blog or associations or whatever more than the privacy she's so concerned about?

She can, in fact, delete Google+ and keep Gmail. Try it. I have!

Since Google supposedly runs on data, the only way Google is going to figure out their problems is if people delete Google+ or stop using it. Otherwise there's no such thing as bad publicity, especially if you're an advertising company.

<comment><USER14> G+ was my public-facing platform, the place where I engaged with people who I _didn 't_ know (most of my posts are public there.) It's separate from my normal online identity, deliberately (the people who read my friendslocked posts in my own space know about my G+ nym and profile, but I chose not to connect it to my normal nym and other personal information.)

I've found it to be an interesting, valuable, informative way to keep up with news, to meet people whose social spheres I wouldn't have otherwise encountered, and to have thoughtful, ongoing conversations. It's a space where I'm engaged in political, social, and specific-group-related commentary (gender and sexual minorities, disability-related discussions.)

I knew that, by using G+ publicly, I was giving up a carefully-considered amount of privacy -- but that was associated with a _single nym_ , not my larger online identity.

Does Google know who I am? Yeah, sure. What I _didn 't_ want was Joe Public (or, worse, Joe YouTube) being able to track me cross-platform, which is why I never associated it with my normal persistent pseudonym or my other spheres of online activity.

I'm criticizing G+ _from_ G+, because I'd love to see some changes made by Google. That's the best way I have of reaching an audience that includes Google employees, and it's also the platform where I've had the most frequent discussions of online privacy, etc.

Sure, I could try to go in and delete everything I've ever posted, now that Google has pulled its latest anti-privacy move. What, exactly, would that accomplish? It's still cached, and as various people will tell you, it's difficult to _fully_ delete a G+ profile, unless you'd like to give up using _all_ Google services (and I have yet to find a mail provider who gives me similar utility for free, or for a low price.)

I didn't mind the targeted ads in Gmail, they were the price I paid for using the service. What I _do_ mind is the forced merging and integration of activities and nyms which users had repeatedly requested _not_ be merged (I declined to merge my YT account _repeatedly_.)

Since I wasn't an active YT user, and I was able to re-link my YT profile to a dead-end G+ page after the fact, I have not been directly harmed.

But if I'd been someone who was an active YT content provider on a controversial subject, for example, or if I'd been outed in some way by the merge, or if I'd actually FOLLOWED Google's real-name policy and used my full legal name as they had wanted, there was certainly the potential for substantial harm to be done -- because _that_ allows people to follow me (and other users) home -- both virtually and physically.

Google's convenience for data-marketing shouldn't outweigh personal safety or privacy concerns. I'm less distressed by their having the information _available_ than I am with them _sharing it with the public_ , after repeatedly declining their "offer" and not being given the option to opt-out.

The existence of a work-around (a dead-end "page") does not mean that the action was an acceptable one to take in the first place -- and it took a savvy user advising me of the work-around to cause me to look up how to do it . . . there wasn't an option for me to do so at the time they merged my accounts, which would have solved a lot of the related privacy concerns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER63> Waiting for a follow-up to [http://xkcd.com/202/](http://xkcd.com/202/)

Making this privacy mess funny seems quite the challenge though.

</comment><comment><USER64> don't think it's totally unreasonable to speculate that plus could become the 'new tab page' in chrome down the line, the way things are going

</comment><comment><USER65> This is annoying indeed. I don't have a G+ account at all, and it seems that Youtube created one for me, though it has no real name in it.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Anyone who still works for Google has to think seriously about what they're getting up in the morning to do every day.

</comment><comment><USER66> I think it's kind of offensive to refer to a product decision by a website as Anschluss; both because it implies Google's leadership are the Nazis, and because it trivializes the actual German/Austrian union (and thus beginning of WW2).

Marginally more offensive than the "co-prosperity sphere" thing pinboardguy did.

<comment><USER14> To be clear, that wasn't my term (it was the title of a link that I reposted), but I agree with you -- I'd have personally chosen something with less of the weight of history and atrocity behind it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> It amuses me slightly that I get prompted to log in with my Google account when clicking the +1 button below this article.

</comment><comment><USER68> Alternatively, why not think of it this way: If you disagree with what's being done on YouTube, delete your account and move on. Nobody's forcing anyone to comment or maintain a Google account. If you're going to be there, you play by their rules. What's the point in bitching about Google's changes in policy when Google isn't forcing you to use their product and when you can leave when you want to.

<comment><AUTHOR> A lot of the problem is reneging on previous privacy/data segregation policies. That is an entirely legitimate complaint.

There's also the question of to what extent you can opt out in the modern world. Got a mobile phone, pretty much essential to work or life these days? Your life is now beholden to Google or Apple. So "lol just stop using it" is fatuous.

<comment><USER69> Well said!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER70> Kind of unrelated question: Do you guys see comments on YouTube videos or it is just me? I don't see anything.

<comment><USER71> Maybe you're blocking apis.google.com or plus.googleapis.com?

Even more unrelated: NoScript users who allow apis.google.com might want to add an Adblock Plus 'Ad Blocking Rule' ||apis.google.com/js/plusone.js to prevent spying via G+ buttons.

<comment><USER70> And now that I checked again, I get them. This is weird... I use AdBlock Plus, maybe it updated its filters?

Thanks anyway!

<comment><USER72> Have you unchecked the "Allow non-intrusive advertising" option in AdBlock Plus? I think that Google has paid to be added to the list.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER73> I still see people commenting with their normal YT usernames. How do they do it?

</comment><comment><USER74> The easiest way to solve this is to get rid of your G+ profile.

<comment><USER75> You _cant_. That's the problem. You automatically get that profile by having a gmail account. They're trying to force you to use that profile for YouTube as well. Google has these incredibly valuable products and that work great separately but they're trying to mash everything together.

<comment><USER76> False. You can delete just your G+ profile here: [https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1044503?hl=en](https://support.google.com/plus/answer/1044503?hl=en)

<comment><USER77> I wish that were true. I have never enabled Google plus, yet there is a profile page out there for me. So when I got to plus.google.com I get the "Set up your account!" page but there is a link for me at [https://profiles.google.com/[long](https://profiles.google.com/\[long) number string] that has my full name and gender on it and I can't find any way to delete that profile.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> OP here -- I am absolutely in favor of persistent pseudonyms associated with a user-generated reputation system, as discussed here:

[https://plus.google.com/u/0/102524008019896509925/posts/ivyA...](https://plus.google.com/u/0/102524008019896509925/posts/ivyA6FS9XR7?cfem=1)

However, there are significant safety issues associated with requiring people to use their legal names for online discussions, and I think that it will seriously muzzle political dissent, social movements which don't currently enjoy mainstream support, gender and sexual minority group discussions, the creation of "safe spaces" (which, I realize, are something of an illusion, but still have value), and vigorous intellectual discourse.

I certainly wouldn't have been comfortable being as politically and socially outspoken as I am on G+ (a deliberately public-facing persona with a unique nym for that purpose), if I had been forced to use my full legal name for the purpose.

Given some of the hate and harassment that has been directed my way (and, honestly, I've gotten off light compared to many), I absolutely would not feel safe engaging in some of those discussions if my name, phone number, and location were easily accessible.

I know that it's difficult to completely compartmentalize between nyms and platform identities, but I think that the ability to choose which face is forward, appropriate to the social group that you're engaging with, is an important part of the human experience.

If you don't want your boss and your grandmother reading your opinions on politics, social issues, sexuality, etc., then a pseudonym is the obvious answer -- and I've seen any number of sites (LiveJournal is a particular favorite) implement granular controls on privacy, in order to establish nym identity and reputation, while still allowing users to speak to their chosen audience.

Can you ever be truly private? Probably not. But it's important to be able to have some form of shield from the casual observer, to have a name and identity that _you_ choose, rather than having one chosen for you, which may reveal far more than you intended.

Yes, I post publicly on G+, and sacrifice some level of privacy in doing so -- I do it because I enjoy the level of discourse on that site, and talking with interesting strangers is part of the fun. On the other hand, I deliberately didn't link that profile with any of my other online identities . . . and, while I may not have done a perfect job of it, I at least did my best to create walls between those personae.

As Dredmorbius said, it's important that users be able to maintain those walls if they choose, without a service provider choosing to collapse them and merge those identities without permission. By using their services, I did _not_ consent to that action (in fact, repeatedly refused their attempts to do so), and if given a choice between leaving the Google-services hive and having my legal identity attached to everything I've ever written, I'd leave.

What is deceptive and duplicitous about this latest G+/YouTube action, is that many users who _expressly refused_ the "offer" to merge accounts were merged without permission, and often those merges revealed personal information that the users had not chosen to share with YouTube.

I find that _intensely_ disturbing, and I am seriously hoping that some type of action is taken against Google, as with Buzz, regarding the breach of private user information.

</comment><comment><USER47> OP's G+ post was a link to a reshare of mine (a story in itself).

I've just made a far-too-long reply to the "Dear Googles: Stop asking" story _also_ trending on HN (how'd I get so lucky? No idea, but thanks). I'll try keeping things shorter here, though recommend reading this as well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748332](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6748332)

First: this is fundamentally about respect and trust. Google respecting user's stated preferences regarding disclosure, and users trusting that Google will do so. I argue at length above that the first is absent and the second has been destroyed. This is quite bad for Google's reputation in the long run, _especially_ as a cloud services company.

I'm finding this ... exceptionally confounding given Google's apparent strident opposition to NSA and other surveillance (a position of Google's I unreservedly applaud). As I've argued before, Google with their ever-expanding and increasingly aggressive personal information aggregation efforts are carrying the NSA's water. Personal information _can_ be an asset, but it's also a tremendous liability when misused or mismanaged.

The fact that I've participated in multiple forums (including G+, Hacker News, Reddit, StackExchange, and elsewhere) pseudonymously over the past several years should show that it's possible to carry on reasoned discussions as such. I'd rather intentionally set up this persona to give me both freedom _and_ an at least partially credible reputation for some discussions. As an experiment it's worked pretty well.

What happened with the YouTube / G+ integration (Anschluss as I term it) above is that three Google services I'd independently registered: Gmail, YouTube, and G+, collapsed the walls between each. I'd set these up beginning in 2008 as I determined I'd want a long-term resident pseudonym and I gradually started extending it to additional services. When G+ was first beta'd, I'd initially signed up under my own name, but was quickly convinced by Eric Schmidt's "identity service" comments and NymWars that this was probably not the way I wanted to go, so I wiped that account and set up a pseudonymous one (against G+ TOU at the time). At some point I'd also configured a YouTube account, using the same Gmail account to register both. My views on video viewing (as with much else) are that it's a private activity and, even pseudonymously, I don't share my viewing actions with others unless I fully consciously intend to do so. Some of us with longer memories recall Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and the snooping of his video rental habits, as well as librarians who resisted FBI attempts to turn up patron's library records.

So I had and intended to retain a wall between the two accounts.

And Google knocked it down.

So I posted about it. And I'm trying to figure out what to do with my G+ account, so when Andi re-shared my post and found that other's couldn't re- share her (excellent) content, I recommended she _keep_ the re-share (as that will preserve my own content should I purge it or leave G+), and create a _new_ post _linking_ to her own re-share. That's ... one of many hoops G+ makes you jump through. All. The. Time.

Not only did Google demolish that wall, against my intent, but there's no clear way to undo that action. As I mentioned to Yonatan Zunger, this is no longer about UI/UX, workflows, tools, or technology, it's about trust. And Google have very clearly demonstrated that they cannot be trusted to maintain a confidence expressly stated as such.

Trust is a privilege I give once. Never twice.

In my case, the actual damage to my reputation and person is minimal: I don't exist. There is no Edward Morbius, he's a reference to a 1958 film character whose abbreviated username looks vaguely interesting. For someone such as Andi S, it's another story. For some people, this could be career, relationship, or life-ending. Google's inability to grasp just how wrong what they've done is ... is absolutely unconscionable. I really don't get it.

But even for the ordinary person with nothing to fear who'd tried to do what an Andi, or Edward Snowden, or Karen Silkwood, or Deep Throat, or Ai Weiwei, or countless others have done, but _simply wishes to keep different aspects of their online activities separated_ would find their wishes disrespected.

And that's really low.

It's also not isolated. I won't re-cap my other HN comment here, other than to note that the lack of respect shown here seems endemic to G+ generally, and increasingly to Google as a company. Where it once provided useful tools which made my life easier and richer, it increasingly gets in my way and sets up traps. This isn't a good sign.</comment>


Show HN: NVMX – Full featured and cross platform Node.js version manager - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/pd4d10/nvmx <comment><USER2> I'm all for choices, but how is this different from NVM? Is there a reason I should switch?

<comment><AUTHOR> The initial motivation is, I need a nvm works at Windows. nvmx is only for macOS and Linux

In addition, nvmx also support nightly, rc, v8-canary version of Node.js, and Microsoft's node-chakaracore

If nvm already meets your needs, I don't think it is necessary to try nvmx.

But If you need the features listed above, just try it:)</comment></comment>


Climate change global editorial - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/06/copenhagen-editorial

<comment><USER2> It's funny that they'd go ahead with this after all that's happened in the last couple weeks (the so called "Climategate")

I'm certainly not saying the accusations debunk Global Warming or anything like that. But when something comes up that throws what I initially believed into doubt I go back and investigate I don't keep pushing as hard as I was.

The fact that these people would come out so strongly even after the last two weeks makes me think their opinion is based more on dogma than it is on science.

<comment><USER3> Doesn't 'Climate Gate':

\- just effect the 'tree ring' data and projections based upon it? \- bring in to question a few scientists ethics?

There are still thousands of other data sets and thousands of other scientists that point toward global warming and mans influence on the global climate.

I may be reading this wrong but after two weeks not a lot of come from the leaked emails to make me doubt the science as a whole. Granted it's still 'best guess' science and the tree ring data just goes to show how our best knowledge may still be flawed but to do nothing is more stupid then to 'put our best foot forward' as it were.

<comment><USER4> No, the flawed data sets and 'tricks' were reused for many papers. There was a tight circle of scientist who published most of the global warming nonsense.

<comment><USER3> Trick in a scientific context is just a clever thing to do. It's not a deceitful trick.

A lot of scientific papers use the term trick.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It is a well tought, well written and well argued editorial.

But I fear it is a "dog bites man" story and the invented Climategate scandal is a "man bites dog" story. So guess which one makes it to front pages, headlines and blogs.

</comment><comment><USER6> What I see is that no North-American heavyweights are endorsing the editorial. Not even middle weights from "progressive" cities such as San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Austin, Denver and the like.

I wonder if ClimateGate had anything to do with that. The New York Times didn't have any issue to remain at least "not clear" when US attacked Irak with claims that proved to be false. Then the same newspaper endorsed Hillay Clinton at the beginning of the last US presidential campaign. They "converted" to Barack Obama's cause later on.

I see big media in the US not willing to show an strong opinion in this topic. Media will be able to weigth and remember each other's position on this in 20-30 years.

Aren't editorials to lead in specially tough decisions? Or it's just me who didn't understand that concept in journalism school 10 years ago?</comment>


Design is a Search Problem - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fThhbt23SGM

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7825065](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7825065)

<comment><AUTHOR> I hoped that if this was already posted, HN would just redirect me to that page. Seems like this isn't always the case.

<comment><USER2> It's complicated. If the URL isn't an exact match some extremely limited normalization may be applied. More, if the item is no longer in cache then it doesn't match at all. This is regarded as a feature.</comment></comment></comment>


The Rebirth and Future of Dashboard.io - <AUTHOR> https://dashboard.io/blog/the-re-birth-and-future-of-dashboard-io

<comment><USER2> Paul has built something awesome. And something that's been entirely missing for many of us---both as mentors and accelerator managers. We've tried to throw any number of the existing tools at this issue to no avail. I'm really looking forward to putting Dashboard through its paces with the next class of PIE.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use dashboard.io with 500 Startups, NextGen Angels and AOL Fishbowl Labs and love it!!!

oh and for Fortify / The Fort too

</comment><comment><USER4> We're using Dashboard for Launch Pad and it has been awesome for our founders. Excited to have the chance to use it!

<comment><USER5> Glad to have you guys onboard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> We are starting to use Dashboard at NxtpLabs. Great features for founders and staff. Awesome support team. Arturo

<comment><USER5> Thanks Arturo - glad to have you folks onboard!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> How can an accelerator get on Dashboard?

<comment><USER5> Just email me directly and I'll get your private community setup.</comment></comment>


Over half of Google employees polled say memo author should not have been fired - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/many-google-employees-dont-think-james-damore-should-have-been-fired-2017-8 <comment><USER2> Two points: First, beware these results. This is a self-selected online survey, not a scientific sampling. Two categories of people might not respond - those who didn't want to be identified of wrongthink, and those whose reactions to the firing were "meh" rather than strong opinions.

Second, it would be interesting to see what the reaction was among specifically female Google employees.

<comment><USER3> > those who didn't want to be identified of wrong think

I'm inclined to think the kind of employees most afraid of that would be those who didn't want him fired.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Why not do a leave of absence thing? Am I the only one that's seen the cop shows 'Leave your badge and take some time to cooloff, Riggs'.</comment>