>But on the other hand, we all rally for the importance of anonymity on the internet, so it's very likely that there will be no way to find the author.
So:
1) We all rally for the importance of anonymity (wrt general speech) EVERYWHERE, before even (and critical to) the founding of America. Writing like the Federalist Papers were absolutely central to arguments for the US Constitution, and they were anonymous. "The Internet" is not anything special or novel here per se when it comes to the philosophy and politics of anonymous speech. There has always been a tension with anonymous speech risks vs value, and America has come down quite firmly on the value side of that.
2) That said, "anonymous" on the internet very rarely actually is to the level of "no way to find the author with the aid of US court ordered process". Like, I assume that just as my real name is not "xoa" your real name is not "xg15", and to the extent we have made some effort at maintaining our pseudonymity it'd be somewhat difficult for any random member of the general public to connect our HN speech to our meatspace bodies. But the legal process isn't limited to public information. If you have a colorable lawsuit against someone, you can sue their placeholder and then attempt to discover their identity via private data. HN has our IP addresses if nothing else, as does intermediaries between the system we're posting from and HN, as well as possibly a valid email address. Which can potentially by themselves be enough breadcrumbs to follow back to a person and have enough cause to engage in specific discovery against them. And this is without any money getting involved, if there are any payments of any kind that leaves an enormous number of ripples. And that's assuming nobody left any other clues, that you can't make any inferences about who would be doing defamatory speech against you and narrow it down further that.
Yes, it's possible someone at random is using a massive number of proxies from a camera-less logless public access point with virgin monero or whatever and perfect opsec, but that really is not the norm.
3) Hosters not being directly liable doesn't make them immune to court orders. If something is defamatory you can secure an order to have it removed even without finding the person in question. And in practice most hosters are probably going to remove something upon notification as fast as possible, as in this case, and ban the poster in question on top.
So no, I don't think it's a "a massive vacuum of responsibility" anymore than it ever was, and the contrast is that eliminating anonymous speech is a long proven massive risk to basic freedoms.
>But on the other hand, we all rally for the importance of anonymity on the internet, so it's very likely that there will be no way to find the author.
So:
1) We all rally for the importance of anonymity (wrt general speech) EVERYWHERE, before even (and critical to) the founding of America. Writing like the Federalist Papers were absolutely central to arguments for the US Constitution, and they were anonymous. "The Internet" is not anything special or novel here per se when it comes to the philosophy and politics of anonymous speech. There has always been a tension with anonymous speech risks vs value, and America has come down quite firmly on the value side of that.
2) That said, "anonymous" on the internet very rarely actually is to the level of "no way to find the author with the aid of US court ordered process". Like, I assume that just as my real name is not "xoa" your real name is not "xg15", and to the extent we have made some effort at maintaining our pseudonymity it'd be somewhat difficult for any random member of the general public to connect our HN speech to our meatspace bodies. But the legal process isn't limited to public information. If you have a colorable lawsuit against someone, you can sue their placeholder and then attempt to discover their identity via private data. HN has our IP addresses if nothing else, as does intermediaries between the system we're posting from and HN, as well as possibly a valid email address. Which can potentially by themselves be enough breadcrumbs to follow back to a person and have enough cause to engage in specific discovery against them. And this is without any money getting involved, if there are any payments of any kind that leaves an enormous number of ripples. And that's assuming nobody left any other clues, that you can't make any inferences about who would be doing defamatory speech against you and narrow it down further that.
Yes, it's possible someone at random is using a massive number of proxies from a camera-less logless public access point with virgin monero or whatever and perfect opsec, but that really is not the norm.
3) Hosters not being directly liable doesn't make them immune to court orders. If something is defamatory you can secure an order to have it removed even without finding the person in question. And in practice most hosters are probably going to remove something upon notification as fast as possible, as in this case, and ban the poster in question on top.
So no, I don't think it's a "a massive vacuum of responsibility" anymore than it ever was, and the contrast is that eliminating anonymous speech is a long proven massive risk to basic freedoms.