Nikki Haley calls for the banning of anonymous accounts on the internet...

 

Nikki Haley. The Hill/AP.

Nikki Haley has called for the banning of anonymous accounts on the internet. The Hill. Haley said the first thing she would do as president was to expose social media accounts algorithms, but she then said that every social media account should be linked to a real identity. She said it was a national security threat to have anonymous accounts and it would force people to be more "civil" if their words were attached to their own names. She also said that doing so would get rid of "bots" from Russia, China and Iran. 

.@NikkiHaley is *openly* pushing for the government to use private tech companies to censor speech. This is a flagrant violation of the Constitution and straight out of the Democrats’ playbook. Any politician who thinks it’s OK for the government to use the private sector as its… pic.twitter.com/Cb1847r6CA

— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) November 14, 2023

My Comment:

This is, without a doubt, the dumbest thing I have heard Nikki Haley say and she's said a lot I disagree with. But this? This ensures that I wouldn't even vote for her if she is the candidate against Joe Biden. Biden is many things, almost all of them terrible, but at the very least I can still criticize him on the internet without using my real name. If Haley gets in, that goes away. 

The fear would be that this would have an instant and severe chilling effect on speech. If everything you say is linked to your real name then people could find out where you live and where you work and use what you say against you. You wouldn't be able to speak about any controversial issue at all without risking losing your job or even face violence for your words. 

Given that people are already afraid to say what they think in this country, doing this would pretty much destroy the idea that people have free speech. People would have no chance to say what they want because someone from the other side would hunt them down and go after their jobs at best. 

And having the government do this? It's a huge 1st amendment violation. The government doesn't have the right to govern speech, whether or not that speech is anonymous or not. Indeed, given that the founding fathers worked under pseudonyms, they understood what free speech means. The government has no right to know what I have to say. 

This would also utterly destroy websites that use anonymous users like Reddit, and 4chan. While you can make an argument that both websites are pretty terrible, you have to note that both sites are incredibly politically influential. Getting rid of anonymity would greatly influence politics and would shut down sites that are critical of the government. 

What really gets me is that this would be a huge own goal for the Republican Party. For the most part, influential Democrats can post under their own names without fear of censorship. But conservative voices? If you post under your own name you get canceled. There are so many influential accounts on social media that only exist because they are able to do so anonymously. And Nikki Haley wants to get rid of that?

As for Haley herself, what on earth is she thinking? This is an idea that most Democrats wouldn't support, let alone her own party. I never really liked Haley and totally rejected her when she went all in on supporting the Ukraine War. But this is far beyond that and really makes me wonder why on earth anyone would support her...