If you have a democracy then the laws of the land should be those that are agreed by general consent - give or take - and as such applying those laws to people in a way that means they are accountable for their actions isn't a problem - in fact it's the long standing bedrock of civilisation.
The problem in China isn't that they can catch people breaking their laws, it's a problem with how those laws are set in the first place.
So the real issue is stopping a move towards authoritarianism which is a whole larger conversation.
So in the issue above - about the journalist - the question should be about whether the particular hate speech law is correct, rather than worrying about if they appear to breach it whether they can be caught.
The problem is that it is very easy to slide quickly into authoritarianism, as we're seeing in the US. I don't see how "transparency" is served by knowing who someone is or associating them with every piece of speech they've ever uttered. The only use of a system like that is to police thoughtcrime.
In the past 100 years the following countries have slipped from democracies to authoritarian states: Germany, Italy, Spain, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Argentina, Chile, Russia, Turkey, Nicaragua.
Some of them recovered, others never did. Look at Turkey for example. If you think you are safe, you aren't.
So your answer is it's inevitable that any country will slip into authoritarianism so we must live as if we are in one already - and create a whole society around being able to subvert authority.
Have you considered that massively enables organised criminal elements in democracies and increases the chances of a slide into authoritarianism?
What are you talking about? I don't want to change anything. You are the one advocating that social media should require any comments being identifiable via id...
First I'm not advocating it - I'm saying it's inevitable - because if you want to not change society away from a model where people are responsbile for their actions, then you need enable that accountability.
It's a bit like in the good-old days of the internet when everyone trusted everyone else - life was simple and good. Then the bad actors came, and so did SSL, firewalls, n factor auth etc etc. Search engine results became less good as people gamed the rankings.
You have to adapt.
In Europe we take a different view from America - in America mass school shootings are a price worth paying for the right to own a gun. In the UK there is a presumption that they really isn't any good reason for owning a handgun, nevermind an assault rifle, so it's pretty hard to get one.
Freedom is multi-dimensional - and not absolute. I'm free of worrying my child will be shot at school, but less free to own a gun.
Same goes for freedoms on the internet - in the end it's about a pragmatic choice about what's best and I'm saying that pragmatic choice is already encapsulated in centuries of legal tradition - the internet doesn't change that - people, in the end, need to be accountable for their actions.
