Asklemmy

43771 readers

2059 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

Open-ended question
Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

Lemmyverse: community search
sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
[email protected]: a community for finding communities

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Why doesn't Lemmy implement an anonymous post feature? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

43 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How many times have we seen people create throwaway accounts on these types of platforms? People often want to share something valuable yet intimate without having it be tied to their online identity for privacy reasons. Some folks create new accounts for this reason. Others decide to remain silent.

Why doesn't Lemmy offer a simple checkbox when creating a post to indicate whether the OP wants their username to be publicly displayed or simply show up as anonymous? Furthermore, any comment that the OP makes on their anonymous post should be anonymous as well.

Benefits

fewer throwaway accounts in the Lemmy database
user will have ability to track their anonymous post(s) from their primary Lemmy account
potentially less bot activity because anonymous posts will be originating from established Lemmy accounts instead of new accounts with no history.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

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

You're right, but as you said, the reason I reacted this way is because of the way you posted it. I'm also taking out some frustration about everyone and their mother having some "great feature" or idea they want to suggest even if they haven't thought it through. For that, I apologize.

Maybe it could be done, but I'm quite sure that doing it correctly wouldn't be as simple as you think. I won't pretend to know how all of the software works, but I think it's safe to assume there are a lot of technical things to consider, especially when federating (and other fediverse software) comes into play. Realistically, I would see this as a waste of effort and a very low priority.