How Facebook's Real Names policy helps Cambodia's thin-skinned dictator terrorize dissenters
A common refrain from Facebook apologists and anti-anonymity activists is that its “Real Names Policy” promoted “civility” by making users “accountable” for their words. In this conception, snuffing out anonymous speech is key to protecting “the vulnerable” from trolls and other bad actors.
If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/24/nationalize-moderna/#hun-sen
But while some trolls hide behind anonymity, others are only too happy to sign their vitriol. Donald Trump didn’t need an anonymous account. Tucker Carlson is right there in the chyron. Nick Fuentes isn’t hiding behind a pseudonym — he’s proud to be associated with Holocaust denial.
Despite the moral panic about “cancel culture,” the powerful can say outrageous and disgusting things without any meaningful consequence. But when it comes to speaking truth to power, anonymity protects the vulnerable from retaliation.
Nowhere will you find a better case-study of this phenomenon than in Cambodia, a basket-case, one-party dictatorship that has been ruled over by the corrupt, authoritarian dictator Hun Sen, a former general, since 1985.
Hun Sen’s corruption and authoritarianism chafed at the Cambodian people, but his repressive statecraft allowed him to keep a tight grip on the reins of power. But all that nearly came to a halt in 2013, when an opposition movement, organized on Facebook, came within a whisker of defeating him during what should have been a sham election.
Other dictators would have used that moment to block Facebook, but not Hun Sen. After squeaking out a narrow victory, he decided to take control of Facebook in Cambodia and co-opt it as a tool of oppression. To do this, Hun Sen would weaponize the Real Names policy.
Because he was dictator, Hun Sen already knew the real names of every person in Cambodia, which meant that he could tell when a Cambodian poster used a pseudonym. Armed with this knowledge, Hun Sen forced Facebook to order Cambodians to post under their real names (which made them liable to arrest and torture) or fall silent.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/meghara/facebook-cambodia-democracy#.km2QBoKME
Hun Sen then spent public funds to hire a bleating army of astroturf supporters from Filipino clickfarms who would “like” his posts and shout down Cambodians — especially exiled Cambodians speaking from abroad — who dared to criticize him:
https://qz.com/1203637/facebook-likes-are-a-powerful-tool-for-authoritarian-rulers-lawsuit-says
All of this created cover for the “Khmer Riche”: politically connected insiders and Hun Sen’s relatives, who looted the country, hired Pricewaterhousecooper to help them offshore their money through Cypriot banks, and procured glden passports from Cyprus to let them trip through the EU on luxury spending-sprees:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/cambodia-hunsen-wealth/
Earlier this month, Hun Sen took an “official visit” to the Maldives, which was commemorated by an official Facebook post that included a gallery of Hun Sen relaxing in a seaside luxury resort:
https://www.facebook.com/hunsencambodia/posts/pfbid02KYoqDAJbeMGyRP9xMYpntYEdKsczGQijRGYJiDDiPSV4u5DDxmwXuCjpRrse8AEtl
As Mech Dara1 wrote for Vod, the post racked up thousands of “fawning comments,” along with a single, brave remark from “Ver To” (a pseudonymous account): “Yes, our beaches are the most beautiful, but our leaders are the dirtiest in the world, aren’t they?”
https://vodenglish.news/hun-sen-orders-police-to-find-facebook-beach-insulter/
Within hours, Hun Sen had vowed to use Facebook to hunt down and punish the person behind “Ver To,” writing “This is a wicked man’s words. Please, police, find it immediately. Where is it?”
In an expanded version of Daral’s article on Global Voices, we see Hun Sen’s Interior Ministry swing into action to punish this mild act of dissent, with ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak saying:
> This is not freedom of expression — this is insulting the leader of the country. … Even for me, we cannot accept this.
> People who live abroad can say anything, but in Cambodia they cannot.
> Even though the prison is crowded, there is enough space to hold these people.
Hun Sen knows that Facebook will help him hunt down this dissenter and jail them in one of his “crowded prisoners,” because Facebook’s Real Names policy dictates that this will happen.
The Real Names policy might as well be called “The Zuckerberg Doctrine.” It originates with Mark Zuckerberg’s oft-stated belief that people who present a different facet of their personality to different people are “two-faced.” This is an abysmal, idiotic belief, one that requires that we related to our bosses the same way we relate to our lovers, and also to our grandparents. But on the plus side, outlawing anonymity and pseudonymity makes it a lot easier to assemble nonconsensual surveillance dossiers on our activities, social graph and beliefs, and then sell access to those dossiers to advertisers:
https://memex.craphound.com/2018/01/22/social-scientists-have-warned-zuck-all-along-that-the-facebook-theory-of-interaction-would-make-people-angry-and-miserable/
Lots of companies have tried for their own Real Names policy. Famously, it was a feature of Google Plus, Alphabet’s failed Facebook competitor. More recently, Twitter’s new owner has made moves to link Twitter accounts to identities by hiding posts that aren’t from “Twitter Blue” accounts, and then insisting that these accounts must be verified with a phone number.
The powerful can abuse the powerless and get away with it, in large part because the powerless can’t speak back without risking retaliation. Sexual abuse was a feature of many industries and large companies for decades, but it too anonymity to create the #MeToo movement. There, anonymity is a force for accountability — not a way to avoid it.
Image:
Hun Sen/Facebook (modified)
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=765259764955813&set=pcb.765259798289143&type=3&theater
Fair use:
https://www.eff.org/issues/intellectual-property
[Image ID: Cambodian dictator Hun Sen's Facebook photo of himself swimming in the blue Maldives sea. Superimposed over him in white sans-serif lettering on red rectangular backgrounds is a quote from a Cambodian Facebook user: 'Yes, our beaches are the most beautiful, but our leaders are the dirtiest in the world, aren’t they?']
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anon here!
so.. my partner doesn't deal well with questions. she isn't a chatty person. like.. when i ask about her day or what's up, things like that, she just replies shortly.
if i prompt her to talk or elaborate by asking questions, she feels interrogated. and my intentions are just that i wanna know how her day was/hear about her day, that i want to make conversation.
i don't want to make her uneasy by asking questions. i am a little confused as to what i can do about this. i want to figure out a way
Hey Anon!
Have you expressed those concerns to her? Have you expressed how you're trying to show interest in her and her day and that you're genuinely interested in knowing her and how her day is?
There's obviously a communication barrier here and I think it's worth exploring because I think it's fair of you to want to have dialogue with someone you care about. Perhaps there has been something that has happened in her life where she never felt comfortable sharing things about herself or maybe she feels self-conscious about herself and what she does that she feels embarrassed to share them with you? Is she like this with everyone or has there been a time in the past where she was more chatty, but recently it's changed?
Has she expressed that she feels like she's being interrogated? Has someone in her life done that to her to make her feel uncomfortable? (Maybe she's had controlling/overbearing parents in the past that wanted to know everything about her and she just felt overwhelmed by it?) There's so many potential reasons, but I don't think it should keep you from expressing your intentions and how you feel about everything, but also respecting her reasons for the behaviour as well. Perhaps you guys can figure out a compromise to this.
Let me know more info if you can so I can do my best to help and maybe give some insight :)
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