dcf.cymru stimulus sheet · RE · Year 11
Read all three viewpoints and the ethics toolkit. You will be given a side. You may not choose it.
Most of the cruelty online is done from behind a made-up name. A person who would never say a word to your face will say it to forty thousand strangers from an account with a cartoon picture. Take the mask away and the behaviour changes, because consequences become possible again.
Anonymity also protects the people who organise harm: the accounts that pile onto a footballer after a missed penalty, the ones that impersonate a classmate, the ones that run a fake giveaway to harvest passwords. Requiring verified identity would not stop every one of them, but it would make each new account cost something.
We already accept identity checks to open a bank account or drive a car. Speech that can destroy a person’s reputation in a weekend is at least as serious.
Anonymity is not a loophole for bullies; it is the only safe door for people at risk. A young person questioning their sexuality, someone leaving an abusive home, a worker reporting unsafe practice, a person seeking help with an addiction — all of these need to speak without their real name attached for ever.
Forcing verified identity means handing every platform a copy of a passport or a bank record. Those databases get breached. The harm of a breach falls on the user, not on the company that demanded the document.
And the argument does not survive contact with the evidence: plenty of abuse is posted from named, verified accounts by people who feel entirely safe doing it. The problem is enforcement, not masks.
There is a middle route. A platform can verify who you are without publishing it. You prove your identity once to the platform, keep a pseudonym in public, and the record only surfaces if a court asks for it in a serious case.
Users could also be given a switch: “only show me replies from verified accounts”. That protects the person being targeted without silencing the person who needs a pseudonym.
The catch is trust. This only works if you believe the platform will hold that record securely and will not sell it, lose it, or hand it over when it should not. Ask yourself whether you do.
| Approach | The question it asks | Used on this motion |
|---|---|---|
| Consequences | Which choice produces the best outcome for the most people? | Does banning anonymity reduce more harm than it causes? |
| Duties and rules | Is there a duty here that holds whatever the outcome? | Do I have a duty to tell the truth about who I am? Does a platform have a duty to protect someone at risk? |
| Character | What kind of person does this make me? | Would I say this under my own name? If not, why am I saying it at all? |
| Tradition | Teaching |
|---|---|
| Judaism | Hillel, in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabbat 31a): “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow.” |
| Christianity | Matthew 7:12: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you.” |
| Islam | Hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari (13): “None of you truly believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself.” |
| Sikhi | Guru Nanak’s three principles: naam japo (remember God), kirat karo (earn an honest living), vand chhako (share with others). Honest living covers how you behave when nobody knows your name. |
| Buddhism | Right Speech, part of the Noble Eightfold Path: abstaining from false speech, divisive speech, harsh speech and idle chatter. |
| Hinduism | Ahimsa (non-harm) and satya (truthfulness) are both listed among the restraints a person should live by. |
| Humanism | No god is involved: right and wrong are worked out by reason and empathy, judged on the effect our actions have on other people’s lives. |