The only formal rights involved in this particular debate are the rights of private entities to control access to their sites and set the terms of whatever debates are aired there. Anonymity may be a treasured online tradition (however recent), but it is not a right, except in the public sphere: the state can't legally stop you from publishing or posting anonymously, but the owner of a privately owned site or publication can decline to give you access.

In fact, you don't have a right to post comments under your own name, much less anonymously, just as you don't have a right to force a newspaper to publish your letter to the editor. Yes, an online site has the capacity to post comments that a print publication lacks; but to suggest that the capacity to post your comment, anonymously or not, imbues you with a right to have it posted is a bit like suggesting that your capacity to copy and paste this column imbues you with a right to appropriate it, or that the ease with which you can enter an unlocked house gives you the right to commit a burglary. Your right to engage in an activity is not determined by your ability to do so. This is not an argument to end anonymity or increase monitoring of comments. It is simply an effort to distinguish between rights, prerogatives, and permissions in the battle over online speech.

Libertarians considering the prospect of additional, private restrictions on speech may be torn between their affection for raucous, open, free debate, and their sympathy for the rights of private parties to control the debates that occur on their properties. Personally, I'm ambivalent toward the stamp out misogyny campaign. I don't believe that misogyny will be eliminated or significantly diminished by private suppression of misogynist online speech. I worry that identifying problems of abusive speech inevitably builds support for repressive legal "solutions." And I shudder at nonsensical efforts to distinguish "hate speech" from free speech; freedom for the speech you like would merely be redundant. But when women complain about speech they consider abusive or downright frightening, I have to say, welcome to the fray. You may mock them for complaining, but "complaint" is just another word for protest. Besides, women who speak out against misogyny can't claim to have been silenced by it.





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