It occurs to me that many of the nastiest online spaces are ones with mixed anonymity levels. On Facebook, you use you real name but can mostly block out harassers. On 4chan, you can't stop harassment but you can detach completely from your identity with each post. On Twitter... well, on Twitter professionals using their real names get hounded across the internet and into real life by anonymous eggs. It's asymmetrical, which favors the people behaving abusively.

The temptation to crack down on those eggs is understandable, they're the ones misbehaving, but it assumes we can actually succeed. If we don't, and the history of mail and telephone misbehavior should lead us to expect failure, we've rendered every space asymmetrical, and given the benefits of anonymity exclusively to bad actors. Unilateral disarmament indeed...