Most digital rights advocates have no doubt about the importance of free speech online, or about the role that privacy and anonymity play in ensuring it. On the other hand, policy-makers, legislators, and companies behind digital platforms where this speech is taking place hardly agree - at best they are oblivious to the significance of this point, at worst, they are actively eroding online anonymity.
Anonymous free speech is a concept older than the internet, but also than the United States, as it previously applied to the printed word.
Anonymous speech has critical importance in political and social communication and it has been repeatedly protected through Supreme Court rulings - and depending on the real life circumstances of the speaker, it could even save their life.
One of the advocates of this idea is the ACLU, which has over the years undergone quite a big shift in the way it treats a number of issues on its agenda - mostly for the worse - but it seems that its position on anonymity as a precondition for true free speech online is holding.
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