and removing said anonymity has people rioting in the streets about big brother watching over their shoulder and the dissolution of free speech.

stupid people will spread their stupidity wherever they can without concern. you can't stop them from doing that. you can however limit their influence by refusing to pander to their level of crap.

they're only words on a screen after all, you're the one who makes the conscious decision to give them worth.

F*gs are just people who ride Harleys. Don't you watch South Park? :rolleyes:

Okay if I delete that last bit of nonsense then and put it behind us? Moving onwards!

I don't think it's genuinely anything hateful. I just think it's more the mob mentality.

One person does it so everybody else follows.
I think the two worst things on the internet are stupidity & attention seeking rather than bigotry or hate because even the most reasonable of people are much more capable of displaying those two traits.

I couldn't agree more. They remove for fear of copyright infringement before they'll remove hate-speech. Tells you how much power copyright has these days.

Of course somebody could argue that it's an issue of free speech... to to them I say IT'S THE INTERNET. Anybody in the world can see and use it so free speech doesn't even need to apply. Of course that kind of thinking can easily turn dangerous/corrupt... it's a real dilemma.

Well those people that argue that ignore the fact that it's a private institution and is completely entitled to placing whatever rules it wants as far as free speech go. Free speech is free, but whenever you're using someone else's media as a form of publication it becomes restricted to whatever rules they set in place.

It's really not rocket science.

I don't get it, peer pressure on the internet is like the stupidest f*cking thing ever.

In outside society, sure, but the internet?

Anyone who does something they don't want to do just to appear cool on the internet is an idiot, though it's no mystery that most internet users are idiots so you could be right.

But anyone who says those kinda things must not object to what they're saying if they're not saying it out of irony. Would a bleeding hurt liberal want to conform to a group of a racist neo cons? Of course not.

I guess the best explanation is that a lot of people just don't have any views on anything to call their own so they adopt other people's opinions out of coolness. But why anyone considers youtube commenters cool enough to imitate is beyond me.

Not that I think the internet should be regulated to the extent of not being able to freely express your ideas using it, but assuming that it's a boundless entity to which all people are entitled and not affected by law is kind of unrealistic. It's not like a case of committing crimes on international waters. All aspects of what makes the internet the internet are governed in an operational extent by the locale in which the web servers, routers, connection links, infrastructures, etc. are governed.
Just because anyone in the world who has access to the internet can use it as a communication medium doesn't mean that a country's policies regarding it don't apply.

I seriously hope you haven't overestimated the tendencies of a large demographic of internet users and are now disappointed by your massive failure to predict the outcome.......
So far, that's all your argument is betraying.
You're an intelligent guy. You should have known that not everyone on the internet is going to be as reasonable as you hope they are.

Yes but we're talking about the general public here.
The kind of people who use text speak and are more interested in who wins Britain / America / Uzbekistan's got talent than who the leader of their country is.