Greece Reportedly Wants to Curb Anonymity on Social Media Platforms

If people on social media networks couldn't hide behind anonymous profiles, would that eliminate online toxicity? That's the idea behind a proposal in Greece.

According to Euractiv, an EU website focused on European policy and government, Greece's minister of digital governance, Dimitris Papastergiou, is promoting the idea that social networks should be regulated so that all accounts have verified identities.

"There are many technical ways to achieve this," he told Euractiv at the Delphi Economic Forum. "The major problem behind anonymity is toxicity -- anyone, especially on social media, can smear an individual and carry out character assassination without facing any consequences."

A representative for Greece's Ministry of Digital Governance office did not respond to a request for comment.

The Greek government, led by Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, has said that online discourse in the country is often rife with harassment, misinformation and hate speech. By ensuring that people link their real-life identities to the accounts they use online, officials hope to foster greater accountability and less toxic discourse.

Greece is moving to ban social media for children under 15 starting early next year, citing sleep and anxiety problems as some of the problems caused by addiction to online platforms.

Australia already has such a restriction in place, and so far, reports indicate that young people banned from social media have been finding ways around it.

Coupled with the age restrictions on social media use that Greece plans to enact, the move to limit anonymity points to a larger effort to limit online access in the country, said Paige Collings, senior speech and privacy advocate at the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"Mandates like this create massive security risks by forcing users to hand over data like government IDs or immutable biometric data to third-party vendors to verify their ages for site access," she said, adding that they can contribute to incidents of identity theft and permanent surveillance over citizens.

In addition to creating uncertainty about what happens to the data collected, Collings said forcing people to share their real identities erodes privacy and free speech rights and can pose a safety risk.

"It is essential for those who risk retaliation for their speech or associations, such as human rights workers in repressive states or victims of domestic violence," she said. "For these individuals, secure anonymity is not just a protected right, it may literally save their lives."