To update the above comment ('edit' is disabled) -- to the "And the devil of a bill is always in its details..." line, I just saw this article headline on Techmeme: "Feinstein Releases Fake NSA Reform Bill, Actually Tries To Legalize Illegal NSA Bulk Data Collection" [1] Pretty shameless on her part. Here's the HN item: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653190

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131031/12394625090/feinst...

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Websites like Reddit and HN are extremely vulnerable.

Hijacking my comment here to talk about a big concern of mine. This EFF article argues that there's a place for Anonymity on the Internet [2], and I think most of us agree. Especially if we emphathize with those in Iran, China, Syria, and the like.

But anonymity is also the key to websites like Reddit and Twitter (including HN). These websites represent breakthroughs in sociology: memes; open, real-time, transnational, popular (upvote/downvote, retweetable) discourse.

It's not an understatement to say that Reddit, Twitter, even H.N. are some of the greatest manifestations of the Internet-age -- look at the impact they have had on mainstream media and raising the bar for popular discourse.

(Ex.1: I would argue that the Snowden revelations would not have persisted in the public conscious nearly as long if it hadn't been for Reddit's continued rage.
Ex.2: As it is, news outlets hawk Reddit/HN for story-material, and build the story's narrative with Twitter.)

But what HNers must realize is that: The mainstream Internet __can not become__ the Tor-visited Dark-Net that many believe is inevitable -- WITHOUT losing its positive sociological impact.

Yet without the perception of anonymity, sites like Reddit will stop flourishing.

Reddit's culture thrives on anonymity, throwaway accounts, and people being themselves without representing themselves.

There are two issues at play. Now obvious: 1.) Reddit usernames can be mapped to people's actual identity. Not as obvious: 2.) Users up and down votes can also be mapped to their identity. Reddit as a dev-team has retreated from the idea of providing HTTPS for its voting/web API, so people's actions (aside from comments) can be mapped as well. I tried to raise this point 5 months ago [3]. I know there's an argument to be made that SSL/HTTPS is useless anyway (just use Tor!, they say), but the bigger question remains:

Can a mainstream community like Reddit exist in tomorrow's Internet?

People and the press are paranoid about Facebook/Google privacy because its users identify themselves explicitly, but the reality is no different with sites like Reddit - just the perception. Just think about how much more is shared on a site like Reddit by its members because of their pseudonyms!
Few people aside from the avid Tor users have realized this.

Reddit is the internet "as we know it," and I feel the Internet is about to change.

In hindsight - Google's initial "no pseudonyms" policy for Google+ was prescient -- though the company eventually capitulated to popular demand for them. [4] Perhaps they wished to save each of us the unsavory realization that aliases exist in name-only (pun intended). :/

[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/10/online-anonymity-not-o...
[3] http://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/1n73s0/again_reddit...
[4] http://www.ibtimes.com/google-allowing-nicknames-pseudonyms-...