preventing retaliation (in case the accused is guilty, but doesn’t know who is the accuser)
preventing bad reputation (“a magnet for trouble”) of the victim
simply respecting the person’s desire to remain anonymous, for whatever reason
Reasons against anonymity:
discouraging false accusations
Note that there are three possible outcomes to investigation: the accused is clearly guilty, the accused is clearly innocent, or we do not have enough data to determine either way. Note that the justice system is binary, and its “not guilty” verdict conflates the latter two options.
I am saying this because there seems to be an obvious answer: publish the accuser’s name if the accused was clearly innocent. Which I approve of… but the problem is that the justice system often conflates “innocent” with “has a good lawyer and the other side cannot provide enough evidence”. So in some legal situations, it is logically coherent to declare the accused not guilty and keep the accuser anonymous.
there seems to be an obvious answer: publish the accuser’s name if the accused was clearly innocent.
What if, after all the evidence comes out, ‘Alex’ and Pat clearly both acted very badly, of approximately equivalent magnitude? In that case, Pat is not innocent, so your rule would say no revealing ’Alex’s real name, but then Avery still clearly got serious benefit (the negative information is much more weakly tied to their real life identity) from posting first.
Reasons for anonymity:
preventing retaliation (in case the accused is guilty, but doesn’t know who is the accuser)
preventing bad reputation (“a magnet for trouble”) of the victim
simply respecting the person’s desire to remain anonymous, for whatever reason
Reasons against anonymity:
discouraging false accusations
Note that there are three possible outcomes to investigation: the accused is clearly guilty, the accused is clearly innocent, or we do not have enough data to determine either way. Note that the justice system is binary, and its “not guilty” verdict conflates the latter two options.
I am saying this because there seems to be an obvious answer: publish the accuser’s name if the accused was clearly innocent. Which I approve of… but the problem is that the justice system often conflates “innocent” with “has a good lawyer and the other side cannot provide enough evidence”. So in some legal situations, it is logically coherent to declare the accused not guilty and keep the accuser anonymous.
What if, after all the evidence comes out, ‘Alex’ and Pat clearly both acted very badly, of approximately equivalent magnitude? In that case, Pat is not innocent, so your rule would say no revealing ’Alex’s real name, but then Avery still clearly got serious benefit (the negative information is much more weakly tied to their real life identity) from posting first.