tl;dr: it’s far from perfect, but it is a decent compromise.
what you’re talking about are government applications, which can take many different forms.
some can be filled out anonymously (often things like complaints, sometimes even lawsuits, etc.), and some need to have a verifiable identity attached (for example petitions, like SKG).
the reason the latter needs proof of identity is to prevent spam and unlawful influence campaign: if there was no verification, how could you know that it is actually citizens filing these requests, and not bad and/or foreign actors?
what if you had a European Citizens Initiative called “let’s join the russian federation” that got to 50 Million signatures overnight?
obviously seems fishy…so how would you verify wether it was actually supported by your own citizens?
this is why you need verification: it’s simply not an option to have this sort of thing filed anonymously.
there are some ideas on how to do this digitally, mostly focused on pseudonymization, which would be mostly great, but the current system is pretty decent.
there’s a tradeoff happening, and it’s one that has to be extremely carefully considered:
on the one hand, you’d want citizens to be free to support whatever campaigns they want without fear of repercussions, social or otherwise.
on the other hand, it’s also a good thing when people can’t hide behind anonymity when voicing their support. with the recent rise of nazis, that’s certainly a prudent state of affairs.
both ways of doing things have advantages and disadvantages.
the current system of public support tends to favor either quite conservative (as in traditionalistic and broadly accepted socially, not as in the “conservative politics”) initiatives over more reformative ones, but it also suppresses utterly unhinged Initiatives of the right wing factions.
as much as i understand that many groups would prefer a more anonymous approach, i honestly think the current approach, under the current state of affairs, offers much needed protection against nazi influence campaigns.
i think people underestimate how much more comfortable nazis get, when they can hide behind anonymity.
they are cowards be default, and anonymity helps them find a whole lot more acceptance than having their names out in the open…
as for why complaints can be filed anonymously… probably the same reasoning, but in reverse:
protecting people from repercussions is more important when it is about reporting current misgivings, than it is when petitioning for change.
think whistleblowers: they NEED anonymity.
without anonymity, a lot remains unreported, because many people tend to shoot the messenger first, ask questions later or never…so protections are required, mostly in form of anonymity, otherwise no one ever finds out about things going wrong…
rumba@lemmy.zip 12 hours ago
The anonymous complaint system aids whistleblowers.
But it also means that the complaints can come from less than reputable sources.
The upshot of this is that the complaint doesn’t get as much traction and is vetted more closely.
This complaint amounts to the condiment on a nothingburger.
Trying to stop the petition based on a technicality that someone is working too hard seems a bit unhinged. Anyone that stands to be hurt enough by the movement would have had lawyers on retainer to handle things like this.
It’s also possible that someone supporting the movement used it as a false flag to get more attention, but there’s 1.4+ million eyes on it. I don’t see that being an advantageous path either.
Either way, the complaint is bunk and will end up being ignored with a moment’s scrutiny.