Rather than write another long Section 230 thread, I'm going to write a long thread about the topic of my next book - First Amendment protection of anonymity. I write this thread because there are rumblings about proposals to require people to use their real names online.

Of course, some platforms have such policies (of questionable efficacy). But they are free to make those choices. A federal law that would *require* real name policies could not survive First Amendment scrutiny.

People have used anonymous and pseudonymous speech since the colonial times and founding. Common Sense, Letters from a Pennsylvania Farmer, the Federalist Papers - the authors all had good (and nuanced) reasons for separating their identities from their words.

The Supreme Court recognized this longstanding history of anonymous speech in 1958, when it struck down Alabama's blatantly racist attempt to force the NAACP to disclose its membership lists.

And 2 years later, it struck down an ordinance that required pamphlets to include the author's name. "Persecuted groups and sects from time to time throughout history have been able to criticize oppressive practices and laws either anonymously or not at all."

In the following decades, SCOTUS continued to recognize the First Amendment anonymity rights of pamphleteers, canvassers, and others. The right is not absolute; for instance, SCOTUS has upheld campaign finance disclosure requirements. But it is strong.

And courts have recognized that the online anonymity rights extend to the Internet. In the mid-90s, federal judges in Georgia and New Mexico struck down state laws that would have restricted the ability to communicate pseudonymously online.

And starting in the late 90s, companies were furious that their employees were anonymously criticizing them on Yahoo! Finance and other boards (though mostly just Yahoo). They brought a ton of lawsuits against these anonymous posters.

These "cybersmear" cases were not typically brought to recover money. The companies wanted to use the discovery process to unmask the employees and fire them. And in the early days, many companies did just that.

But tenacious lawyers like @megangrA and Paul Levy represented many of the anonymous posters and challenged the subpoenas. Eventually, the courts adopted pretty rigorous standards for scrutinizing these subpoenas, rooted in the long 1A history of anonymity rights.

The standard is not absolute - as in the SCOTUS cases, there is not an absolute First Amendment right to be anonymous. But the courts have made clear that they will closely scrutinize any attempt to unmask a speaker.

This is a very long way of saying that I cannot imagine a situation in which a court approved of a general requirement that all social media users operate under their legal names. While courts have permitted laws that pierce anonymity, this would be far, far too sweeping.

I promise to get back to my regularly scheduled Section 230 tweets, at least until my next book, United States of Anonymous, is published early next year.