Anonymity on the web

[Blue Velvet]

Would you post on MacRumors if you had to post a reply to this thread under your real name?

Farhad Manjoo over at Slate writes:

Anonymity has long been hailed as one of the founding philosophies of the Internet, a critical bulwark protecting our privacy. But that view no longer holds. In all but the most extreme scenarios—everywhere outside of repressive governments—anonymity damages online communities. Letting people remain anonymous while engaging in fundamentally public behavior encourages them to behave badly. Indeed, we shouldn't stop at comments. Web sites should move toward requiring people to reveal their real names when engaging in all online behavior that's understood to be public—when you're posting a restaurant review or when you're voting up a story on Reddit, say. In almost all cases, the Web would be much better off if everyone told the world who they really are.

http://www.slate.com/id/2287739/

Personally, I wouldn't. But maybe some people might be justifiably more circumspect about protecting their identities than others. He goes onto say:

For one thing, several social science studies have shown that when people know their identities are secret (whether offline or online), they behave much worse than they otherwise would have. Formally, this has been called the "online disinhibition effect," but in 2004, the Web comic Penny Arcade coined a much better name: The Greater Internet ****wad Theory. If you give a normal person anonymity and an audience, this theory posits, you turn him into a total ****wad. Proof can be found in the comments section on YouTube, in multiplayer Xbox games, and under nearly every politics story on the Web. With so many ****wads everywhere, sometimes it's hard to understand how anyone gets anything out of the Web.

In unmoderated spaces, perhaps. Apple gets a mention:

What will the outing of commenters do to comment threads? From what I can tell, sites that switched on Facebook comments this month saw an overnight improvement in the quality of posts they attracted. Comments on TechCrunch used to be virtually unreadable; now—even on hot-button subjects like Apple—they're somewhat interesting.

He throws out the challenge:

I'll take sterile and neutered over vulgar, stupid, irrelevant, sexist, racist, false, and defamatory any day. That's why I hope every site on the Web adopts Facebook's comment system. Disagree with me? Tell me why below. Just use your real name.

Signed
Alex

 

[eternlgladiator]

I don't mind the idea one way or the other that much. In fact I like the idea of using both the best. I like that I can come on here and use a persona that while somewhat different from my every day self is still similar. It's not like I talk differently and it probably wouldn't take much work to figure out who I was based on my macrumors name. At the same time I don't mind commenting using facebook or facebook comments but my tone changes slightly depending on the issue.

This is kind of a tough issue because you've got people that don't want to be know and people that don't care. I could really care less if people figured out who I was on here because I'm not out doing anything malicious or that I think would hurt my reputation.

 

[Macaddicttt]

One thing to keep in mind is that rarity of your name and that it's not really that much of a unique identifier for most people. Someone with the name of John Smith is far more anonymous on the internet than, say, me. My last name is extremely unique, and any internet search of my full name is only going to return results that refer to me.

 

[smithrh]

I would not post ANYTHING for fear of _appearing_ to violate NDAs.

Mind you, I'm NOT violating NDAs, but it would be far better to remain silent in this case.

Add moderation and the problem of nasty posts and posters tends to go away - but it doesn't go to zero.

Edited to add: and I forgot to mention how much I hate Facebook and their data-mining ways... We don't need more links to Facebook, we need less. I'm very likely to be cancelling my Facebook account - I suppose that means I can't post on some sites now, oh well.

 

[R94N]

Would you post on MacRumors if you had to post a reply to this thread under your real name?

I would probably post less, and think a little more about what I am posting, if that was the case.

 

[arogge]

Nope, I wouldn't post anything. Oops, too late.

 

[Melrose]

Meh. It's not really a big deal. Anyone who's important enough or cares enough to do that much tracking would have easier ways of finding out who I am and what I say.

eg, we worry about Google knowing so much, or the Government knowing so much, but we never stop and think about how much our ISP knows about us. And they know where we live

 

[mizvalorie]

I wouldn't post if I had to use my full name. Mine is pretty unique and I'm sorry but I am paranoid.

However I don't post offending stuff unless I am mad and I tend to use a few curse words (nothing racist, sexist, etc.)

It doesnt bother me if people post racist or sexist things, which they do all the time. That is their belief and not mine. I do not feel the need to force my opinion on someone and therefore ignore comments like that. I feel we try to govern what people say way to much.

 

[Don't panic]

i wouldn't.
in principle it should be ok, but search engines makes it a non-viable option for people with unique names.
even completely harmless posts, such as this one, would constitute a possible issue and would be frowned upon.


let's push this to it's limit to normalize for different names frequency:
let's assume that to access the internet your full name with a trackable, non-hackable unique identifier would be associated to every comment. every single one

i think you'd lose almost instantly 99% of internet traffic. and while in a lot of specific (specofoc™ now belongs to melrose and can only be used with his previous approval) cases that would be good, the final result would be not.

the ruling principle would become
"anything you write in the internet can and will be taken out of context and used against you"

 

[Melrose]

specofoc

This is a new word to me. I like it.

 

[Don't panic]

This is a new word to me. I like it.

then it's yours.
for free.

 

[gameface]

There is a site I admin for. I used to work for them in a creative capacity and everyone knows it. My face and name have been in the credits to their movies. Because of my name and face being so readily available to everyone I have got quite a lot of **** I personally would rather not have in my real life by trolls I banned for one reason or another. Contacting me on facebook via made up names, IP relaying me, emailing me, making up screen names that included my name but were over-the-top mean, etc. I used one screen name for all sites and found people would follow me around other forums. I eventually had to change all my logins losing status pretty much everywhere I have posted for years. Hell, I can't even have an avatar here anymore and I have been posting since 2003.

So, yeah, I can kind of see his point.

 

[Peterkro]

I think people very much underestimate the dangers of using your real name on the web.I have personal knowledge of people who's lives have been pretty much destroyed by stalkers,now due to confidentiality issues I'm not going into details but attempts to kill,arson and on and on.It is very common in some professions.Now I might sound like I'm exaggerating but look into it there are some excellent papers on it in the U.K. mainly by forensic psychiatrists.

The second issue is if you have political involvement,anybody reading the news knows about the insane infiltration and monitoring of fluffy groups like climatecamp.


Signed:
Peter the Painter.

 

[Melrose]

then it's yours.
for free.

Please note how I withheld the Sarah Palin jokes.

 

[maflynn]

I do post under my real name, my userid is my initials and last name

 

[OneMike]

Anonymity is not as important as common sense.

There are many people who use aliases. "somerandomname," but that is also their twitter ID, Facebook ID, MobileME ID, etc..

Using common sense on the information you share in my opinion is more important than being anonymous.

 

[andalusia]

I think it's stupid to use your full name online.... *ahem*

I pretty much use my name for every username I have to sign up with. Bad idea? Perhaps. I could care more.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Because of my name and face being so readily available to everyone I have got quite a lot of **** I personally would rather not have in my real life by trolls I banned for one reason or another.

Having moderated here for a couple of years, pissed a lot of people off and crossing people's paths who seemed beyond redemption, I fully appreciate this argument. As someone who has tried over the years to bring many people together here in real life, it's been an awkward line to walk at times.

I used one screen name for all sites and found people would follow me around other forums.

Never use the same name twice. Have no need or desire to establish myself as an internet 'brand', even as a commentator... and where possible, like to compartmentalise. You're not a Facebook friend of mine unless I've met you in person, not that I use it much these days. Not sure I want some of my LinkedIn contacts reading my posts here on MR either.

 

[OutThere]

One thing to keep in mind is that rarity of your name and that it's not really that much of a unique identifier for most people. Someone with the name of John Smith is far more anonymous on the internet than, say, me. My last name is extremely unique, and any internet search of my full name is only going to return results that refer to me.

This was exactly my argument when, sometime last year, Blizzard was planning to put real names on all the posts on their discussion forum. Clearly this was met with outrage and wound up never happening. My name is, I believe, unique on the Internet. Last I checked I was the only person on Facebook with my name, and plugging my name into Google will give you a host of things about me. This creates a pretty imbalanced system where some people remain largely anonymous and others essentially expose themselves completely when they use their real name.

Now the real problem that arises here is the fact that using real names will not stop the trolls, miscreants and other ill-willed Internet denizens from browsing around and getting peeved about something I posted with my real name visible. With a nearly unique name, the barrier to entry for messing with me is extremely low—since my address and phone number are incredibly easily accessed if you have my name, the doors are open for nasty craigslist ads, someone ordering 25 pizzas to my house etc. Someone with an extremely common name would be shielded from this unless they chose to reveal a variety of more specific details as to their identity.

 

[Eldiablojoe]

Some folks are in lines of work where anonymity = safety. FWIW.

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

Interesting article.

I think for most, privacy is already blown, with sites like FB and Twitter.

 

[Ugg]

I have never seen the point of FB or Twitter or any other social networking website. Rarely do I have news that I feel compelled to announce to the whole world. When I do, email works just fine. Besides, free use of FB or Twitter hardly seems to be a good value when you consider that they are making billions of dollars off everything you put on the website.

When it comes to MR, my identity is only semi-private because I've been here so long and I have a link to my website in my signature. Since it's a site devoted to my family's history, there's even less opportunity to hide who I am.

My local newspaper just switched to a FaceBook login for comments. Comments have plunged of course but the people who do comment are much more civil. I think a case could be made for local commenting to be under one's given name but global commenting, like here on MR under an alias.

Over the last few years, I've begun to think more before I post an opinion on the internet. Part of it may be simply a matter of growing older, but part of it has to do with caution in regards to what the internet has become.

 

[Blue Velvet]

I have never seen the point of FB or Twitter or any other social networking website.

They're extremely powerful tools for all sorts of purposes, especially on mobile devices and platforms. Friends of mine stayed in touch through the Christchurch earthquake using Facebook, posting updates and pictures to reassure all their friends they were doing OK, a far simpler process than hitting 'send' to a specified list of people. The other thing is that emails are a little more intrusive and usually demand a promptish reply or call to action, whereas a status update on Facebook doesn't. Facebook at its most basic can also be an excellent address/contacts book.

The main reason I don't do Twitter and barely bother with Facebook these days isn't about not liking the platforms, it's more to do with digital sanity, as Shelley Hayduk puts it:

Even when we leave our computer we still have the ever-present stream of texts, alerts and updates. On a good day, this taps us into humanity's stream of consciousness, a testament to our ingenuity, connectedness and the power of many.

On a bad day, it can be nothing more than digital noise, overwhelming us with an onslaught of information. This dizzying array of stuff leads to a catch-22 recently explored in Newsweek's "I Can't Think." Sharon Begley notes that the more information we receive the poorer our choices -- a kind of "info paralysis" occurs, a deluge of information and possibilities that leads to brain freeze or, at the very least, lowered productivity.

It occurs to me that there is a simple premise we rarely follow, especially when we are, say, more technically inclined and wired. That is: "Some information needs to be discarded and some needs to be remembered. Keep and pay attention to only what is relevant." Or as Bruce Lee put it: "Absorb what is useful."

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/the-secret-to-digital-sanity/72550/

If I'm on the Mac, I'm often doing something that needs full attention like designing... checking someone's tweet when I should be keeping an eye on what's overprinting and what is knocking out isn't helpful. So it's emails and phone calls that I also usually prefer, but Twitter and Facebook certainly have their place... just not for me right now.

 

[Ugg]

They're extremely powerful tools for all sorts of purposes, especially on mobile devices and platforms. Friends of mine stayed in touch through the Christchurch earthquake using Facebook, posting updates and pictures to reassure all their friends they were doing OK, a far simpler process than hitting 'send' to a specified list of people. The other thing is that emails are a little more intrusive and usually demand a promptish reply or call to action, whereas a status update on Facebook doesn't. Facebook at its most basic can also be an excellent address/contacts book.

The main reason I don't do Twitter and barely bother with Facebook these days isn't about not liking the platforms, it's more to do with digital sanity, as Shelley Hayduk puts it:




If I'm on the Mac, I'm often doing something that needs full attention like designing... checking someone's tweet when I should be keeping an eye on what's overprinting and what is knocking out isn't helpful. So it's emails and phone calls that I also usually prefer, but Twitter and Facebook certainly have their place... just not for me right now.

You've just highlighted the two things that attract me to and repel me from social media.

There are times, especially with family, when it would be nice to make a global announcement. Especially in regards to genealogy. It would be easier and potentially more inclusive.

However, as you point out, it's just one more layer of communication to deal with and inevitably, I would end up being forced to communicate with people I don't really want to communicate with. Which would suck up even more of my time and attention.

IMO, facebook and all of social media is in its infancy. To be honest, I wouldn't mind paying a social media site if I had TOTAL control over my information. Until that happens, I will continue to be a luddite.

 

[quasinormal]

Thread bump.

This is a very interesting subject. I'd argue that anonymity on the web is an illusion. There will always be that IP log around somewhere.

I'm all for disclosure of true identity on the web, that would include our real names and locations. I hope I don't seem crazy to suggest some sort of unbreakable electronic token that is permanently tied to our identity with DNA.

Maybe I'm just getting old.