Internet users anonymous: your days of hiding are numbered
Are the days of being anonymous online and commenting without thought numbered? And is that a good or a bad thing asks Paul Cotton. 
There was once a time when the idea of using your real name on the internet was discouraged.
Social networking mostly took the form of bulletin boards and chat rooms, online banking was treated with a measure of suspicion. Handles were a necessity.
Things are different now.
We surf a web that’s more comfortable with identity. Entire sites and businesses are driven by it – Facebook and Google being the prime examples. Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg aims to create the ultimate address book while Google has spent years building a fairly anonymous portrait of who you are but now via their network of linked services are beginning to tie it back to your name, with Google+ as the spearhead. As we’re encouraged to be ourselves online, it sometimes feels we’re losing the freedom to escape the view of corporations or to be who we want. Is this a bad thing?
With anonymity comes a certain level of power, an ability to disregard social norms and niceties. People that are lovely face-to-face can become vicious the moment they’re no longer responsible for their actions. To some extent, it’s human nature.
I’m divided. In general, cutting anonymity helps keep our darker sides in check. If I was running a blog, I would strongly consider employing an identity driven commenting system (Facebook comments, for instance) in order to give people pause before sharing. They can still make their point, but they’re less likely to include an insult. Do I want to live in a world where the online handle is a memory? Probably not, that feels like another step along the journey to an Orwellian world.
As it stands we can choose to maintain or inhabit ‘safe’ places – or you can venture into the wild and hope your skin is thick enough.
And as long as the safe zones don’t overrun the wild, maybe this is the best way forward.
Paul Cotton is a creative planner at Salmat Digital. Find him on Twitter as @tali3sin.
- This article first appeared in Encore magazine. Download the iPad edition, now free.
Paul, hi. I commented on another page today along similar lines. I ask people to give it a go using their own names – especially on an advertising site FFS! to reveal their real selves may be rather liberating and lift the tone as the quality of comments is way superior when people are prepared to stand by them.
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Thing is, anonymity will always prevail. It’s not hard to create a fake email account or a fake Facebook account. I know plenty of people who have both real and fake accounts so that they can have a social side and a private side on the Internet. “John Smith” has his real life friends, while “Smith Johnson” posts on those random hobby message boards and complains to companies on Facebook.
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I think one of the problems with real-name ID and similar systems is evident when we look at the Arab Spring. I’m reasonably certain a lot of the protests, which were facilitated by the internet and social media would not have occurred if real-ID was implemented.
I’m not by any means an expert on the Chinese system, but does the great lockout contain any sort of ID-tracking?
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Norelle, you might want the publicity, many others do not though. There are many excellent, intelligent and worthwhile comments posted on Mumbrella and on a plethora of other websites that are not under ‘own names’.
Hey, you might have an agenda to seek publicity to help create more business for your company? Others don’t and are happy as they are, however want to comment to fuel the debate and balance it out.
I couldn’t think of anything worse than a site full of comments from people with vested interests to plug their agenda, with back links to their website every time. (You are not doing it Norelle.) Many others are (the self obsessed fame seekers…) It would be ghastly.
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There are sometimes things you want to say online that would cause you so much grief with your company and/or colleagues, that you NEED to be anonymous. That doesn’t mean you want to swear and rage and be mean to someone. It simply means you want to have a job to go to on Monday morning but, at the same time, impart some information to others that might be important in the grander scheme of things.
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the fallacious arguments really come out in force on this topic
it beggars belief that a Gen Y would use the arab spring as an example. Repeat after me – the uprising was not driven by social media, it was assisted by it. And forgive me for being a pedant, but you might find that this sort of thing is the exception rather than the rule
this was topped, however, by Always Anonymous, who implies that people who are “self obsessed fame seekers” are precluded from using their real names right now and that if real names were required they’d step out from the shadows and self-promote to buggery. Do you not realise how absurd this remark is?
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Nell if we go along with your assertion that the Arab Spring was “assisted by” anonymity rather than “driven” by it, what difference does that actually make?
The fact remains, that it happened, and that it would not have been even remotely successful without the same culture of anonymity that the internet provides.
Furthermore, it’s probably a good thing that this was an “exception” rather than “the rule”. I’m not sure if you’re one who just wants to see the world burn, but I’m quite glad that revolutionary uprisings aren’t the order of the day all over the world, all the time.
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There are times and places for both real names and Anonymity. This isn’t a ‘right and wrong’, ‘good vs bad’, ‘1 or a zero’ situation.
Real names can instantly validate and elevate the level of discussion. But equally, anonymity can help us discuss, push topics and discover outcomes that couldn’t have been had, had the participants have to have used their real names (and therefore attach their professions, employment, education, family and personal details) with it.
There are a few issues with having to use real names as I see it:
1. Attaching a real name can be like attaching a stigmatizing word to something that doesn’t quite fit – once used you bring your pre-conceived notions and history of that word along with you – and the same thing happens with people.
2. Stigmas and biases cloud discussions every day: ‘Oh they would say that wouldn’t they’… or ‘yeah but they’re just saying that because….’ Once you know who has said something it’s very difficult to see the comment for what it is. If you dislike someone it’s easy to dismiss their opinion no matter what it is. And equally it’s much easier to forgive someone for obtuse statements if you like them. (Alan Jones springs to mind at this point).
3. Real names and controversial ideas (even what may seem mildly controversial at the time) rarely mix well. If people knew they would be cited and possibly taken out of context for anything they said online at any time now, or in the future they would be mighty careful.
4. Enforcing real names / real id, limits creativity. As per point 3, if, for example, I knew that everything I have written and will write will forevermore be tagged with my real name and inextricably tied to me, I would be exceptionally careful what I wrote and contribute far far less. Not because I have any ‘wild’ thoughts or opinions, but because everything can be taken out of context, and I don’t know what the future holds, and who will see it and judge it before they even meet me. It’s not the opportunities I know I’ve missed out on, it’s the opportunities that were denied to me before I even knew I’d missed them is what I’d be concerned about.
Anonymity can provide a freedom that simply can’t be found elsewhere. What’s so bad with anonymity anyway? Some of the best ideas, and our founding scientific theories have come from anonymous publishers and authors using Pen Names. Davinci, for example, published under false names for years for fear of reprisal from the Church and the State. Today his theories are revered and no longer controversial. How sad, and limiting for us all, it would have been if he’d been forced to choose between advancing scientific theory and instantly being thrown into the dungeons, or not publishing at all and holding entire generations back.
And yes I’ve used an anonymous name for this comment, not because anonymity is good and not because it’s bad. What matters is the content of the discussion, not who I am personally.
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