The Internet's Age of Rage 315
RackNine sends this excerpt from an editorial at the Guardian:
"The worldwide web has made critics of us all. But with commenters able to hide behind a cloak of anonymity, the blog and chatroom have become forums for hatred and bile. ... The psychologists call it 'deindividuation.' It's what happens when social norms are withdrawn because identities are concealed. The classic deindividuation experiment concerned American children at Halloween. Trick-or-treaters were invited to take sweets left in the hall of a house on a table on which there was also a sum of money. When children arrived singly, and not wearing masks, only 8% of them stole any of the money. When they were in larger groups, with their identities concealed by fancy dress, that number rose to 80%. The combination of a faceless crowd and personal anonymity provoked individuals into breaking rules that under 'normal' circumstances they would not have considered. ... One simple antidote to this seems to rest in the very old-fashioned idea of standing by your good name. Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line. Put your name to something and your words are freighted with responsibility."
Rage is good (Score:4, Insightful)
If it takes anonymity for people to say what they really think, then we need more anonymity. Many injustices happen because people in power can count on people being trapped in responsibilities and dependencies. If nobody can say what they think, then nobody can know that they're not alone with their rage. The internet is not a place where you can expect to be treated nicely. It's very honest, and that can be frightening at times, but it's necessary. You shouldn't equate rage to criminal behavior (stealing money).
The obvious point that no one ever talks about (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hey, asshat! (Score:4, Insightful)
Adopt a pseudonym and you are not putting much of yourself on the line
Apparently they determined that a pseudonym is enough to make one behave in an uncouth manner. I would posit, however, that this depends largely on the persistence of the pseudonym. If you use throw away pseudonyms, like our good troll commodore64_love and all of his little sockpuppets, then you have less of a reason to behave in a civilised manner than if you have one that you are using consistently for a long time.
After all, your real name is just the pseudonym that the government knows - and in some cases, not even the one that most of your acquaintances, let alone friends, know.
Re:The obvious point that no one ever talks about (Score:4, Insightful)
people... actually think
I can tell you've not spent much time on the Internet...
Anonymity isn't the same as it was 160 years ago. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, anonymity could be a cloak for someone who fears reprisal (social, physical, legal).
People can and do build reputations around their pseudonyms online, where they reinstall the social norms. You see it on forums every now and then (for example, heavy posters who fear losing their reputations making apologies for bad behavior). Like any society, the internet has it's own behavioral controls - whether they're remnants from offline controls or new ones like 'troll' flags. We're just developing them - some of us are still kids in costumes again really.
Pseudonymity vs Anonymity (Score:2, Insightful)
I agree completely. I think most of the Internet's commenting problems don't require legal names to be revealed at all and that they can effectively be solved with pseudonymity and reputation systems. Essentially, reputation is being conflated with legal identity in most of the reports on these problems. I hope it's just accidental and short-sighted thinking and writing, but it sounds increasingly like a war drum against being able to have a voice on the Internet without revealing your legal name and having it permanently attached, in one way or another, to every comment you ever make.
Why is there so little talk of building systems where creating a pseudonym and establishing a reputation are important? Perhaps a real identity could be divulged to gain reputation outside of the normal system, but what benefit could it have beyond that? Such a requirement will just kill the discussion of many worthwhile (though perhaps embarrassing or taboo) subjects on the Internet.
Anonymity in 2011 Stanley Cup Riot (Score:3, Insightful)
Another interesting analysis with anonymity in the Internet age could be done with the Vancouver Stanley Cup riots from a couple of months ago. People were openly destroying vehicles and commercial property while knowingly surrounded by cell phones and professional photographers recording every move they made. Video and photos were uploaded in real time to the Internet, eventually assisting the police and the public to identify a large number of locals.
It was a bizarre case of cognitive dissonance where these criminals would pose in front of their crimes without a thought to the fact that they would be easily identified and charged with the said photo.
War on anonymity (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not so sure the "war on anonymity" is carefully being orchestrated, though I certainly hear the loudening beat of its drums. And there are certainly forces that are very much behind the cause.
What worries me most is the support for it I hear from those who aren't very interested in the topic. I think many people see horrible comments on websites or blogs, hear something like the "Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory", and just assume that's the problem, with the obvious solution being banning anonymity without thinking about the negative consequences for true expression of the unpopular, embarrassing, and taboo.
Systems using pseudonyms and reputation systems are up to the challenge--while not obvious at first, a little thought into the problem shows this. You could even have adding your legal name give you a reputation boost (doesn't Amazon do something like this?). But with all the blaring bile about how humans are not capable of having the power of anonymity without reverting to sub-human pseudo-demons, too little attention is being paid to the real solution that doesn't stifle discourse.
I hope that the problem is that the pseudonym+reputation solution isn't obvious to the person who is first confronted with this problem, and that over time it will become clear and a consensus will build that anonymity doesn't need to be removed--we just need to add a reputation element. There are certainly forces that will push against this and favor getting rid of anonymity as soon as possible, but I'm far from convinced they will succeed. [Perhaps this is too hopeful?]
Real ID as a muzzle: the other side of the coin (Score:5, Insightful)
There's another important issue here: Anonymity can be a worthy tool for social reaction and revolution when the individual expresses a minority or otherwise unpopular opinion; some of the other nasty habits of society include ostracization; limiting availability of jobs; sabotaging retirement; false accusations, false imprisonment, inappropriate listing on the no-fly, no-buy, and the sexual/violent offender (AKA as the you're-fucked) lists; singling out for "attention" from the local (or not local) cops; vandalism; burning crosses on the lawn; DOS, etc.
While true free speech cloaked in anonymity definitely opens the door for the proverbial "Internet Superturd", suppressing it isn't something that uniformly does good. For instance, Google+'s recent insistence on "real id" effectively eliminates any viewpoint that is sufficiently off-center to present a personal risk at a level unacceptable to the speaker. This in turn means that as the speaker's social load and dependencies increase - family, depending upon keeping one's job, political position, etc. - the more effectively they are muzzled in a "real id" environment.
Another example is Facebook's TOS where they forbid anyone on the s/v offender's list from joining; anyone put on that list is now locked out and locked to the bottom level of society; doesn't matter that they've paid their debt to society by serving time, paying fines, whatever the judge decided: they're permanently locked out, not to mention often having to live under a bridge or in a camp. That kind of ostracism is way too powerful a tool to use against someone who is supposedly free to walk around; they'll never re-integrate, they can't. If you're going to treat someone that badly, you'd better have the sense to put them in jail and keep them there or else you're just grooming a very, very angry person whom someone will unhappily meet on a dark and stormy night. Unfortunately, this only treats the unfairly listed -- kids having sex across age lines, polygamists, pee-ers in bushes, etc. -- even worse. By far the best solution is to treat payment of sentencing debt as 100% presumed rehabilitation unless shown otherwise. The government shows no sign of being responsible here either, nor forcing corporations like facebook to be responsible, which again brings us back to the need for pushback. And given the lynch mob mentality associated with these matters, anonymity is definitely called for.
In general right now, our government is doing a lot of things it shouldn't be doing, and these activities are currently pushing hard against individual rights of free speech, free travel and privacy. IMHO, anything that does away with anonymity under these circumstances is extremely unwise.
Re:The obvious point that no one ever talks about (Score:4, Insightful)