

Anonymity vs. Transparency [Infographic] - madamepsychosis
http://mashable.com/2011/05/19/anonymous-transparent-infographic/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Mashable+%28Mashable%29

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terio
Of course both anonymity and transparency are needed. The need for
transparency is obvious in many scenarios. Anonymity is more contentious. Some
people would love to avoid it completely. For example, I just came back from
Spain and I saw a debate, which was none after all, on TV about the need to
identify everybody to prevent slander.

I firmly believe that anonymity is in many cases the only tool to express
oneself, like when power asymmetries or divergence from social conventions
make such an expression extremely expensive.

Anonymity is fundamental for democracy. If it was not, there would be no
secret voting. Other examples in which anonymity is obviously required are
when you need an honest opinion which could be affected by power asymmetry
(rate your professor, give your employer some feedback, etc); when the subject
matter requires privacy (sexual behavior poll); and so on.

Dealing with anonymity in the internet is not easy. The usual problems are
slander, low quality content, trolls, spam, etc. [Shameless plug ahead] That
is part of our mission at spottiness.com. We allow anonymous users to send
messages that remain posted in our web site. We guarantee the quality of the
content of the messages, and although there is no way to fend off slander from
the beginning, the site offers tools to fight back.

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Silhouette
I think several of your anti-anonymity examples are flawed. For example, if
voting in elections were truly anonymous, anyone could vote many times over.
In practice, they know very well who has voted, as they must to make sure the
election is properly conducted. What they can't do is associate _how_ someone
voted with that person.

(Except that actually they often can, because in many electoral systems the
ballot papers are numbered and they can in theory figure out who got which
paper. You are protected in this case only by the separation of the electoral
register-ballot paper index from the ballot paper-vote cast connection, making
it another excellent example of how sharing limited data with independent
parties can be fine but combining that data in the hands of a single party can
have unintended consequences.)

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bugsy
Indelible ink is used worldwide to prevent double voting, while preserving the
right to vote and anonymity of voters.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Election_ink>

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bugsy
Infographic is pretty but misleading propaganda that promotes its left column.
It does indicate "advertisers" win at the bottom, but fails to mention
stalkers, totalitarian governments, corporate power in general, and Zuckerberg
and his investors in particular benefit from the total internet surveillance
tracking which Zuckerberg cynically calls "integrity".

Having a corporation track all your visits, readings and posts on the internet
such as Facebook is trying to establish, and to be able to accurately link it
to your identity, is about power control and money, and not to your benefit.
It is such an unpleasant possibility that expert PR firms plant absurd
infographics and stories every day to promote this agenda and pay armies to
downvote or otherwise disenfranchise all who question the plan. The propaganda
is working as we see here in this discussion all the people now have bought in
and are promoting corporate surveillance and control of lives as if it is a
good thing in any way whatsoever.

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robertskmiles
Ultimately the question is one of freedom vs enforced rules.

If you have a system of anonymity or pseudonymity, it's always possible to
identify yourself by a real identity if you want to. Whether this takes the
form of 4chan's "photo with a shoe on your head" or Reddit's "Post about this
to your twitter account", reliably associating a pseudonym to a meatspace
person is easy. So you can get the advantages of the 'transparent' system in a
pseudonymous system _if you want them_ , but you're never forced to.

The only way to properly run a transparent system is to force everyone to
identify themselves. Then you can't get any of the benefits of anonymity.

The only people pushing for 'transparent systems' are people who have some
material gain from them - advertisers, information miners, law enforcement
etc. I think they have enough power as it is.

So I'm in favour of anonymity by default, keeping the choice to be transparent
in the hands of the individual.

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wladimir
My vote goes for pseudonymity. It has the advantages of transparency (such as
reputation) but also the advantages of anonymity (such as to allow expression
of less popular opinions without repercussions).

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AliAdams
I remember hearing a talk by Philip Zimbardo, one of the main figures in the
Stanford Prison Experiment.

He concluded that 'evil' behavior is a product of a combination of:

1) Mindlessly taking the first small step (eg Milgrim Experiment - the first
45volts couldn't be felt)

2) Dehumanization of others (giving them numbers in a prison)

3) De-individualisation of self (anonymity)

4) Diffusion of personal responsibility (saying a higher authority takes
responsibility)

5) Blind obedience to authority

6) Uncritical conformity to group norms ('Everyone else is doing it')

7) Passive tolerance of Evil through Inactions and/or Indifference

8) New or unfamiliar situations (default actions don't apply so morality can
become disengaged)

If you take this in the context of anonymity online, a substantial number of
these factors are heavily involved(2,3,4 and potentially 1,7&8).

Anonymity has its advantages, but the encouragement of it diffuses people's
responsibility, potentially encourages 'evil' action, and has subsequently
risk of escalation...

I think my vote has to be transparency.

TED talk link:

[http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_o...](http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html)

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bugsy
False argument. De-individualisation of self is not anonymity. You are
misrepresenting Zimbardo. Zimbardo would note that the tracking and
surveillance we are talking about is the sort of thing that leads to
atrocities.

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AliAdams
Dehumanisation could be arguably not as applicable as some of the others but
it isn't difficult to see parallels between a 'number in a prison' and an
avatar; In a forum, the person can address the avatar without thought of the
individual (human) behind it.

I don't think my point was anything to do with surveillance. It is an
interesting thought that Zimbardo would draw that conclusion though.

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cosgroveb
"Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity"

It's been said before I'm sure but I don't need Zuckerberg lecturing me on
integrity.

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Silhouette
I think this is a false dichotomy. In reality, your life is not either an open
book or a closed one, and you can choose how much personal information of what
type you share with whom. The problems usually start, IMHO, when others are
allowed to make that choice for you.

This can be direct, as with all the modern tracking technologies and personal
information that businesses try to collect about you even if they don't really
need it, but it can also be more subtle, for example where social networking
sites can build up a profile on you based on information implied by your
relationships, or where information from sources you might expect to be
independent is aggregated and available for data mining by a single entity. It
also cuts both ways, if you wanted to share certain things but for some reason
were prevented from doing so, leaving others with incomplete or out-of-date
information even though you were willing to share that kind of data with them.

I think the more serious problem here is that this is a Pandora's box problem.
Once your life is out in the open, there is no way to put it back, but the
consequences are not always immediately obvious.

Perhaps as a society we should grow up and learn not to evaluate people based
on isolated data or out-of-context incidents that we find out about their
past, but as any politician, insurance company or judge can tell you, that's
not going to happen any time soon. It's probably a generational shift if it's
even possible at all.

In the meantime, an entire generation are growing up sharing their lives on
Facebook and Twitter and being physically tracked via their mobile devices and
travel smartcards and logging every purchase/refund they ever made with
credit/debit/loyalty cards. It's only a matter of time before "bad candidates"
don't even get their CVs read because the employer's automated background
checks picked up a black flag, "bad customers" (who expect the product/service
they paid for and complain if they don't get it) see their consumer rights
eroded by the power of the database, "bad clients" can't get useful or even
legally required insurance because their profile fits a high risk group, and
so on. These trends are already well established, but as Pastor Niemöller
explained, first they came for the communists and I was not a communist...

An amusing anecdote to close with: just a few hours ago, I read a comment by
someone who works at Facebook, observing that most people there also maintain
a separate LinkedIn profile because they want to keep their personal and
professional lives separate. Apparently Zuckerberg hires a lot of people who,
in his judgement, have a "lack of integrity".

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TeMPOraL
"just a few hours ago, I read a comment by someone who works at Facebook,
observing that most people there also maintain a separate LinkedIn profile
because they want to keep their personal and professional lives separate."

Given how easy is to track down someones' Facebook profile given his LinkedIn
profile (and the other way around), I see no sense in this reasoning.

Different "profiles", accounts, blogs, etc. form a kind of graph - they are
usually connected one to another (often the connection is by google'ing up
something) and it's really hard to keep them disjoint without special effort.
It's easy to find someone's Facebook account from LinkedIn name, then google
up his blog via e-mail address he shared on Facebook, then google up something
else via the nick-name found on that blog, etc. The question always is, if
someone cares to do that.

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ghaff
There's often value to segregating different content/"lives"/etc. even if you
aren't keeping one hidden or secret from the other. A lot of people with whom
I have some sort of professional connection aren't necessarily very interested
in my hobbies etc. I see it more about making at least a modest effort not to
feed every one of my connections, who I know in a wide variety of different
contexts, the same information stream.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Right, I see how it makes sense in terms of filtering relevant information.
Thanks.

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shii
Original source without the blogspam from a new user:
[http://namesake.com/blog/2011/05/namesake/are-you-who-you-
sa...](http://namesake.com/blog/2011/05/namesake/are-you-who-you-say-you-are/)

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zipdog
We could turn this question from the individual as themselves to the
individual within an institution: for example an executive at Sony or a
government official.

Given the harassment Anonymous has given to Sony execs, its not surprising
that there's a certain invisible wall between the rest of the world and those
in privileged positions. I guess anonymity of everyday activitists is a one
way to redress that.

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nooneelse
From your first paragraph, I thought you were about to turn this question
toward something a bit different about the issue of transparency into
institutions. For instance, why, after say a time period t (set by reasoning
about the particular context, allowing for the maintenance of competitive
advantages, etc.), shouldn't people outside of an institution be able to see
internal records of how decisions (and thus perhaps very important mistakes or
triumphs) were made? Surely the information has utility to the public, if only
for historical reasons.

If an institution is unwilling to allow that, then hypocrisy threatens when
they would deny individuals in other institutions (even if it is just a social
discussion group) the same right to privacy about how internal affairs are
conducted.

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TeMPOraL
A really nice infographic. I like the design, especially the Facebook logo
progressbar (near the bottom, "70% of Facebook users...").

