
New Facebook Feature Empowers the Dangerous "Comment Nazis" - kgarten
http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000823.html
======
kylec
_"You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your
work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably
coming to an end pretty quickly … Having two identities for yourself is an
example of a lack of integrity."_

It's not a lack of integrity - what people say and how people act is _always_
based on the context it's in. There are things you'd say to your friends that
you wouldn't say to your family or even other friends. It's always been this
way, and it's pretty arrogant for Mark and, consequently, Facebook to assume
otherwise.

This has actually pretty much pushed me off Facebook, as the only stuff I post
is what falls in the relatively small subset of stuff I'd tell to my family,
coworkers, boss, friends, and people that I know online.

~~~
wisty
Anyone trying to beat facebook should read that quote every day.

People should, in an ideal world, behave with integrity. But it's not an ideal
world. My boss shouldn't care what I'm doing in my own time, but he might. The
military shouldn't care if a potential recruit once tried pot at a college
party, but they might. No employer should care about sexual orientation, but
they probably do.

It's not about integrity. It's about living in a hypercritically judgemental
society.

Choosing to remain slightly anonymous is one way to maintain your integrity.
It's better than treating every statement like a PR release. Like Mark does,
if he has the integrity to say everything using his own name, like he tells us
to.

~~~
jasonlotito
To play devil's advocate here for a moment.

You state a lot of things that people _shouldn't_ do. Isn't it kinda sad that
the one thing we _shouldn't_ be doing, being ourselves, isn't on that list?
That's what this discussion is essentially about. Freedom to think what we
want, be who we are?

Maybe the goal shouldn't be to hide from everyone, but to expose everyone for
who we all really are? Maybe if everyone realizes how messed up everyone
really is, we'll stop being so judgemental? So maybe the best way to do that
is have a single identity, a single being. Sure, how you act might be
different between different social groups, but that doesn't change who you
are.

Maybe this is an idealist outlook, but isn't it an ideal we should be working
for, not hiding from?

~~~
statictype
Would you want every conversation you have with your spouse/child/parent to be
available to every single other person you know?

Regardless of how sincere and honest those conversations may be?

If not, then this idea that "the days of you having a different image for your
work friends or co-workers and for the other people you know" is very much
_not_ over.

The fact is, people have private interactions with other people all the time
and they expect it to be private and society accepts that it's perfectly
alright and natural for this to happen.

When I'm with someone else and they get a call from someone close to them, I
excuse myself from the conversation in some way. That's just the polite thing
to do.

This idea that all this is coming to an end is just wishful fantasy on the
part of the owner of a site who's existence and popularity probably depends on
this being true.

~~~
jasonlotito
Again, playing devil's advocate...

The argument is valid, but doesn't apply in this case.

> Would you want every conversation you have with your spouse/child/parent to
> be available to every single other person you know?

No, of course not. However, this is forcing private stuff public. Nothing is
being forced here. Certain sites will require you to log in with your Facebook
identity. You choose to interact with them in this manner, or you choose not
to. If you comment in Facebook comments, you are doing so in a public forum.

> The fact is, people have private interactions with other people all the time
> and they expect it to be private and society accepts that it's perfectly
> alright and natural for this to happen.

This doesn't change anything. The proposal isn't to share your private life.
Simply to make public comments just that, public. If you want things to remain
private, keep them private.

Basically, you're arguing for something that isn't a problem.

------
henrikschroder
Ah, this will be how Facebook crumbles.

The value of Facebook's users is that the overwhelming majority of them are
real. People use their real names, and hook up with their real friends,
resulting in a real social graph.

But if Facebook becomes the single-sign-on provider, the identity provider,
for a majority of blogs and forums and other venues where people today
participate anonymously, then Facebook will start seeing a huge number of fake
profiles appear as people make multiple identities to preserve their privacy
and anonymity, and the more those fake profiles are used, the less the real
userbase will be worth, which ultimately threatens their bottom line.

~~~
reemrevnivek
We can only hope that people will be smart enough to do that. It's certainly
not a guarantee.

------
pluies_public
_You have one identity. The days of you having a different image for your work
friends or co-workers and for the other people you know are probably coming to
an end pretty quickly... Having two identities for yourself is an example of a
lack of integrity._

This sounds _awfully_ like:

 _Mr. Anderson, it seems that you've been living two lives. In one life,
you're Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company.
You have a social security number, you pay your taxes, and you... help your
landlady carry out her garbage. The other life is lived in computers, where
you go by the hacker alias "Neo" and are guilty of virtually every computer
crime we have a law for. One of these lives has a future, and one of them does
not._

------
goombastic
Ever get the feeling that the web is suddenly trying to profile you? Every
upvote you make, every comment you leave, every article you read... Until one
day they start knocking on your door for having negative thoughts, being
unhappy, being prone to rebellion, not being conformist, or whatever category
some data mining app applies to you.

~~~
forensic
Of course the web is trying to profile you. If it's not Google and their
advertisers then it's Facebook and their government friends who plug all your
comments into NSA supercomputers to check for terroristy thoughts.

We all have profiles in some NSA database somewhere, just waiting to be
expunged and used against us when someone important decides we're a Homeland
Security threat.

~~~
mkjones
I think you mean "extracted" or "opened," not "expunged" (expunged means
sealed or erased, the opposite of what I assume you intend).

That being said, I work on anti-abuse systems at Facebook and I'm pretty sure
we don't "plug all your comments into NSA supercomputers." What evidence do
you have that indicates we do such a thing?

~~~
forensic
I meant exhume actually.

You don't need to plug them into the NSA. Since Facebook pays your salary it
wouldn't be your job. NSA employees would do all the work.

I'm sure they have circumventing the privacy measures down to a well oiled
system by now. The NSA loves to illegally wiretap everything. This is their
obsession. Justification: all the foreigners who use Facebook being a
potential national security threat. All the communication on Facebook (e.g.
Egyptian revolution) being invaluable data to CIA analysts. Etcetera. It's
naive to think that these agencies don't have large teams focused solely on
extracting value from Facebook.

Zuckerberg, being the guy with control over everyone's data now, is way too
friendly with the various alphabet soup agency heads to believe that Facebook
is hindering their never-ending investigations. You don't see FBI directors
kissing the feet of Larry and Sergey.

------
michaelchisari
As an addition to that last question, about the Eygptian protestors, I also
often wonder how different Mark Zuckerberg's positions on privacy, anonymity
and identity would be if he were gay...

~~~
prodigal_erik
Or if he ever had to to apply for a job, after getting caught calling other
students "dumb fucks" for trusting him.

I mean what I say, but I can't rely on every stranger out there to treat me
rationally afterward, so I intentionally limit who knows it was me. In venues
like Facebook (and now linked forums), solely because I can't do that, I never
say anything beyond the inoffensively vacuous when I bother to use them at
all.

------
redstron
Nothing stops one creating a fake Facebook profile. Choose a reasonably human
sounding name, crank the privacy levels way up, and comment. FB is unlikely to
figure out it's fake.

There are some disadvantages. Your fake identity will probably need to be
reused across sites, since creating a new account involves getting an email
address, which takes a few extra minutes per identity. But choose a generic
enough name, and it is less of a problem...

~~~
buza
Now Google is _requiring_ users to verify new gmail accounts with a text
message sent to a mobile phone. I can only assume that it will soon be
prohibitively difficult to create fake email addresses to use to create other
fake accounts. I fear that anonymity will likely die soon, whether we like it
or not.

~~~
peterwwillis
Um. You know Google is not the only free e-mail provider, right?

Anonymity and privacy are like punk rock. People have been saying it's dead
since its inception, but look around and you'll find it all over the place.

~~~
buza
Of course. I'm just suggesting that once one provider starts doing it, others
may likely follow.

------
DanielBMarkham
The only thing I put in my FB feed is funny pictures. No politics, no computer
stuff, nothing that might be construed as being controversial.

Why? Because I am a "fake" person? I mean heck, I post a lot more than that
over here.

Nope, because my FB feed includes stuff like friends of my grandmother, or my
14-year-old son, or my HS buds. Each of these audiences has completely
different standards and measurements of civility.

------
esila
The concept of having your "real identity" associated with comments is very
similar to the recent issue with the gaming company Blizzard. There was an
announcement a few months ago stating that a poster's full name would be
displayed on the battle net forums (this was prior to the release of WoW
Cataclysm and SC2).

There was an online petition and a massive cry of dissent from the users.
There was even a moderator who tried to justify Blizzard's position by posting
his real name and saying he "didn't care". Much of his personal life
information was displayed and if I remember correctly he had to change his
FaceBook account due to all the trolls.

Blizzard did not put this idea into effect.

Associating identities with views online can have massive repercussions
regardless of how much "integrity" that person has. Trolls and stalkers would
have an absolute field day due to the loss of anonymity.

And now, for some humor to wash down the pessimism, s/fb/blizzard or vice
versa:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NgAkWxcPBE>

------
Duff
I've chosen to out-opt of Facebook for a variety of reasons that aren't really
germane. To assist with this, I use a Chrome extension called "Facebook
Disconnect" to basically remove FB from my daily web experience.

So for me, TechCrunch doesn't have a comment system anymore. That's too bad,
as I liked the previous system and found the commentary interesting. I'm not
alone -- 4,000 people a week install this browser extension.

The end result for TechCrunch is that a small, but growing minority of readers
will be less engaged with the site. In the grand scheme of things, not a big
deal for them I suppose.

------
kkowalczyk
A problem with that article is fundamental, but unfortunately not uncommon,
misunderstanding of free speech.

A website is a private property.

You have no more right to leave a comment on my website than I have to come to
your house and bore you with a speech on politics.

My free speech rights allow me to publish my thoughts on my blog or publish
them in my newspaper. Free speech, however, is not about allowing me to
publish my thoughts on your blog or giving me right to publish an op-ed in New
York Times, anonymously.

So saying:

"But to force all comments into the realm of "single real identity" public
exposure -- as Facebook now appears intent on doing -- is unacceptable,
reprehensible, dangerous, and utterly at odds with basic free speech rights in
the United States at least."

,as dire and dramatic as it sounds, is, frankly, utter bullshit.

Today we have unprecedented ability to exercise our rights to free speech,
anonymous or otherwise, so let's not fall for demagogy of people who want to
pollute web with worthless comments while hiding behind principles of free
speech (while completely misunderstanding those principles).

~~~
michaelchisari
Normally, I would agree with you. However, there is an exception I make for
hegemony. When a private entity becomes powerful enough, I think there are
similar arguments to be made about as there would be for governments. Maybe
"censorship" and "free speech" aren't accurate terms, but that doesn't negate
the discussion itself.

~~~
kreilly
This might be a valid point except that TechCrunch made a business decision to
use FaceBook's comments in an apparent attempt to improve the user experience
by limiting trolls.

In no way is any government or monopolistic entity forcing them to do this.

------
lwhi
The comment attributed to Zuckerberg, really shocked me. It has the ring of a
pronouncement made by a despot, or an out of touch royal detached from the
real world. It scares me that this guy and those around him, are able to try
to shape world according to such twisted world views.

Even if this really was a question of integrity, why does he feel the need to
enforce it on our behalf?

This for me is a pronouncement that is fit for a dictator.

------
spullara
Everyone did notice that Facebook's comment system allows you to login via an
essentially anonymous Yahoo! account as well, right? When/if they add Twitter
and Google those will be equally anonymous and the trolling / spamming will
return to normal levels.

------
phwd
In Season 5, Episode 17 of House, a guy loses his inhibition which causes him
to speak his mind having no control over what he says. Now if you watched this
episode (or read the recap), I hope you would understand the difference
between stating a comment because you take notice of those around you versus
saying the first thing that comes to mind.

~~~
rue
Is a TV show really the best example, even if it's been seen by a relatively
large number of people? It's not real, after all.

~~~
alextgordon
It is in fact a perfectly real condition:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinhibition>

~~~
rue
I know the affliction is real, I'm just questioning the wisdom of using the
_portrayal_ thereof by a TV show as a basis for argument. The gracious
commenters provided good links to expound on the fallacy.

------
tptacek
Long story short: if you don't allow anonymous or psuedonymous comments on
your site, you're a Nazi.

~~~
jimfl
And if you insist upon making anonymous or pseudonymous comments, you're a
troll.

~~~
tptacek
Who said that? Because, he overtly said the Nazi thing.

------
eggdude
Like most, I disagree that having multiple identities are coming to an end.
But I think it is a good thing that Facebook comments are being used on other
sites because it will promote integrity. Not every site will use Facebook
comments so when we want to dawn a different, anonymous personality, we can
close the Techcrunch tab and open a different site that allows anonymous
comments. Each site will have its own environment and purpose. I think it is a
good thing that we are moving from an almost completely anonymous Internet to
an Internet that allows you to be anonymous or not depending on the situation.

------
bpeters
We can all pull the "Mark never walked in our shoes" line, but what he is
trying to say is that transparency is inevitable as we march forward into the
information age. So we might as well accept our convictions and live with
them.

As for the people in Egypt there will always be outlets for anonymous
communication. However, it won't be found on some tech blog.

Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions
more carefully, just like we do in real life. And if you are one of those
people who want to lash out, but don't have the guts to do it in face then you
should just tell your best friend or keep it to yourself.

Just my thoughts.

~~~
VladRussian
>Putting faces behind the comments provoke people to consider their opinions
more carefully

You're absolutely right. KGB and Stasi had achieved a lot of success in
putting faces behind the comments, and as a result people were considering
their opinions extremely carefully.

~~~
bpeters
Easy to take everything out of context isn't it? Also you would have to assume
that the people hosting the comments where either KGB or Stasi... Are you
referring to Techcrunch?

~~~
VladRussian
>Easy to take everything out of context isn't it?

yes. It is one of the reasons people may like to remain anonymous - to avoid
dealing with consequences when comments are taken out of context, incorrectly
interpreted and/or understood. Why should i spend extra effort dealing with
morons who aren't able or inclined to understand a simple logical idea?

>Also you would have to assume that the people hosting the comments where
either KGB or Stasi...

not necessary. Just reading/listening to have been enough.

------
benohear
As long as website owners are aware of the consequences, it seems to me to be
up to them to use this or not.

I'm guessing the main attraction is to have the comments automatically
propagated to the commentator's Facebook friends (that IS how it works,
right?)

Personally I'd like to see a similar system for Hacker News - you'd get a much
better comment moderation while keeping the discussion in one place and not
having to worry about running a commenting system yourself.

------
plusbryan
I find it rather ironic that I'm hesitant to comment on this thread because I
disagree with the strongly opinionated majority. Therein lies a paradox.

~~~
ebiester
I believe it'd be an interesting addition.

However, before you do, ask yourself: would you have the same opinion if you
were gay and 15 years old in a fundamentalist family? In a middle eastern
country? If you were transgendered but only in the beginning stages of
transitioning? If you were polygamous in a community that disapproved?

How about if you were conservative in a liberal university?

How about talking about how you had an abortion? That's an important view,
with policy implications, but you never know who would fire you if they knew.

Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence?

~~~
plusbryan
> Should everyone with non-normative views be forced into silence?

Absolutely not, and I agree with you. But help me out - isn't the root cause
of all the examples you list a lack of information? Case in point of many:
don't people in general become less bigoted the more educated they become?

Call me a naive idealist, but I wonder if the information barriers erected by
people to protect themselves, are, on a wider scale, actually what keeps
bigotry and hatred alive?

Zuckerberg isn't a saint, so I'm not suggesting that there is any altruistic
motive behind his moves. I'm just questioning if greater transparency is
inherently a bad thing.

~~~
ebiester
That's how I live my life. I also have white male privilege and a wonderful
family who embraced me coming out and the ability to choose my employers due
to my skills as a developer. That's why I live out of the closet, precisely
for the reasons you mention.

That doesn't hold for a kid in a religious household, the same exact kid who
needs to find a community in which she or he can be heard. It was that
anonymous community that allowed me to find the resources I needed.

Now, to be fair, the LGBT community is largely going to know better than to
force people to name themselves, and the blogger always holds the choice. I'm
more concerned about the overarching issue. I'm concerned about governments
forcing their citizens to blog and comment using their own names. And
Facebook's move is exactly the type of thing that will give them ideas.

------
jeffreyrusso
You might have one identity, but you probably have many personas - and
personas are what most people put forth on the web. That's a pretty
fundamental fact, and it seems like Zuckerberg is dead wrong on this.

This might be an unpopular statement... but IMO, Google seems to get this on
some level (even though they haven't figured out a way to package it.) There
is a recurring theme in the occasional bits that leak out of Google about
their high level thoughts on what they could contribute to the social web
around understanding and helping people separate their personas -

<http://mashable.com/2010/07/13/google-social-slide-deck/> (update: creator of
this deck now works at FB... wonder if he took his opinions with them, or if
this is still indicative of the thinking at Google?)

<https://profiles.google.com/> (notice the language around managing what the
world sees when it searches for you...)

------
ScottBev
I have more of an issue with the lack of control that I have between my
friends, family, coworkers and their social networks.

I had a coworker arrested on some very serious and character destroying
charges. It was hard enough to having to relay that privately to our
executives. I couldn't imagine that spiraling out on my network and remaining
there forever.

A former coworker now has a very interesting business, that isn't very PC.
Should I screen her because of what that will look like to business and/or
community contacts?

No, in both contexts I wish to shape how others reflect on my identity. I
shouldn't be constrained to one very public identity.

And concerning Zuckerberg, how does a billionaire, twenty something have a
clue about a normal user of his system? And besides does he really sounds like
a press release to his friends in real life?

------
reneherse
People, it's time we create a "contextual persona" toolset for social
networking. This is the widest crack in Facebook's armor that a rival could
exploit...

~~~
fungi
ok lets flesh the idea out.

you have a single sign on that allows you to create multiple persona's e.g.
public, family and friends

when posting you would have the ability/requirement to tag content as being
accessible to individuals in groups you have associated with each persona.

sounds like a bit of a pain in the ass that would become very unwieldy beyond
a few groups.

~~~
quattrofan
What we need is a browser "persona" plugin, that allows you to swap in and out
different accounts when it indicates you are on a FB enabled page.

~~~
raghava
But would it still help? I mean, accessing multiple personas through the same
browser on same machine would still be a giveaway, isn't it?

<https://panopticlick.eff.org/browser-uniqueness.pdf>

~~~
quattrofan
Depends what you are trying to achieve, if we are talking a simple level about
controlling what "side" of yourself your friends see I think the browser
plugin is fine. If its about hiding your identity for security reasons then
sure its not going to work, and also of course FB could use the techniques
outlined to discover when you are doing this and block you.

------
brown9-2
It seems to me that there is a solution to these type of identity problems,
although it's a bit non-ideal: don't mix business and personal networks on
sites like Facebook.

------
sili
I believe if this feature takes of, the result will be a lot of sock puppet
accounts on Facebook.

------
mkramlich
A hacker in their early/mid 20's with supposedly poor social skills who's
quickly become a multi-billionaire for making what is essentially just an
profiles/feed website, went to Harvard, and who seems to have never had a real
job in his life is, I dare say it, going to have a rather skewed and limited
perspective on what's realistic in life for the vast majority of people. For
the majority of folks who must or desire to maintain separate work/personal or
friends/family or public/private identities, or who belong to oppressed
groups, are clearly not going to be able to relate to it. People without
FUx1000 money in the bank (like Mark clearly does) are going to have a hard
time relating to it, because without FU money one does have to be much more
careful and arguably afraid of what happens when the wrong people see the
wrong thing and do something that hurts you down the line.

That said, despite his perspective, he clearly has a financial motive to turn
Facebook further into the dominant identity system in the web. Actually, I'll
take that back, it's not clear to me that he has any motive personally to make
it any more dominant, because he's now into the discretionary billions range
of wealth. Perhaps his motive is to increase ROI for all the sub-one-percent
shareholders. I dunno. I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded
ambition that thinks it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the
entire world -- we're talking the entire world here, it's not like coming in
1000th place, and it's not even truly a race. If anything, it's a race to
stand still, and then you die, no matter what.

It's interesting to think that there are now more people with a Facebook
identity than most meatspace nations have citizens. More _Facebookians_ than
Brits, for example. Than French. Japanese. I don't know the exact count of
total Facebook users offhand but I wouldn't be surprised to find it's already
surpassed the number of US citizens as well.

~~~
defen
> I've just never gotten this whole sort of unbounded ambition that thinks
> it's not good enough to be the 3rd best thing in the entire world -- we're
> talking the entire world here...

Reminds me of something...

    
    
       I have no spur
       To prick the sides of my intent, but only
       Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself,
       And falls on th'other.

------
jpr
Zuckerberg doesn't get context sensitivity.

~~~
natrius
You're assuming that if he understood context sensitivity, he'd come to the
same conclusions that you have.

------
msh
Wow, a lot of hate directed towards Zuckerberg. I understand why the auther
can be sceptical og facebook and his comments, but degrading it into
namecalling is just not keeping the debate at a serious level (in example,
calling Zuckerberg a manchild).

------
ohashi
As far as I can tell Zuckerberg have no redeeming features (success isn't a
redeeming feature in my mind).

~~~
fuzzmeister
Wow, is this really how bad the hate for Facebook and Zuckerberg has gotten on
HN? To say that someone like Zuckerberg, whether you agree with him or not,
has "no redeeming features" is simply ignorant. I'm all for reasonable debate
about the privacy issues Facebook brings up, but can we please avoid this
personal attack nonsense?

~~~
exit
sorry, what are his redeeming features?

~~~
ohashi
Seems kind of odd to me I can get a negative score for saying it and you can
have a positive one for asking again. I have yet to see anything redeeming
about him, he is one of the most influential people in the world but he isn't
mature enough to use it properly. In fact, he seems to go the extra mile to
piss off everyone about privacy, usability, whatever. His company is changing
the world, but his personal ethos is making that world less and less a place I
want to be.

------
ozziegooen
So small business owners trying to prevent their forums from become cesspools
of curses should be considered "Nazis"? This post illustrates the same
alarmist tone that trolls normally do.

He's trolling people because they're trying to stop trolling.

Requesting real accounts for comments on personal business websites isn't a
violation of the Freedom of Speech. It's the equivalent of asking politicians
to reveal what bills they voted for. Transparency means accountability, not
the destruction of everything good online. Geese.

