
Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online - protomyth
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2011/08/randi-zuckerberg-runs-wrong-direction-pseudonymity
======
bdhe
In these sort of arguments I don't really understand why _civility in and of
itself_ is valued. It only makes sense in a social situation that affords
civility. For that you can make "giving up anonymity" _opt-in_ , rather than
_opt-out_ (which is mostly what is being done a lot, from forums that force
you to use FB accounts to tor users in various countries who have no easy way
to opt-out of foregoing anonymity).

It is rather silly to quote civility when the alternative, the lack of
anonymity, has terrible "real-world" consequences, as mentioned in the
article.

 _the argument willfully ignores the many voices that are silenced in the name
of shutting up trolls: activists living under authoritarian regimes,
whistleblowers, victims of violence, abuse, and harassment, and anyone with an
unpopular or dissenting point of view that can legitimately expect to be
imprisoned, beat-up, or harassed for speaking out._

Can someone explain the rationale of placing civility ahead of the above
consequences?

~~~
reso
The argument is that online anonymity itself also creates real-world
consequences, such as character assassinations, harassment, and downright
internet crime.

If "Civility" means "being nice to each other", why shouldn't we value it, in
and of itself?

~~~
VladRussian
>online anonymity itself also creates real-world consequences, such as
character assassinations, harassment, and downright internet crime.

anonymity itself doesn't create crime or harassment. Like in the real life, it
only makes it easier to perpetrate one. With this being said, why wouldn't we
all wear GPS and RFID enabled collars at all times with our name,
identification number and scan barcode being promptly visible on the collar?

Nice device, goes well with Guchi pants:

[http://www.extremtrac.com/e/products/personal%20tracking%20s...](http://www.extremtrac.com/e/products/personal%20tracking%20system/p18.html)

~~~
onedognight
> why wouldn't we all wear GPS and RFID enabled collars at all times with our
> name, identification number and scan barcode being promptly visible on the
> collar

Like a smart phone?

~~~
Joakal
A smart phone is not needed.

FBI can turn on a phone's microphone:
<http://news.cnet.com/2100-1029_3-6140191.html>

A German politician got a telecom company to hand over phone location data:
<http://blogs.dw-world.de/spectrum/?p=907>

Pretty animation of phone tracking: <http://www.zeit.de/datenschutz/malte-
spitz-data-retention>

------
daeken
I have released many pieces of software which could've brought a shitstorm
down on me, legally and otherwise. I've decided in every case to do so under
my real name, as I felt that I was in the right and if others disagreed, the
downside for me was low (I have no house to lose, no family to support, etc).
Others in the same exact position would've chosen to release these things
under a pseudonym, as they had more on the line; this is a reasonable choice,
and one that should be respected. In an environment where everything has to be
tied to your name, you don't just crush malicious actions, you crush anything
controversial. That's not alright.

------
Cherian_Abraham
If you are not offended in five minutes after leaving your doorstep, then you
dont live in a free country.

Facebook being the Identity provider of the net is a scary thought. As does
anyone that big.

------
VladRussian
>People behave a lot better when they have their real names down.

right from the KGB and Stasi manuals.

~~~
nate_meurer
Yep. Replace the word "civility" with "harmony", and you have the official
position of the Chinese government as well, almost word-for-word.

------
kefs
Relevant TED Talk:

Christopher "moot" Poole: The case for anonymity online

[http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for...](http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_m00t_poole_the_case_for_anonymity_online.html)

~~~
pilgrim689
I enjoyed that. To be honest though, he does not make a very strong case for
anonymity. That is not to say that there is not a strong case for anonymity,
but anecdotes like "they saved a cat" and "they protested scientology" are not
it. I think people have organized protests on Facebook before.

~~~
kefs
I agree, it wasn't very in-depth.

More relevant quotes from 'moot' here:

[http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/13/4chan-moot-christopher-
poo...](http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/13/4chan-moot-christopher-poole-sxsw/)

------
One_adm12
Who the fuck cares about Randi Zuckerberg. Without Mark would we give a shit
what she says?

~~~
corin_
Her views are relevant because of her position (until yesterday) in Facebook,
her surname is just a nice addition to attract more readers, not the reason
for the story.

------
jrockway
_I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better
when they have their real names down. … I think people hide behind anonymity
and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors._

That's nice that you feel that way. Why do I need to care, though? I _can_ say
whatever I want behind closed doors.

------
dbuxton
I was talking about something similar earlier today with a friend from high
school. We were talking about how it was totally un-cool to disagree with the
"consensus" about which girls were hot and which were not. We were imagining
what it might have been like if we'd felt able to speak our minds.

I'm not a huge believer in the whole "social media toppled authoritarian
regimes" stories that have been going around after Tunisia/Egypt but I do
think that to the extent real anonymity is possible it has the potential to
help people living in places where dissent is both stigmatised and punished by
allowing them to realise that others feel the same way.

This Steven Pinker talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-son3EJTrU> (I think;
I don't have Flash so can't check it's the right one) talks about why this
type of communication is essential to free societies and why freedom of
assembly is protected in all free societies.

On the same general topic researchers in public health give people some wiggle
room on truth telling by introducing random noise into their responses in
order to improve the aggregate quality of information you get from asking them
questions about controversial topics (drug use, sexuality):
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randomized_response>

tl;dr: anything that helps people tell the truth rather than timidly
conforming to social norms is a good thing

------
dmethvin
Randi is right. Only scumbags like Ben Franklin are sleazy enough to use
pseudonyms. <http://www.pbs.org/benfranklin/l3_wit_name.html>

------
orbitingpluto
TL;DR Your right to privacy interferes with my revenue stream.

------
Okvivi
In my past life I've worked on the Google Maps identity story when Google
Hotpot launched (allowing you to set a maps nickname, while still having
friends on Google Maps). I feel that identity on the web is a harder problem
than most people realize.

My personal opinion is that you have to strike the right balance between

\+ establishing trust in the production of content (you want other people to
trust what you post, build an identity). Producing anonymous/pseudonymous
content is fine, but how can I, as a consumer of that content (reader of
reviews) can make sure I can trust it?

\+ offerring users the protection they want from entities bothered by the
content you produce. This can range from the extreme cases of freedom of
speech, minorities, sensitive issues (medical, sexual orientation) to the more
trivial examples of bad reviews for restaurants where the owners might track
you down.

\+ incentivizing the production of high quality content and discussions (see
the quality of YouTube comments for a case of user generated content gone
wrong :-) ).

\+ making it easy for users to deal with this identity complexity.
Understanding that even though you are logged in with your GMail account you
are posting as a Nickname, understanding what others can or cannot infer about
you.

It's a complicated problem full of tradeoffs any way you want to go. \+ Go
with real-name all the time and you upset the people that are not comfortable
exposing their real name. \+ Go with pseudonymity and you lose the benefits
brought by having an identity on the web. \+ Go with a compromise and you have
to deal with complicated user experience problems.

------
protomyth
I would hate to see a tradition in political discourse older than the US be
given up for advertising dollars. How would a modern version of the Federalist
Papers work with no pseudonyms?

------
kapitalx
Having the ability to speak anonymously allows for people to speak their true
mind and show their true personality rather than hiding behind the fear of
lash back.

~~~
william42
One word. /b/.

~~~
slowpoke
I've met some of my best (online) buddies on /b/ or in /b/-related activities
(though I don't go there anymore).

Yes, it's a raging shithole of trolls, mouth-frothing idiots and general
retardation, but there're probably just as many decent people there. They're
just not as vocal. This applies to many places, by the way, not just /b/.

Also, generally speaking, /b/ is the worst kind of example that you can
probably think of. This makes for an interesting argument though: it can
hardly get worse than /b/ - it's the absolute superlative of anonymity induced
uncivility.

------
trotsky
Computer security is and will continue to be so imperfect that it will remain
extremely difficult for anyone to mandate real identity use on the broader
internet. All the anti-censorship tools would work just as well against
western governments and websites as they do against the middle east and asia.
Wifi is ubiquitous and very hard to manage. People's identities are trivial to
steal and would be a cinch to use if no money was changing hands. Hacking the
client, password reuse, selling dead accounts, proxies and vpns from locations
that don't require name use, off shore hosting.

Sure, many people wouldn't bother and just adapt. But clearly groups like
Anon, 4chan, most of irc, #antisec and numerous others would avoid it all and
go elsewhere. It's often repeated that the kids will hang around until
something new is cooler. I imagine AnonymouSabu could do a pretty good job of
jump starting a new social network all by himself if he got banned from
twitter. Even if you have nothing to hide you'd probably head there if your
friends are there.

Second is how practical PKI with identity management is on a nation scale. To
make a serious run at 100% real identity all the time you probably need to go
full public/private key, smartcard+pin, IP packet tagging for egress outside
the nation's great firewall and so on. With less than all that it'd simply be
too easy to avoid.The problem is, PKI with identity management is a really
hard problem to do well. One of the largest PKI deployments in the world is
the DOD. They wrangled for years on deployment, already have strict security
protocols and a managed environment. None the less they had to shut the entire
system down not that long ago and revalidate every identity because they had
so many bad cards in active use.

Sure, the government probably isn't the best at that, hence why the Obama ID
plan looks to open standards and a federated group of ID providers -
presumably firms like Google, Facebook, Bank of America, Verisign and Verizon.
The problem is that many of these firms are ill equipped to manage something
you depend on for all aspects of your life, day in day out. I've edited out a
bunch of specific examples, but suffice to say few or none of them have all
the pieces needed to manage such an important, hands on and support reliant
business.

On paper it all seems achievable, but in practice it seems highly unlikely to
me that you'll see universal required ID. Facebook would like to see it for
any number of business reasons, but when it comes down to it it probably
matters little what they think.

All that because somebody related to someone who figured out how to help
college students hook up thinks people might be a bit nicer in blog comments?
Yah right.

------
jamesu
A while back i decided to forego my pseudoname in order to look more
professional.

This has led to many problems: for one, conflicts. It seems every other month
people mistake me for someone else with the same name. Either that or yet
another person "mistakenly" uses my gmail address to sign up for a web
service.

My last name is also difficult for some people to pronounce. With a
pseudoname, this was not an issue. Not to mention my pseudoname was pretty
easy to remember... people even still use it!

Really as far as i know, my lack of a pseudoname has not made me appear any
more professional than before, so i'm finding it hard to find a good reason
why i should even use my real name on the internet. In fact pseudonymity is a
great tool to segregate online identities in this age where people will write
and store prejudicial information about you for extremely long periods of time
(forever if it gets to archive.org).

------
zenica
I wonder how this relates to exponential growth in "Persona Management
Software". I heard for some companies having thousands of Facebook accounts
under control. And apparently they are "real" and non-anonymous as it gets.

My question is: how are they going to distinguish puppets from real people?

~~~
r00fus
> My question is: how are they going to distinguish puppets from real people?

As long as it benefits their bottom line, I'd say: never.

If you follow the money, it rarely fails... especially when we're talking
about the amoral concepts that corporations are designed to be.

------
gallerytungsten
Facebook is (so far) arguably the most successful example of "permission
marketing," a concept in which the marketer learns about the mark, in order to
more effectively sell them some crap they don't need (and perhaps something
they do need, just to be fair.)

Of course, anonymity is a powerful defense against this type of marketing,
particularly when it isn't particularly "permissive" in the first place.
Facebook's repeatedly sneaky approach to eliminating privacy is part and
parcel of that effort.

So naturally, "permission marketers" think everyone should be identified as it
helps them make more money. That's really what it's about: the bottom line.

~~~
Terretta
I think the by far more massive example are the custom coupons at the grocery.
People who complain about cookies or Facebook have no problem swiping their
affinity card at the grocery. That affinity program knows more about them than
Facebook does, and much more money is involved.

------
testymctest
In real life people use their real names ... doesn't stop idiots being idiots.

------
hussong
The 'Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory' is a hypothesis at best. One that has
been refuted by empirical evidence of pro-social behavior under anonymity many
times.

For all practical purposes, it's not even a well-formulated hypothesis, and
most people (even journalists) never bother to look at any of the findings,
it's just a popular meme.

------
djb_hackernews
That quote makes me feel like she(he?) didn't really understand what they were
saying. It looks almost identical to a word jumble. I know it was a free form
panel, but jeez, you are the marketing director of Facebook, you should be a
better communicator than that.

------
One_adm12
Once you start letting people use pseudonyms, then what? Are we going to start
letting dogs use pseudonyms too? Where does it stop?

------
DanielBMarkham
Yuck. This argument is consistently framed as a false dichotomy: either get
rid of pseudonyms or keep them.

Why not both? Some places, like Google+, might be nom-de-plum-free. Some, like
reddit, might not. Why make it one way or the other?

I can easily foresee an internet that has parts that are "real person only"
and parts that are the wild west. For that matter, some parts, like banking
access, might be even more locked down. I don't think we have to make some
massive decision for all of it. Let it evolve and bifurcate as it needs to.

~~~
wmf
The problem occurs when one of these real name zones becomes a monopoly.

------
intellection
Authoritatively do not go there with Nym.

------
majmun
nonsense. some of things that post comments or use Internet don't have real
identity.

------
ristretto
The argument for political dissidents in nonfree countries is valid but old
(in many cases the regimes will catch the dissidents regardless). The value of
pseudo-identity is not just anonymity, but the ability to have multiple
identities. We shouldn't be forced to use one identity for the various areas
of the internet, just like the comments and actions i make on HN are totally
unrelated to my facebook community or my twitter community. Single-identity is
a vehicle for tracking people, and i can only think of evil reasons to track
people across communities. Even in real life, we dont carry our real
identities around, you don't tell your full name to the cashier in the
supermarket or to people in the street. If you get into a fight, you don't
start by exchanging phone numbers.

In fact, offline real identity is less dangerous: unless you kill their
mother, people you don't interact with will forget you in a matter of months.
The internet is permanent.

But why am i wasting my time, facebook people think like infants anyway.

~~~
tapp
Your comment re: multiple identities is exactly right. I don't understand why
people seem so surprised to hear this sentiment coming from her, though - Mark
is already on record on that topic:

“Having two identities for yourself is an example of a lack of integrity.”

Facebook's policy from the top down seems to be that you are only ever
entitled to one identity - period. If you were foolish enough to be born into
an environment where expressing yourself solely through that one identity can
get you in to trouble and/or killed, that's your own fault.

------
mark242
Coincidence?

"Randi Zuckerberg to leave Facebook..."

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20087785-93/randi-
zuckerber...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-20087785-93/randi-zuckerberg-
to-leave-facebook-to-start-social-media-firm/)

I think someone likely said, "enough is enough" and forced her out.

------
vaksel
i think anonymous should take this as a challenge, and hunt down everything
negative there is to know about her online.

I'm sure if they look hard enough they can dig up plenty of dirt on her.

But even if they do, it wont' be all of it, since noone is that stupid as to
use their real name online. If she has even a single account online that uses
a pseudonym or a username she is a hypocrite

~~~
tptacek
Let's definitely harass people who express viewpoints we don't agree with.

