
Ask HN: When is online anonymity undesirable? - onuralp
I am particularly curious about circumstances where you think anonymity detracts from the overall experience, makes the communication less efficient, and reduces the chance of a future interaction.<p>Is there a place for anonymity in our digital future?
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cimmanom
When you're trying to self-promote - e.g. LinkedIn.

Situations where you want to discourage abusive / antisocial behaviors
(especially those with potential real-world repercussions for the victim) or
be able to enforce real-world repercussions for said behaviors.

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slim
When you need to build trust. Typically in social networks

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goblins
>Is there a place for anonymity in our digital future?

I hope so.

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Irishsteve
Cynical view would be its a good way to force unified accounts across your
various verticals - a-la google plus, and in that case you can sell as one
entity as opposed to seperate.

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Bizarro
How would there not be a place for anonymity in our digital future?

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onuralp
I suppose what I had in mind was akin to the following practical example, say
a technical question asked on Stack Overflow. When the submitter can't
reliably or efficiently anonymize the accompanying data [which would risk
reveal the submitter's anonymity and compromise data], the submitter does not
have any choice but anonymizes both the identity _and_ the data, which
probably results in a sub-optimal exchange.

Imagine that you can effectively anonymize the dataset, I think one can think
of circumstances where this could lead to a more effective communication as to
provide further information (e.g., submitter's domain familiarity, language
experience, resource constraints) and context (e.g., is this a standard
practice) instead of fishing for more clarification in an iterative, and
therefore less efficient, fashion.

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coralreef
From what perspective are you seeking?

If you take the perspective of a consumer internet business, then knowing your
user is pretty valuable, and may help in monetization and UX.

