

4chan founder: Mark Zuckerberg is “totally wrong” about online identity - bond
http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/13/4chan-moot-christopher-poole-sxsw/

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DarkShikari
It's interesting to contrast the Japanese style of online identity (which
inspired 4chan) and the style that Zuckerberg is trying to promote.

Millions of Japanese have profiles on sites like Pixiv (popular art site with
~15m images) or Nico Nico Douga (popular video site with ~15m videos). They
create art, videos, etc, and upload them under a name. Many of these people
earn money off their work, publishing doujinshi at Comiket, creating art and
promotional videos for commercial games, and so forth.

But there's no attempt to ensure that these are real names. Typically they're
aliases. Even their most popular social networking site, Mixi, works the same
way. To the Japanese, there's absolutely no reason why "my life as a doujin
artist" and, say, "my life as a software engineer", should be given the same
name.

Interestingly enough, this is how it often seems to have worked in the West as
well... prior to Facebook.

~~~
bane
Maybe there's a market for a social networking site that let's one maintain
sets of identities, segregated (or joined) by groups or "circles" of people
from different facets of their life?

I know we often talk about separate facebook accounts for work/regular life
people, but why not for online identities as well?

FB doesn't allow this (nor do any other social networking site I'm aware
of)...

~~~
rabidsnail
okcupid works like mixi in this way (and a lot of other ways, too). It's a
shame that they call themselves a dating site; they're really a social network
for people who met online.

~~~
wisty
I would _love_ to see those guys pivot, and release a multi-identity facebook
killer.

Not that they need to (I think they are bootstrapped), but it would be cool.

~~~
rabidsnail
They also just got acquired by match.com, so probably not happening.

~~~
wisty
Well, I hope they can vest soon.

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nyellin
I founded a startup with dsebrow and jsebrow to try and address this issue. We
let users have private and anonymous conversations with their friends and
colleagues, with a twist: you can see who is part of a conversation, but you
can't see who made individual comments. In other words, you can have anonymous
conversations with people who you respect. The trolls can't comment, because
participation is invite-only.

There is a demo at <http://freeversation.com/about/> but please don't
excessively promote it or repost it to HN yet. We're not quite ready to go
live. (Until this discussion hit the homepage, we weren't planning on allowing
the public to access Freeversation.com until later this week.)

We will be applying for YCombinator.

~~~
ilovecomputers
Well that might lead to awkward situations.

 _Donny, Steven, Eric, and Bob have joined the Freeversation_

Anon: "Hey guys how's it going."

Anon2: "Donny cheated with Mary."

Anon: "Okay, who said that?"

Anon: "Eric it was you wasn't it?"

Anon2: "Donny also stole booze from last nights party."

Anon: "I will find out who this is."

Full disclosure: I don't know how bros talk, but I can see Freeversations
leading to confessions or straight out bashing. Best to lay down some
etiquette for new users.

~~~
nyellin
We're planning on adding some moderation options, but we also trust our users.
You get to decide who to invite to a conversation, so presumably you won't
invite someone who is going to make a joke out of a serious discussion.

If people don't live up to our expectations, we do have some creative
solutions for encouraging people to behave.

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kkowalczyk
What if they are both right?

Facebook model is phenomenally successful, clearly Zuckerberg must be right.

4chan model is phenomenally successful, clearly Poole must be right.

The only issue I see here is our polarizing attitude and insistence that one
must be better than the other.

It's not a zero sum game. We have both because they target different, non-
overlapping scenarios and we have hundreds of other, smaller communities, each
with different rules.

We don't discuss it when people who like bitter chocolate claim that those who
like sweet chocolate are "totally wrong". I think we have enough space on our
servers for both Facebook and 4chan.

~~~
noibl
Only one of those people is making moral judgements against people who use
pseudonyms ("an example of a lack of integrity") and making phenomenal amounts
of money out of marginalising the practice.

~~~
joe_the_user
Facebook hasn't marginalized the practice terribly much - at least half my FB
friends are also using aliases.

~~~
Raphael_Amiard
You can use alias, but the friction to do so, and also to eventually change
alias, is considerably higher than on most sites.

All in all, you are not __supposed __to do that on facebook, even if plenty of
people do it, and that does make quite a difference.

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statictype
It's like the saying "It's difficult to make someone understand something when
his job depends on him not understanding it".

Facebook's popularity is driven by attaching your real life to an online
identity. 4Chan's success is driven by total anonymity.

That the two founders have diametrically opposing views on anonymity is not
really surprising. There's certainly merit to both view points.

~~~
ryusage
I think you're misunderstanding Poole's stance on this. Zuckerberg seems to be
pushing for a huge reduction in anonymity - maybe to the point of removing it
altogether. That is definately because it would benefit him directly.

Poole, though, is just saying that it would be a mistake to assume there's no
value to anonymity. He's clearly not saying that everything should be
anonymous, since, as pointed out in the article, he's also creating a new site
that utilizes FB profiles.

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stcredzero
_“The cost of failure is really high when you’re contributing as yourself,”
Poole said._

So Mark Zuckerberg is "totally wrong?" This makes me knit my eyebrows. Just
because putting your real identity out there can have good uses doesn't make
anonymity "wrong." Neither does the utility of anonymity make real identity
wrong. Clearly these are both useful.

The presence of hordes of anonymous least common denominator users can have
detrimental effects too. Sometimes, there is a place for close social distance
and the good behavior it brings. Sometimes there's a place for freewheeling
anonymity and the frankness and creativity it enables. Neither is "wrong."

~~~
bbgm
Agreed, they both have their place, although I am biased heavily in favor of
using personas that link to your real identity. If FB allowed anonymity, I
would be using it. It's for my connections and those alone.

~~~
bbgm
And that should be I _wouldn't_ be using this. Notice it too late to change

------
thrwaway
this is very true, in the sense that in high school i was a very shy person
that other people picked upon. on coming to college [in a different area from
where i went to hs], people were from different places, and i didn't have a
background as that _insert random/weird label here_ kid, and as a result being
my authentic self, i made nice friends, and no one really cared about what i
was or was not in the past.

~~~
w1ntermute
This is actually an issue now for new college students, because of Facebook.
People form an opinion of you from your Facebook profile (and thus your social
interactions with your high school Facebook friends) long before you meet them
face-to-face.

------
kenjackson
Kind of weird that the founder of 4chan really seems to get this a lot more
than Zuckerberg, founder of the largest online community in the US (world?).

~~~
burgerbrain
Actually, I think it makes a lot of sense. 4chan's appeal is the anonyminity,
and facebook depends on having accurate data on people to mine and sell.

~~~
hcack
While it's representative, moot doesn't have $50bn to lose. His principles are
less likely to be marketing than Zuck's.

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frou_dh
If you've thought about this subject yourself then you can create your own mix
and don't need Poole or Zuckerberg to lay down the law.

~~~
rbarooah
Sorry - downvoted when I meant to upvote.

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gs8
Anonymous web is perfect, communities are able to filter out trolls on there
on. If some one wants to have a single identity they are able to do that in an
anonymous web. But the reverse can't be done. Zuckerberg benefits financially
from a single identity web and that is why he likes it.

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thatusertwo
Mark Zuckerberg's opinions should make most conspiracy theorist think Big
Brother is closer then we think.

~~~
danssig
Except that Zuckerberg's "opinions" happen to directly correlate with what
makes him the most money (through advertising). Big Brother may benefit from
his greed though.

~~~
thatusertwo
They say money is the root of all evil.

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Nope, that's a mis-quotation. Money is itself not the root of all evil, it's
the _love_ of money.

Look it up: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_of_all_evil>

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reustle
Yet he used facebook connect to sign up for his latest project, canv.as?

~~~
ryusage
My impression from the article was not that Poole thinks Facebook is evil, or
that anonymity is always better than a clear identity. His point was simply
that it would be a mistake to eliminate anonymity from the internet entirely.
Both systems have valuable benefits. From that standpoint, I don't see any
contradiction in the choice for his new project.

------
dangoldin
Technology Review also had an interview with him where he brings up the same
points: <http://www.technologyreview.com/web/25997/>

I'm not sure if a subscription is required though.

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stretchwithme
Maybe a mix of anonymity and clear identity would work best. Let people have 2
profiles, one anonymous and one not, with behaviors clearly owned by the
profile used. They can use the anonymous profile when they feel it might be
helpful.

But give people the ability to eventual discover who someone is if they have
consistently bad behavior over time and when many more people share that
opinion than oppose it.

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tomp
While I don't support Mark's ideas and Facebooks' politics about privacy, I
really don't get it when people say that you can't manage who sees your FB
content.

Facebook has for a long time supported Friend Lists.

All my photos (and the ones I'm tagged in), except the profile pictures, are
only visible to a very small circle of friends. I could do the same thing for
status updates if I wanted.

~~~
lreeves
Two examples as to why people say it's hard to control access to your content
of the top of my heard are

a) by default applications that your friends install can access your content.
b) Facebook has several times changed their privacy defaults without informing
the users, causing reams of older content to be visable to "friends of
friends" as opposed to just friends.

Unless you check the privacy and application settings approximately every
three months then it's easy to get burned when a site upgrade gets rolled out
and the "recommended" settings are applied to your account.

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digitaltothem
What I especially like about this model is the following: "content becomes
more important than the creator, which is unlike virtually any other online
community. Rather than prioritizing the most valued and experienced users..."
This is the foundation of creating value.

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mapu
The title of this article is very misleading.

~~~
pknight
is it? Didn't mislead me...

~~~
jon_dahl
Yep. I was there, and he did say this (amongst other things) during his talk.

Good talk, all in all. 4chan is a refreshing change from VC backed,
liquidation-event-directed online communities. Not that 4chan is a Facebook
replacement by any means, but it's helpful to remember that an enormous part
of what's interesting on the internet is open-source, non-profit, or not
profit-motivated.

~~~
BoppreH

      what's interesting on the internet is open-source,
      non-profit, or not profit-motivated
    

You forgot "balls-to-the-wall crazy". An unusual environment is more likely to
advocate creativity, from where most of the interesting things spark.

~~~
generalk
4chan as a whole is not "balls-to-the-wall crazy." Several of their boards
are, but as a whole that's not necessarily the case.

~~~
BoppreH
True. But I still think it's appropriate because a) when talking about 4chan
people don't think of the sane boards and b) the crazy boards hold a great
chunk of the traffic (majority?), even if they are outnumbered (not that you
need many of them).

Regardless of what we think, 4chan and /b/ are synonymous in most places. And
there's a good reason, I don't think international press is interested in the
Animals, Traditional Games or Literature boards.

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daimyoyo
He's right you know. Where would we be without Rickrolling and LOL cats?

</sarcasm>

