
The anonymity I know - shasa
http://chrishateswriting.com/post/76431353368/the-anonymity-i-know
======
ChuckMcM
Great article moot, and well said. What is particularly intriguing to me on
this (hackernews) and 4chan has been how so many people conflate anonymity
with "non-identity", which is absolutely not the same.

Karma systems attach value to a 'handle' which is its own form of identity. So
I can create an account on a forum as xyz123 and say what ever I want, but if
the speech is of low value to the community I'll get "down karma" (what ever
the mechanism is) and that identity will become less valuable, if instead the
speech is found to be of value I will get "up karma" and that identity will
become more valuable. I might find at some point that my identify as xyz123 is
more valuable to me than my "real" identity. So am I anonymous? Sure, but does
that mean I don't have an identity? Absolutely not.

Of course this allows for sock puppetry, for whom Scott Adams will forever be
the patron saint. And in that sense there is value in being able to isolate
uniqueness. Which is to say these two names are the same human, versus these
two handles are two different humans. And this is the point that rubs on the
'anti-anonymity' folks. As much of the conversation's interpretation can
change when you know the relationship between the participants, it can
completely flip one's perception of it. And not knowing the underlying
relationships can make us susceptible to manipulation (which is used often
enough to have its own name "astro-turfing")

I keep wondering if we'll ever get to a system which has both anonymity and
structure, but I don't know if that is possible as identity is often
discernible by the relationships.

~~~
kybernetikos
> so many people conflate anonymity with "non-identity", which is absolutely
> not the same.

Quite a few people have mentioned this in passing, but I think it's actually
the central point.

What you're called has no relationship to meanness at all. Whether your
actions can have consequences for you is what has a relationship to meanness.

This holds true in real life too. The Stanford Prison experiment degenerated
because the prisoners had no meaningful way of creating consequences for the
prison guards, not anything to do with names. Abu Ghraib abuses occured
because the mechanisms to hold the guards to account were (perhaps even
deliberately) not working. They used their real names.

The rule of nature is that groups of people who can suffer no consequences for
their actions will tend towards worse and worse behavior.

This is obvious. Imagine a forum where you could call yourself whatever you
wanted in conversations (and different names in different conversations), but
you have to log into it with a password and passwords cost $50 to acquire and
for sufficiently bad behaviour they can be revoked. The fact that you can call
yourself whatever you like isn't going to change the fact that people will be
careful not to do things that risk their $50.

Reddit and hackernews and stackoverflow tend not to degenerate because the
identities on there have history and value. If you behave badly enough, your
identity will suffer loss, and you yourself will lose some of the value you've
built up.

One of the most wonderful things about the internet is that you can take part
in communities where race and sex and family history and class and age are
subordinated to achievements, ideas, and skill at expressing them.

~~~
seabee
> Imagine a forum [...] but you have to log into it with a password and
> passwords cost $50 to acquire and for sufficiently bad behaviour they can be
> revoked

You don't have to imagine it, take a look at the Something Awful forums.
People still get banned but the discourse is better, from my limited
experience.

------
bguthrie
I think what both pieces miss is the behavior that _asymmetric_ anonymity
seems to encourage. The ability to lambast public figures from behind a screen
of anonymity seems to bring out the abusive worst in people, and the target
has nowhere to run. Conversely, communities in which _everyone_ is anonymous
seem to foster a degree of creativity and respect rarely found elsewhere. I
think Altman was thinking about the former when he addressed the app, and this
piece addresses the latter. But they're different kinds of anonymity.

Edit: Asymmetric, not asynchronous.

~~~
pamelafox
My only experience on 4chan was due to a Google Alert notifying me that I was
the subject of a thread on /d/. That thread was the highest density collection
of insults about me that I'd ever seen on the net, and sadly, I'm not yet
thick-skinned enough to entirely ignore the "comments on the internet."

When I see things like that, or comments on youtube videos of my talks, I
sometimes think "maybe I should retreat and make myself not such a visible
target." But I stay because I feel like I'm meant to be a role model for my
gender, and people seem to like to hear the things I say. Or at least, I stay
for now.

I get the impression that communities like this feel that people put
themselves out there purely for their own benefit, and therefore they have the
right to attack them, because they are asking for it. I think many of us never
asked for it, but given the pros/cons, we stick with it. There are definitely
cons, though.

I don't see how to prevent anonymous communities from lambasting public
figures, and don't think they should necessarily be prevented. But it sure
would be nice if they realized that everyone's a person, and nobody likes to
wake up to find they've arbitrarily been chosen as the subject of taunts for
the day.

~~~
pervycreeper
>it sure would be nice if they realized that everyone's a person

I hope you realize that anonymous comments are also (usually) written by
people, and the points of view they express are also worthy of consideration
and respect. Making comments which lack a connection to a person's real life
identity enables the commenter to use an honest and direct tone, without
resorting to passive-aggressive innuendo.

Also, people tend to forget that there is an implicit social contract involved
in becoming a "public figure", namely, in return for having a platform for
disseminating ideas, the people you are able to reach have a right to respond
and criticize them (and you) in return. If your ideas are too weak to defend,
perhaps they are not deserving of wider attention.

~~~
prawn
Are the ideas being attacked or the individual in this case?

Many people simply don't know how to respond to something they dislike or feel
threatened by and anonymity means they don't even have to consider a valid
argument in their aggression. Sometimes race or gender or other feeling of
competition are enough to make people feel threatened - not much relating to
social contract or "points of view worthy of consideration and respect" then.

~~~
pervycreeper
>anonymity means they don't even have to consider a valid argument in their
aggression

Is that just speculation, or did you have an example in mind when you said
that? Not being a user of 4chan's /d/ board (believe it or not!), I am not
familiar with the particular controversy referenced in GP's post. Not knowing
what they were reacting to, and what the reactions were, I can't comment on
whether there was any "aggression" without "valid arguments" (real or
perceived), but I can not think of anything that could have been posted that
would be genuinely worthy of concern (that was specifically enabled by
anonymity).

>Sometimes race or gender or other feeling of competition are enough to make
people feel threatened

Not sure if you're referring to the commenters or GP poster, but in either
case, it's hard to see how any of those could be considered relevant to the
question of anonymous commenting.

My guiding assumption here is that a free, open, unfettered exchange of ideas
is a higher value than preventing feelings of offense or hurt egos.

~~~
andrewflnr
Well if you don't know what you're talking about, not being "familiar with the
particular controversy", maybe you should refrain from defending the
participants. Sometimes people's views really don't deserve any respect. None.
Use your imagination. Granted, they're often perfectly capable of saying such
things under their own name.

------
nswanberg
This is a great essay, and a great argument for anonymity and what it can
offer.

Sam's essay went too quickly towards condemning anonymity, but it started by
attacking a different kind of anonymity--that of small groups. Secret might
have problems not simply because the messages are anonymous, but because they
are anonymous between people who know each other and can act on that
information. In 4chan participants likely will never meet--in Secret they
already have.

~~~
mikeg8
Interesting perspective. Thanks.

------
izzydata
I agree with every word. Of course I am incredibly biased because this is the
kind of internet interaction that I prefer. It is just a different kind of
internet culture and is obviously not for some people.

If you want every possible opinion on something whether it be the most popular
opinions or the least popular opinion and everything in-between then anonymity
is the way to go. Preferably without internet aliases for a true
representation of unfiltered opinions.

------
danso
> _I strongly disagree. What I’ve observed is the opposite—that anonymity
> facilitates honest discourse, creates a level playing field for ideas to be
> heard, and enables creativity like none other._

I think Chris makes a great counter-argument, however, isn't it possible that
anonymity can breed both meanness _and_ creativity? I don't mean just
creatively-cruel-pranks, but that what anonymity breeds is dependent on the
community, and to an extent, how that community is moderated. HackerNews
allows anonymity, but I think it'd be a much different place for discussion if
it weren't for the mod policies in effect.

~~~
wpietri
Yes. Healthy communities, real or virtual, self-regulate through social
feedback loops. Requiring real names activates those social feedback loops in
a way that is very handy from the perspective of people designing communities.

If you're going to have anonymity, you need to find a workable substitute.
Early BBSes were often pseudonymous, but they were also gardens carefully
tended by their operators. HN's self-moderation and karma tracking provide a
similar effect here. Quora has a functional mix of mostly real names with
optional anonymity on a per-post basis plus user voting and heavy moderation
to enforce a "be nice, be respectful" tone.

Another good example is John Scalzi, who moderates his blog comments using the
"Mallet of Loving Correction". His comment policy is a great example, but it
clearly takes a lot of thoughtful gardening on his part to keep a pseudonymous
comments section from descending into something pretty ugly:
[http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/site-disclaimer-and-
comment...](http://whatever.scalzi.com/about/site-disclaimer-and-comment-
policy/)

~~~
crassus
Scalzi considers "ugly" anyone that is outside a very small neighborhood of
idea space. It's fine for his own professional blog, but it's incredibly
narrow as a general principle for discussions.

~~~
wpietri
I don't think that's the case. He's pretty strict in enforcing _behavior_ ,
including the behavior of staying on topic.

Another good example in this regard is Quora. They cover an incredibly wide
range of topics and viewpoints. But they're pretty insistent on respectful
behavior.

I think that focus, respectful behavior, is exactly what makes for good real-
world discussions. Because on-line fora break the sort of continuous, subtle
social signals that help guide real-world discussions, I think we need to be
especially disciplined in pursuing that respect.

~~~
crassus
It's tempting to define "impoliteness" as disagreement with progressive
beliefs about feminism or white racial guilt. Judging by what Scalzi has
banned people for, he seems to fall victim to this. He uses the banhammer more
than any other blogger I've followed. The others don't feel the need to curate
the discussion so closely.

It's fine to be so closed off in your personal space, but the intellectual air
can get a bit musty.

~~~
wpietri
Do you have some examples of him banning people who were behaving well and
discussing topics respectfully but were still banned? I actually don't see him
banning many people; I think he's just frank about being willing to ban.

In particular, I think a lot of my fellow white males who charge into topics
of sexism and racism do so without significant respect for the lived
experience of participants or the large amount of existing discussion. It is
easy for them to see a ban on that behavior as intolerance of their opinion.

One blogger I'm fond of recently quoted this bit: "The more foreign the idea,
the more relational groundwork you need to do before you can broach that
topic." [1] He was quoting a Christian pastor who is talking about how to
introduce the notion of human evolution to Christians who are (incorrectly)
hostile to it. But it applies anywhere: jumping in and expecting people to
instantly listen to your views is in itself a behavior, and a lot of
communities find it disrespectful. That it isn't intended that way doesn't
really matter; part of being respectful to people is caring about whether your
friendly intentions are matched by the impact they have on your audience.

[1] [http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/02/10/why-
youn...](http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2014/02/10/why-young-earth-
creationism-needs-to-be-killed-with-fire-part-1/)

~~~
crassus
I'm adding "disrespectful" to the list of euphemism that progressives use to
silence dissent.

~~~
wpietri
Well next I see a progressive, I'll let them know that some anonymous internet
guy is keeping a list. I'm sure they'll be impressed.

In the meantime, you might think upon respect a little. It turns out it's not
just a far-left thing. If a liberal walks into the middle of a conservative
talk and starts shouting slogans, people in the audience aren't just going to
say, "Hey, tell us more, stranger, about your novel views." They're going to
shout him down and throw him out, because his behavior is disrespectful to the
existing audience and dialog.

The difference between you and that liberal is that the liberal will know that
he's protesting, not trying to participate in a discussion.

I understand you want it to be magically different for you online. Which, hey,
it's nice to have unrealistic dreams sometimes: it adds some spice to life.
But if you actually want to start influencing other people's views, rather
than just have the satisfaction of vomiting your notions and upsetting people
you didn't really like anyhow, then you're going to have to work on on
demonstrating respect for the people and the existing discussion, something
they were building before you turned up.

------
wpietri
On the one hand, I was an early BBS user, and there was a fair bit of benefit
in anonymity or pseudonymity there.

On the other, when somebody says that he strongly disagrees with the notion
that anonymity breeds meanness and his positive example is _4chan_ , I'm
gobsmacked. We must have such different standards for what qualifies as
meanness that I'm not sure we're the same species.

~~~
bsamuels
Do keep in mind that 4chan is not /b/. There's a _huge_ discrepancy between
people's interpretation of what 4chan is like, and what it really is. This is
probably why the community has been able to stay so strong over the years. On
the off-chance you visit one of the more aggressive boards and someone tries
to say mean things to you, you can always reply in a friendly, careless
fashion and make them feel really bad about what they said.

I was gonna go look for some lovey dovey thread to cite as evidence, but
instead I found a thread full of guys trying to build a physical version of
their imaginary chinese-cartoon girlfriends.
[https://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/101944946/](https://archive.foolz.us/a/thread/101944946/)

I literally can't imagine this happening anywhere other than on 4chan.

~~~
Zikes
/b/ seems to be a "honey pot" for the more negative behaviors on 4chan. By
providing that outlet, the rest of the site's communities are that much more
civil as a result.

~~~
moot
> There's a _huge_ discrepancy between people's interpretation of what 4chan
> is like, and what it really is.

> /b/ seems to be a "honey pot" for the more negative behaviors on 4chan.

Double bingo!

~~~
wpietri
Ah. Thanks, that's helpful. Where should I look to see a sample of 4chan that
you consider more representative?

------
MattGrommes
I used to think that anonymous comments bred ugliness because it gave people a
way to be (even temporarily) racist, hateful, etc. with no consequences for
their "real" offline self. The most interesting effect of so much commenting
going on using Facebook is my discovery that people are just as willing to be
outright racist and hateful in a million ways when their real name, picture,
and main online identity are involved.

~~~
teddyh
Well, let’s look at it from a historical perspective. In the past, before the
Internet, the only place it was even _possible_ to be anonymous was in writing
– anonymous pamphlets, books written under pseudonyms, etc. Now, did these
contain horrible behavior? No, the horrible behavior (as judged by the
standards of the times) was associated with lower _classes_ instead. The
anonymous pamphlets and books written under pseudonyms were instead
_challenges to the status quo and the powers that be_.

------
Kapura
I always appreciate what moot has to say, and I think he's absolutely correct
about anonymity creating a stage in which it's fine to fail publically.
There's almost no judgement based on past efforts, which means that you can
frequently see new ideas pop up.

This is especially true of the boards with topics, which tend to have smaller
communities than the random board, allowing for more effective meme
propogation. For example, a recent tweet [1] by musician Lorde ended with the
words "o i am laffin" which has since become a sort of alternative to "lol" on
4chan's music board (especially when a given thread is about Lorde herself).
It became a meme not because karma reinforced its popularity and not because
moot or any other admin endorsed it, but because enough anonymous people
thought that it was funny that they ALL want to keep posting it for no good
reason.

moot mentions snapchat in the article, which I think is related in a
fundamental way to what has made 4chan successful. I've had snapchat since
June, and the way I use it with my friends is to share small jokes and the
tiny frustrations of modern life. This is stuff that is amusing enough that I
want a few people to see what I've written once, but not so funny that I think
it should exist for eternity online. But it's always been more about the jokes
for my friends and me than about security.

Apparently I'm not alone. When news got out about the snapchat leaks[2], many
people thought that this would be a damaging blow to Snapchat. These were
people who I assume don't use snapchat very frequently. To me, it never
mattered that the photos leaked, because there's so much noise in the
snapchats that it'd be difficult, I am thinking, to use the data maliciously.
The worst thing is that the database of snapchat ids leaked, so people can
spam snaps to people they don't know. But this is not a problem that is
difficult to deal with.

Point is, moot is right about nobody in silicon valley really understanding
the value of anonymity. While the Mr. Altman was discussing the negative face
of people shedding their identity (e.g. people with bones to pick doing so
anonymously in public) he didn't see the positive benefits that moot
describes. Perhaps a gossip app is not the best place to see creativity
blossom on the internet.

I want to relay one last anecdote from my time on 4chan:

4chan has an advice board (/adv/[3]) that is as anonymous as the rest of
4chan[4]. On this board, people ask for advice. Often it's relationship
problems, even more often it's the problems of sad men who like girls but have
no idea how to transition from that point to a relationship with one of them.
If Mr. Altman's hypothesis that "Anonymity breads meanness"[5] were true, one
would expect this board to be full of people just trolling depressed neets.
While that does happen from time to time, more often than not it's full of
people genuinely trying to help these people that they don't know and have
never met. They expect nothing in return, but they are a fully anonymous
community that just tries to help people who feel they don't have anywhere
better to ask for help.

Maybe anonymity isn't so bad.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/lordemusic/status/430186358930292736](https://twitter.com/lordemusic/status/430186358930292736)

[2] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/46-million-snapchat-usernames-
ph...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/46-million-snapchat-usernames-phone-
numbers-reportedly-leaked/)

[3] [http://boards.4chan.org/adv/](http://boards.4chan.org/adv/) (probably
NSFW)

[4] there are actually different levels of anonymity on 4chan, but, for the
most part, everybody is more or less completely anonymous with each post.

[5] [http://blog.samaltman.com/anonymity](http://blog.samaltman.com/anonymity)

~~~
polemic
Regarding your anecdote: IMO it works for 4chan because the entire system is
_built_ around anonymity and a troll culture. If _every_ message on 4chan is a
trolling opportunity but _every_ user is anonymous, trolling looses a lot of
it's 'fun'. You get no notoriety, the target is primed for it already and is
protected by their own anonymity.

Trolling on 4chan has been elevated to such an art-form that it takes more
energy to successfully troll than basically anywhere else on the internet. And
that's saying something.

The problem is that very few other platforms can keep that anonymous
relationship equal in all cases, and that's where the real problems start. The
power relationship becomes unbalanced and the equation tips in favour of bad
behaviour.

Take twitter as the classic case. A lot of feminist writers will use semi-
anonymous accounts because of the level of vitriol that is commonly thrown at
them. Then some particularly nasty individual doxxes their account and the
level of personally abusive and physically threatening messages increases
dramatically.

~~~
Torgo
Feminists and friends fling just as much shit as anybody else on Twitter.
During the Piers Morgan Twitter flamefest, you should have seen some of the
hatred thrown his way. In particular I remember the person who wished him to
get "dick cancer." I posted a link one time to an article critical of the
DailyKos response to a particular Ted Rall cartoon, and a social justice
warrior flamed the shit out of me for _weeks_ after I stopped responding,
because I didn't think a badly drawn caricature of Obama constituted racism.

I don't think you need anonymity to make trolling lose its flavor, I have used
plenty of forums over the years where there were persistent identities but the
sophisticated (compared to twitter users) forum members just didn't take the
bait and trolling attempts usually just fell flat.

~~~
chazu
I can corroborate this. I follow a few SJWs on twitter and the vitriol they
post is often very surprisingly potent. I actually think that pound for pound,
threads on 4chan on topics like race or gender politics end up being better
conversations because the anonymity takes away the need for people to
demonstrate their status as provocateurs.

~~~
br78
>I actually think that pound for pound, threads on 4chan on topics like race
or gender politics end up being better conversations

I love anonymous conversation but this sentence makes me think you've not
tried to debate these things on 4chan too often.

------
k-mcgrady
Slight OT: I'm interested on people's thought on anonymity on HN.

\- Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our
real names?

\- How would using real names affect the discussion here?

\- Does the anonymity here go far enough? For example if someone manages to
tie our real identity to our HN username their is no way of changing the HN
username.

~~~
higherpurpose
You know how we see "former" politicians, or "former" chairs at agencies, or
"former" judges speaking on the war on drugs, and so on? Why are they always
"former"? Because they know that what they say could impact their career and
they could lose their jobs, at a time they may not be ready to lose their
jobs.

Now, imagine if everything they can say after they become "former" that
position (so I'm not necessarily talking about leaking classified information
here), could be said anonymously much earlier while they still have that job
and know everything what's going on at the time.

Anonymity is powerful, and not just in oppressive countries where the
usefulness of anonymity should be obvious, but also in countries where you may
want to tell a "truth" about something, without fearing for your financial
situation or your career.

Let's imagine Tim Cook had an opinion about what is going on between Palestine
and Israel, and let's imagine it's a damn good one, since he's a pretty smart
guy, and that opinion could even provide a big insight into the debate, and it
would be very useful for the debate. I don't need to tell you that he wouldn't
want to give that opinion under his real name on HN. That would create a
media-firestorm, and could potentially get Apple, the company, in trouble,
too, over his personal opinions.

I think these are just a few of the reasons why anonymity is important, and
more should be explored. Anonymity is important for humanity, and it should
never be killed or banned, whether by NSA or by companies like Google and
Facebook.

------
qq66
Anonymity increases the variance of behaviors that people will demonstrate
online.

When you use your real identity, your actions carry risk with them, so you
tend to bring your actions towards the population mean. If you choose to dress
in an outlandish way in New York, you might wear a pink sweater and orange
jeans. At Burning Man, where your real identity has been shed temporarily, you
may wear a toga or nothing at all.

The dirty look you give someone in "real life" might become an unspeakably
rude comment in an anonymous forum. But the funny dance you invented to go
along with a Daft Punk song might be something you choose to share with the
whole world under the veil of anonymity.

When something changes the variance of a human behavior without changing the
mean, you'll never be able to come to agreement on whether it's "good" or
"bad" \-- it's just different.

------
saraid216
Both of them are conflating anonymity with its consequences. This really needs
to stop, because it's preventing us from actually understanding the mechanisms
in play.

moot understands that identity is "prismatic", but he misses one of the
consequences of this, which is that one of the fundamental components of
identity is how we are related to by others. Who we share as is a function of
who we are seen as. Anonymity strips away this latter part to provide a blank
slate. That's what makes the experience "raw".

Because the filters on your speech are derived from who you care about hearing
you speak. If my mother is in the room, I'm not going to talk about the crime
in my neighborhood, because it would worry her unnecessarily. But that's also
something I'd be willing to discuss publicly under my real name with a home
address attached. It's not a function of "am I anonymous"; it's a function of
expected consequences.

Talking about anonymity and ephemerality obfuscates the issue. It's a
simplified model easily understood by a software hacker, making it so that
FOAF networks don't need to be included into solutions. One of the simplest
ways to understand Google+'s early advantage over Facebook was that, if you
were about to comment on a post to a limited group, you were _explicitly_ told
you who could see what you were about to say. It wasn't enough, but it was an
order of magnitude better. (Yes, for the record, the real name thing was
dumb.)

When we post on HN, we have certain expectations of our audience, and we often
feel betrayed and indignant when commenters fail to meet them.

Anonymity and ephemerality aren't wrong. They're reasonable defaults for many
situations. They're also good ways to sidestep harder questions, like how to
accurately parse a name or portray an identity, when you _do_ want to do that.

(P.S. This comment turned out as a really shitty piece of writing. Sorry for
the scattered incoherency.)

------
josefresco
I may be completely ignorant here but how is Snapchat anonymous? I thought you
shared content with your contact list... but maybe I'm missing something. Is
it because Snapchat has no "profile" page a la Facebook?

~~~
bentcorner
It's not anonymous, but to the user it's ephemeral. You can make a pic, send
it through snapchat, and be confident that regardless of the outcome (people
loved it or hated it) they would never be able to see it again.

Traditional internet forums are anonymous and static. Snapchat flips that
around.

~~~
falcolas
> You can make a pic, send it through snapchat, and be confident that
> regardless of the outcome (people loved it or hated it) they would never be
> able to see it again.

Yeah, not so much. If there weren't things like screenshots, perhaps. A browse
through Reddit's seedier parts proves this ephemerality a lie.

~~~
bentcorner
True, and the app itself doesn't actually delete the pictures off your device
either. Still, the intention of the app is to share impermanent pictures,
which is an interesting twist on things.

------
afreak
I say this with hesitation but I believe that Snapchat, with all of its
idiotic flaws is an indication of how the future of social networking
platforms will be. It demonstrates that you can have a service where your
friends are known but the content is seemingly temporary, allowing for some
semblance of control.

I don't think that Snapchat is the future, but it does make me think that the
ideas around it are what will make Facebook lost to younger generations.

Being anonymous is not important to most people. If it were, news website
comments would be more palatable where real identities are required--far from
the case.

~~~
sneak
> I say this with hesitation but I believe that Snapchat, with all of its
> idiotic flaws is an indication of how the future of social networking
> platforms will be.

Snapchat only really delivers on its promise because of the kind of user-
hostile DRM Stallman and his ilk have been screaming warnings about for years.

Its children and derivatives cannot reasonably exist in a future in which end
users have real control over their computers.

~~~
pjc50
It's interesting that this is a case where DRM transfers power from one user
to another: from recipient to sender. The only other case I've come across
where this kind of transfer is accepted as beneficial is anti-cheat systems in
games.

------
k-mcgrady
>> "What I’ve observed is the opposite—that anonymity facilitates honest
discourse, creates a level playing field for ideas to be heard, and enables
creativity like none other."

One big counterpoint to this I can see is ask.fm. People are given total
anonymity and they use it to berate and bully others (I believe it's also lead
to several suicides). Anonymity can work great if the community is good. Here
on HN I think it works pretty well. On ask.fm it clearly worked horribly but
only because the community using it used it that way.

In the end I think it's all down to the people using the service and anonymity
or true identity plays only a very small role.

Edit: and the downsides of anonymity can been seen below in '784927489234's
comment.

~~~
784927489234
If someone commits suicide because of some bullshit on a random website, then
the suicide was probably going to happen anyway.

This is the same tired "think-of-the-children" argument about reversed song
lyrics played backwards, Ozzy Osbourne, foul language, and on and on, that the
PMRC lobbied against, and used as a point to provoke the parental advisory
album labeling in the 80's.

The term "cyber bullying" (which is new and different) is used incorrectly as
a catch-all sometimes, but really, it should be reserved for a different form
of pervasive harassment that follows the victim across many different scopes
of internet and telecommunications access, where ignoring activity originating
from one source (a single website, the victim's e-mail inbox, or the victim's
telephone number) does not provide escape from disparaging remarks.

This is not the same as one website providing anonymity or even pseudonymity.

Yeah, children are inexperienced, and thin-skinned. They don't understand the
risks of providing their real information on the internet, and and don't
behave with the sophistication of those that do. There's lots of things on the
internet that are not for kids. LOTS.

All the more reason to inform the inexperienced to AVOID revealing their
honest real-life identity, rather than encouraging rubes to engage in
promiscuous full-disclosure so that advertisers and ad-driven businesses can
make a buck off of "unique" impressions.

------
sp332
_The conversation is “raw” to say the least—almost everyone checks their
filter at the door. The resulting dialogue is about as honest as it gets. In
lieu of traditional barriers to membership, the community uses cryptic and
crude language to regulate who can and cannot participate. On the surface this
may seem offensive, but it’s often meant to do little more than keep newcomers
on their toes and encourage they lurk and learn the house rules before
participating._

How can you have honest, unfiltered dialogue when there are barriers to entry
and membership is regulated?

Hey moot, why are YouTube comments so bad? Clearly it's not just anonymity.

~~~
bsamuels
youtube comments are bad because there's no barrier to entry.

with 4chan you have to get over the social impact of actually browsing 4chan.
Just go look at the 4chan subreddit, it's filled to the brink with people who
want to consume 4chan content but are too scared to actually visit the site.

------
normloman
We have pseudoanonymity on hacker news, and everyone gets along just fine.

Perhaps anonymity is a red herring. Maybe the tone of discourse is a function
of what kinds of people a community attracts, and how involved each user is
with that community.

~~~
hellbanTHIS
Yeah that's pretty obvious if you've ever seen a news article with Facebook
comments that the Drudge Report has linked to, particularly one involving a
black person.

------
xradionut
Having been "online" since the '80s, I respectfully disagree. Relative
anonymity in "real" life leads to antisocial activity and rudeness since
there's little chance of identity or recourse. Consider the behavior of
automobile drivers.

Anonymity online can't fully be achieved except by a small few, but the
positive benefits can be simulated for many by careful operators of BBS or
internet forums.

------
thanatropism
I just discovered that 4chan works great on mobile phones.

The great barrier to entry, for me, was the high risk of not only NSFW, but
very weird NSFW stuff randomly popping up (even if I stay in /mu/ and /pol/)
at work. Now I have a tiny screen for it.

------
steven2012
reddit has some of the most helpful, positive and encouraging communities on
the Internet. It really depends on the tone that each particular app/forum
cultivates. Sure, there are assholes but for the most part, the communities
created in some subreddits are simply fantastic. And their upvoting/downvoting
system is far superior to anything, including HN and slashdot, and really
helps clean up the noise. Had I never used reddit, I probably would have
thought the same thing of Sam Altman, but reddit has such positivity in some
of the subreddits that it is really great to see.

~~~
jordigh
I have recently quit using reddit because I got tired of the bickering,
particularly in the more mainstream subreddits. The smaller subreddits seem
fine. While there is also some bickering in HN, it seems to me to be much more
moderated.

It seems like once a community grows large enough, so do its number of
assholes, but the asshole count must be absolute, not relative, since it just
takes a few to ruin the fun for everyone. This is why HN seems to me less
bickery than reddit right now, because it's more focussed on just one niche.

What really did it for me was the pack rape mentality that parts of reddit
exhibit. I want nothing to do with a website that allows this:

[http://betabeat.com/2012/08/reddit-watches-with-glee-as-
camg...](http://betabeat.com/2012/08/reddit-watches-with-glee-as-camgirl-has-
heartbreaking-meltdown/)

------
Grue3
> What I’ve observed is the opposite—that anonymity facilitates honest
> discourse, creates a level playing field for ideas to be heard, and enables
> creativity like none other.

Clearly moot hasn't ever been to /pol/.

------
egocodedinsol
I made this account anonymous to see if my comments improved. They're
certainly shorter. I suspect it's because I'm not as worried about being
misunderstood.

------
yuhong
As I said before, I am not for real name policies, but I do want the problems
with posting under real names to be fixed if possible.

------
juliob
I don't know about these days, but I personally had to deal with
4chan/Anonymous several years ago (before Anonymous became known for taking on
public causes) and what they were doing was downright evil (and immature) with
real-world consequences. "For the lolz." I wonder what moot was doing when he
presided over this disgusting behavior.

------
networked
Here's an idea: to reap the benefit of anonymity but also to discourage the
trolling that comes with it how about an anonymous BBS where you pay
(anonymously and in some currency that people don't particularly mind parting
with -- e.g., Dogecoin) to post?

~~~
forgottenpass
Then the rich enough are free to continue posting whatever they want, the poor
are discouraged from posting anything at all and everyone else has to justify
paying money to communicate with strangers on the internet that don't care
what they have to say anyway.

~~~
networked
>everyone else has to justify paying money to communicate with strangers on
the internet that don't care what they have to say anyway

I think many people would pay to post on an anonymous equivalent of Hacker
News. Of course, the question is how you bootstrap such a community.

A more straightforward alternative (which would benefit the poor posters the
most) is to offer compensation to the posters through, say, the encouragement
of tipping for good posts or some sort of a redistribution mechanism [1]. I
wonder how this would affect the natural self-regulation of an anonymous
community in what people choose to post. One could say that it would encourage
the posting of popular opinions but I think that in most anonymous communities
that already happens through other means.

Another, more out-there, idea would be to algorithmically grade the posts and
assign a price to each. A long, thought-post post would cost you nothing while
a post consisting of just "lol" would cost a lot.

[1] E.g., a voting-based system where everyone pays to post and then whoever
paid can upvote other posts in the thread. The money is redistributed among
the posters in proportion to the number of votes they got once the thread no
longer accepts new posts. Try to come up with exploits for this system and
ways of mitigating them.

------
pearjuice
>The conversation is “raw” to say the least—almost everyone checks their
filter at the door.

Their filter? You mean privilege and doubles.

------
crassus
These days, there are social justice warriors combing your twitter feed
looking for a way to get you fired if you "offend" someone. Anonymity is vital
for the diversity of ideas. I'm sure some people are slavering for a world
without anonymity, where they can enforce ideological conformity. I prefer
this way, thanks.

