This strikes me as less an argument for pseudonyms and more an argument for impermanence. It seems to me that the thought experiment is more like putting a mask on, and then yelling your revolutionary ideas, rather than doing it in public and just hoping to not be recognized.
Not really. If I shout something on the street, it's virtually impossible for the people around me to figure out who I am (unless they already know me). With real names attached to everything, even if the statement is impermanent, it's essentially trivial for "bystanders" to track down your identify.
If one of the bystanders cares enough, they'll use their phone to take a picture of you. From there it's entirely possible to link that picture of you to other pictures of you online (facial recognition and all that), and then to your identity, if there are any publicly accessible pictures of you online that are linked to your identity. Or they could share it with their social network, hoping that there's some overlap.
Similarly, if I hear someone shout something that interests me, I can begin a conversation with them which may lead to getting details of their identity, unless they're actively concealing those details. Or follow them home, and so forth, as you start moving to less and less ethical options.
Attaching real names to statements online does make the process ridiculously easy, though, and it would probably be useful if social networks had a "do not expose my identity (in comments, etc.) to people who are not already my friends (or friends of friends)." That seems (to me, at least) to be rather more similar to how the real world works.
The absolutely massive photo database owned (or at least permanent irrevocably licensed access and storage) by Facebook, combined with the metadata people are more than happy to provide (Tagging their friends bodies & faces) sounds like an absolutely perfect training set for an automated recognition system.
You'll even get all sorts of different angles, lighting conditions, age variations, and just about anything else you might want.
I'm not usually one for conspiracy theories, but there's something about it that makes me at least a little uneasy.
Facebook apparently already has a facial recognition system, which startles me a bit. Not surprising in the least, of course, just I'm worried that I hadn't heard of it before.
Having a real name attached to your online identity could actually help a revolutionary message. If I hear someone on the street shout some anti-government messages I would probably ignore them. On the other hand, if a well respected and know person makes that statement on a social network they might get a better response.
My question is Why are we trying to emulate real life on the web? Yes, anonymous comments have no personal touch. But how about meeting up for a beer for some real conversations as opposed to writing on each other's wall ?
And that response could come at 4am. I wouldn't characterize it as "better", though. The fact is that social networks, especially Facebook, are more broadly public with private speech and connections. If you were actually listening to a revolutionary message, you'd be listening to it in deepest secrecy or in the anonymity of a large crowd.
Exactly. But since it seems pretty much impossible to retain impermanence in the digital sphere (real-life impermanence relying, of course, on the fact that the information is never recorded to a reliable medium) anonymity is a necessary crutch.
The author's real point is that argument made by google and facebook ("there's nothing wrong with more-or-less eliminating anonymity online for the same reasons that we do just fine in meatspace without much anonymity") doesn't go through, because of the differing levels of permanence between digital and real-life interactions. Therefore, if you want to argue one side or the other, you have to do it with those differences in mind.
