Ypulse Guest Post: The Problem With Online Anonymity
Posted by anastasia on 11-19-2007
The Ypulse Guest Post Program has now officially launched, and I'm really excited that our first post was pitched organically by a reader in response to my post about the program. In the coming weeks you'll also hear from several youth media and marketing execs, academics and other influencers in this space (or at least several have told me they would post!). Today's post is from Kristen Olson, who is a 24-year-old advertising account coordinator for The Cimarron Group. Kristen has worked in Hollywood for three years and has moonlighted as: a film reviewer, director of development, journalist, copywriter, poet, agency receptionist, story editor/analyst, production assistant, and blogger. Her first collection of poetry will be available on Amazon early December, and her book on Interactive Advertising Strategy will be published mid-2008.
Our government spies on us all the time. It knows who we talk to.
Companies spy on us all the time. They know where we go on the Internet. They know where we are by what we place on our profiles. They can fire us for having a MySpace picture in which we're drinking from a red cup if someone insinuates that we were drunk.
To say nothing of constant security cameras, arbitrarily placed Webcams "just for kicks," and the fact that if you make a sex tape or take nude photos, apparently anyone has a perfect right to steal it and release it on the Internet or what the heck, sell it for profit.
So why don't we get to spy on each other? Oh, you know, privacy. We value our anonymity.
I'll agree. We've still got some secrets left. Why sell those out? Why let everyone see what everyone's doing all the time? (As Shatner would say: "That’s too much knowledge!")
People should be allowed to preserve some little white lies, right?
I'm not sure anymore. I think I'd easily trade what's left of my privacy for some major strides forward in eliminating abuse of anonymity. I say this as a person who truly resents the intrusion on my privacy. I just don't know what to do anymore.
I think it was this story that did it. Don't go here yet until you've read what I have to say.
I believe in free speech. I think we ought to be allowed to say whatever we want to whoever we want. But if we're not backing that up with our identity, it's not fair to anyone on the other side of the conversation. We can say whatever we want, and go much further than manners allow.
I say this as a person who has kept a blog for seven years hidden under a pseudonym.
This is an idea that's ripe for abuse itself — political statements might affect our jobs. Arguments online might lead to an argument on the front lawn. Stalkers and identity thieves get that much more to use against us. And maybe it's not for every part of the internet — maybe it's only social networks and blogs that should be adhering to this.
But I don't know how much longer we can live in the wild west.
Anonymity is great in certain cases, but those cases probably should be rarer than we think. Anonymity is easy and it feels good, but maybe it's something we're growing out of. Bullying and abuse are not okay, and we're seeing more of it everyday.
I spent the age of 12 being the girl that my classmates attempted to drive to suicide — or if not suicide, to in-patient treatment at Silver Hill. I've seen and experienced the same behavior among adults.
There is no way to criminalize psychological abuse. There is no recourse for the victim except to leave. But you can't leave the Internet, so the only solution — it seems — is for the masses to announce to perpetrators that this behavior is unacceptable, and to cyberbully is to risk your own reputation, job and friends.
If you would like to pitch an idea for a Ypulse Guest Post, please email me and include some info about yourself, where you work, etc.
November 19th, 2007 at 10:24 am
Regarding the woman who abused MySpace: This is the only case I know of in which a grown woman pretended to be a teenage boy online to psychologically hurt a teenage girl.
Meanwhile, there are thousands of good people at YouTube who share their talents for acting, singing, and/or directing, without giving out their full names. They have more privacy as a result.
Kristen Olson, are you counting "YouTube" as among "social networks and blogs" which should stop people from posting under pseudonyms?
November 19th, 2007 at 10:51 am
I have to meet you halfway on this topic. First of all, there are a great number of people that aren't as comfortable as you in their connection to their online identity. I'm 22 and I feel the same way as you in terms of transparency and how I represent myself online is the same person I am in real life.
However, the bigger issue here is that people want to express specific aspects of themselves depending on the community they are members of. For example if I'm a hardcore metal fan that resides in those types of online communities do I want them to know that I'm a puppy lover with 3 kids and a Volvo? This is where I believe the social graph concept offers a compelling solution where we can easily transfer our identity, but highlight or filter certain aspects of it to the micro-communities we are members of.
Cheers,
Seni
November 19th, 2007 at 3:04 pm
Eric-
Usually, no matter what pseudonym you post under on YouTube, you're still acting as your own identity (even if that identity is as a character) because it's your face. I've seen very few videos where a person's face is obscured, and if their face doesn't appear at all, they usually want some sort of credit. I'm counting youTube as a place where we should have identity established because 1) It would clear up alot of copyright issues. 2) I don't see any value in not disclosing your identity on youTube - if you've done something great you deserve the credit, if you've done something mediocre it'll push you to make it better. The reality is that everything on YouTube will/can be found by people you don't want to see it, and linking it to our name forces us to act in conjunction with that reality. What's an example of something a performer doesn't want to link their names to?
Seni-
I totally get your point about the incongruities. But they exist for all of us, so I suppose that part of the question I'm posing here is: What would happen if we all had to cop to our own incongruities? The knee-jerk response is that people would accuse you of not being a "real" hardcore metal fan, or a "real" puppy lover, or that they might consider you as something different than the filtered identity presented. But would it really shake out that way? I kinda suspect that - while there would still be people who were rude about it - that most people would be like "well, whatever" and continue talking to you about puppies or music. Right now we express ourselves as divided entities, but what if we had to express ourselves as a single, complicated identity? Would it change the way we treat each other? Would it change the way we treat ourselves? I see alot of positives in the idea. We all live in fear of judgment from people who don't know us, but what if we had to stop living like that?
We all have things we'd prefer to hide. But is this is same as the necessity of anonymity? When is it really necessary to be anonymous, and when is it simply to protect our fragile egos?
Go ahead and respond if you read this - I'm really interested in both sides of this idea.
November 19th, 2007 at 4:14 pm
Interesting debate.
Without getting into a debate regarding people perceptions of themselves, online identities, and privacy as they are too big to address here, I just wanted to point out that in many ways we are more honest representations of ourselves online due to levels of anonymity. If the online world became fully open I fear we would lose out on a lot of the eccentricities that make it great.
my 2 cents
November 22nd, 2007 at 10:44 am
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2007/11/vigilante_justice
The above is interesting coverage of the cyberbullying case and the Internet vigilante uprising that followed