<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2024-10-22</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # Manifesto for a Better Internet: Part 1  ### Anonymity Protects Us All In the early days of the Internet the prevailing wisdom was to *never* provide identifying details to anyone. This was for personal safety. You never knew who might be looking at forum profiles, or seeing your posts. The first shift in this general piece of advice was when Facebook was introduced. Facebook required all it's users to use real names only. Google+ followed this logic by enacting the same policy. The reason they gave was that this would incentivise good behaviour online. Of course the *real* reason for abolishing anonymity was to easily tie real names to profiles comprised of collected user-data. [Ad companies had been trying to get people to relinquish their anonymity for years](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna3078835)(and make no mistake: Google is an advertising company first, and software company second): >[!quote] >*"Advertising firms, who stand to gain as much as any from personal data collection, have absorbed the brunt of complaints from privacy critics"* > >&mdash; Bob Sullivan, NBC News, Nov. 17, 2000 Google and Facebook weren't the first companies to suggest people use their real names online, but they *were* the first to have a good chunk of public opinion agreeing to it. These attempts usually were met with derision from the public, who instinctively understood the massive risk associated with revealing one's real identity online. After Facebook went forward with this as a requirement, and Google+ followed suit, there was some controversy but it was surprisingly minimal, and there were many who felt that Google and Facebook were right. Support for the idea began to grow, and soon it was seen that the only people who would actually want to stay anonymous were, of course, bullies preferring to hide behind a keyboard. People were saying this without acknowledging a growing online shaming culture where people were ruining lives over awkward tweets (a shaming culture, mind you, mostly perpetuated by people using their real names). <iframe id="odysee-iframe" style="width:100%; aspect-ratio:16 / 9;" src="https://odysee.com/$/embed/@TED:b2/how-one-tweet-can-ruin-your-life-jon-ronson:b?r=FSt665Rw9s7jNf3VvU2yBN5VBy9wPAyy" allowfullscreen></iframe> I watched this TedTalk shortly after it was released in 2015, and multiple times since. Every time I do, I still feel incredibly sad. I think we've all been treated unfairly by our peers at some time or other in our lives. Justine Sacco was treated horrifically, and fired from her job. She was afraid to meet anyone after, because if her name was Googled, the first thing that returned at the top of the search results was the tweet, and everything that transpired because of it. She remained unemployed for years because of this. "Cancel culture" as a term did not yet exist, but here was an example already, before anyone even tried to say ["cancel culture doesn't exist; you're just being held accountable!"](https://www.cnn.com/2021/03/07/us/cancel-culture-accountability-reality-trnd/index.html) Stories like this are innumerable, and demonstrate a very obvious and legitimate reason to remain anonymous. The less there is online to connect anything to who you really are, the less chance you will end up like Justine. But there are other, more subtle reasons for staying anonymous. It's not always just for personal protection. In the days when online anonymity was just a given, it allowed for more freedom to experiment with ideas. For example, if I was born into a Christian family and community in real life, but had doubts or questions about the faith, I might not be very comfortable expressing this to peers. But if I can put on a mask for a while, and join a questioning or atheist community, I might feel more comfortable expressing thoughts like this, bouncing ideas off of others who may have thought about it more deeply. Or what if I was born into some sort of racist or Neo-Nazi cult? If I wanted to simply have a reasonable conversation with someone without having to fear for my physical safety, I may want to hide who I am. Reasonable conversations are a large part of how these people manage to come out on the other side, and leave the cult. By staying anonymous, it is easier to let guards down and discuss new ideas and perspectives without fear of being derided by a peer-group. If you're protecting a real identity, and people can see that it is, in fact, *you* who is having the conversation, there's more of an incentive, I think, to double down, just to protect this social position. There's also a tendency to believe that being forced to see the error in one's own perspective is a kind of weakness. Someone using their real identity may refuse to back down in this circumstance, for fear of being ostracised by peers, but, if you go through the humiliating experience of being logically argued into a corner while using an anonymous pseudonym, you can easily just abandon the account, and no one is the wiser. But the conversation will stay with you, and eventually influence you to, perhaps, change your mind. Trans individuals, wanting to know about possible consequences of life-changing decisions, questioning whether or not to get surgery, may not want to discuss this with their LGBT community group. They may want to hear other perspectives and anonymously join a detransitioner community. In decades past, it would be easy to anonymously join a chat or forum and fabricate their [a/s/l (age/sex/location)](https://www.webopedia.com/definitions/asl/) just to try on the identity for size, without letting anyone know. An article from The Verge, about a [very niche social media site called Melodrama.com](https://www.theverge.com/c/24201735/melodrama-com-website-community-2004-melo), was included with a series of nostalgia [articles about tech and culture from 2004](https://www.theverge.com/c/24247055/2004-tech-internet-gadgets-phones-pop-culture). It illustrates very well the phenomena I'm trying to convey here. After all, if online communities are really a "second life" of sorts, doesn't it make sense to live that life with the freedom to say what you want? And I mean that as a human being. Sometimes we all just need the freedom to be in a bad mood once in a while. To wake up on the wrong side of the bed and be a little irritable and short tempered. What better place to just let it out a little bit than online? Isn't that better than snapping at the drive-through attendant? More than this, sometimes we need the freedom to have an ill-conceived opinion. To be in the wrong. Online discussion is the perfect place for spitballing new ideas and perspectives. If we all keep these ideas to ourselves for fear of possible social repercussion, nothing will change. Anonymity can give anyone the courage to share these ideas. I'm not saying that there's never any time when using your real identity isn't appropriate. Many employers want to see a Facebook page or something to know a little about prospective hires. If they see someone causing a lot of online drama, or speak in a way that isn't conducive to a healthy work-environment, they may just decide to skip over that prospect to someone else for an interview. If there's nothing online at all about a person, it's a bit of a shot in the dark. I would say craft a "real life" persona on the major platforms and construct it with professionalism in mind. This is specifically for the eyeballs of employers, clients, and other professional contacts, and all posts should be made with this in mind. *Everything else* should be done anonymously. Moreover, I think that all anonymous accounts should be abandoned regularly, and new accounts created to start fresh, particularly if you like to post about controversial topics, make dark, offcolour jokes, or have opinions that go against the current mores of the day. The longer you go, the better the chance that some crazy person is going to actually investigate your persona, looking for identifying information. The less that's there to see, the better. There are still sites that allow anonymity, Reddit and Twitter/X, for example, but even on those sites there is some derision directed toward anyone without a real name behind the account. Anonymous accounts are generally treated as "lesser than." We need to retreat from this attitude. The words being said are always more important than who is saying them. Some posts can be disregarded, whether from an anonymous account, or a real person. A post that's just insulting and not contributing anything to the discussion or topic at hand can simply be ignored. On the other hand, a good, solid argument remains so, whether or not it's from a pseudonym. There was a time when this was the common perspective--not just online, but generally. I couldn't tell you the number of times in my life that I've smiled and said "yeah, okay buddy," and just walked away. It was easy when statements only existed while they were being said, but, as the saying goes, the internet is forever. And so long as there's a danger of deranged assholes harassing your family and employer because of an online social faux-pas, anonymity should be the default for everyone. We need to stop treating anonymous accounts like second-class citizens. Caution is always a wise course, and online communication can be especially dangerous. It always will be. There will always be human beings looking to sew chaos and disorder. We need to help people remember that self-preservation is more important than feeding data-hungry advertising agencies and multi-billion dollar organisations. It's good advice to remain anonymous online. Let's share this advice, and stop needlessly putting ourselves at risk.