Online identity: is authenticity or anonymity more important?
Aleks Krotoski
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/ ... -anonymity
Facebook and Google want to link online and offline personas, while 4Chan and other social sites prefer people to play with the freedom of pseudonyms
Thursday 19 April 2012 16.47 BST First published on Thursday 19 April 2012 16.47 BST
Before Facebook and Google became the megaliths of the web, the most famous online adage was, "on the internet, no one knows you're a dog". It seems the days when people were allowed to be dogs is coming to a close. The old web, a place where identity could remain separate from real life, is rapidly disappearing from the computer screen. According to Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, and Richard Allan, its director of policy in Europe, a critical mass of people only want online interactions supported by "authentic" identity. And this, say critics, will have irrevocable effects on the openness of the web.
The pursuit of authenticity is creeping into the heart of most social media models and in the current internet landscape is playing an important role in how we engage with one another and with web content. For many people, Facebook and Google products are the sum total of their web interaction, and the value in creating a platform that provides confidence that a person is who they say they are, rather someone pretending to be them, is critical to a social network's success.
Within this model, authentic identity is non-anonymous. Facebook profiles and Google IDs are tied to a person's real name and real connections, and increasingly to their activities across cyberspace. Users are familiar with logging into other services using Facebook or Google IDs, forming a single public identity that's an aggregated version of their offline past, the online present and their combined future.
Facebook also believes authenticity is linked to a person's photo stream, which is why it has just paid $1bn for the photo-sharing service Instagram. "Pictures speak a thousand words," says Allan. "Immigration officials will ask to see a photo album to see if a relationship is genuine. It's a very instinctive and powerful way to confirm authentic identity."
Not everyone agrees. "I would not call what you have on Facebook 'authentic' identity," says Christopher Poole, the 24-year-old creator of 4Chan, an online community founded in 2004. 4Chan boasts two design features antithetical to Facebook: first, its 20 million users don't register an account to participate and are therefore anonymous; second, there's no archive.
Poole, who was voted Time's most influential person of 2008 – two years before Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg was declared the magazine's Man of the Year – believes Facebook's commercial motivations shut down the online experience: "Mark and Sheryl have gone out and said that identity is authenticity, that you are online who you are offline, and to have multiple identities is lacking in integrity. I think that's nuts."
"We went from a web that was interest-driven, and then we transitioned into a web where the connections were in-person, real-life friendship relationships," adds Poole. "Individuals are multifaceted. Identity is prismatic, and communities like 4Chan exist as a holdover from the interest-driven web."
Allan believes such attitudes are naive. The millions who have gone online over the past decade want a safe place where they won't experience bad behaviour, have their identities stolen or be duped by impostors, he says: "Pretend identities don't work very well now that the web has moved from a minority sport for geeks to a mainstream occupation."
And this attitude is baked into the main players' systems: any profile on Facebook or Google that does not appear to be tied to an offline name is removed. Nicknames and pseudonyms, regardless of their longevity – and some have been in use for decades – are considered breaches of terms of service. What people do online now, and will be doing in the foreseeable future, is inherently tied to their offline selves. And this locks down what it is considered acceptable to do and who it is acceptable to meet.
Yet a social network's success need not rely upon this direct link between online and offline identity. In Japan, the three most popular social networks operate under pseudonyms at the discretion of the account holder. "[Japanese social networks are] anonymous, but we can trace past mentions by login ID or nickname," explains Yasutaka Yuno, editor-in-chief of Japan's most popular mobile technology site, K-tai Watch. "The past mentions are useful to judge credibility. In each social community, ID acts as personal name."
An online identity can be as permanent as an offline one: pseudonymous users often identify themselves in different social networks using the same account name. But because their handles aren't based on real names, they can deliberately delineate their identity accordingly, and reassert anonymity if they wish. Psychologists argue that this is valuable for the development of a sense of who one is, who one can be, and how one fits into different contexts. This kind of activity is allowed even in countries where social network account holders are required to register for a service using a national ID, as in South Korea and China; their online public identities are still fabrications. Even with this explicit link with the state, when users are aware that their activities online are traceable, identity play continues.
Andrew Lewman, executive director of the Tor Project, hopes to re-anonymise the web. "The ability to be anonymous is increasingly important because it gives people control, it lets them be creative, it lets them figure out their identity and explore what they want to do, or to research topics that aren't necessarily 'them' and may not want tied to their real name for perpetuity," he says.
The Tor browser and software obfuscates a user's web traffic so anyone watching is unable to trace who a user is or where they are coming from, by bouncing an individual's communications through at least three different places. People can still be identifiable on a service like Facebook or Google if they choose to log in, but Tor prevents these sites knowing what users were doing before, and where they go after they log out.
This is a technological solution to what Lewman feels is an elemental problem with the de-anonymisation of the web. "The ability to forget, to start over is important," he argues. "Maybe you just got divorced, maybe you just came out of rehab and you want to start over.
"As soon as you log into a Gmail account, you start getting ads for the drug rehab you want to forget. If you're in a real-name environment, such as Facebook, unless you actually physically change your name and your friends, you're thrown right back into your old life."
Although Facebook does allow users to curate what's public and private – "recasting your public persona by selecting from the data you've put onto the service," explains Allan – Lewman believes the automated systems make a total social reinvention difficult to pull off.
"If you truly wanted to be anonymous, you'd have to use a combination of 4Chan and Tor," explains Poole. Tor provides the back-end anonymity that compliments 4Chan's front-end anonymity. But this is technologically advanced: it is the major players setting the identity agenda. And so the ideological battle over online identity continues.
"Facebook is setting the expectations of what we want," says Poole. "They set the bar in terms of what kind of control their users have over their identity online. They've been moving that bar slowly but surely in a direction that they might call transparency, but what other people might call lack of choice."
Allan believes the benefits of authentic identity outweigh the costs. Facebook and other services with an assurance of security and credibility are more inclusive, and open up the web to new audiences who never would have gone online before, he says. "We're optimists. Facebook enables hundreds of millions of people to express themselves online because they didn't have or know how to use the tools they needed." Facebook, he believes, is a stepping stone to the rest of the web.
And if they are successful at promoting their particular brand of authentic identity, if you want to be a dog on the internet in the future, you'll have to have papers to prove it.
reference:
https://blog.coralproject.net/the-real-name-fallacy/
"forcing real names in online communities could also increase discrimination and worsen harassment."
"people are actually more sensitive to group norms when they are less identifiable to others."
"Lab and field experiments continue to show the role that social norms play in shaping individual behavior; if the norms favor harassment and conflict, people will be more likely to follow. While most research and design focuses on changing the behavior of individuals, we may achieve better results by focusing on changing climates of conflict and prejudice."
"Gender- and race-based harassment are only possible if people know a person’s gender and/or race, and real names often give strong indications around both of these categories. Requiring people to disclose that information forces those risks upon them."
"Since platforms that collect more personal information have high advertising revenues, they can hire hundreds of staff to work on online safety. Paradoxically, platforms that protect people’s identities have fewer resources for protecting users. "
"Pseudonymity is a common protective measure. One study on the reddit platform found that women, who are more likely to receive harassment, also use multiple pseudonymous identities at greater rates than men."
"Requiring a single online identity can collapse those contexts in embarrassing or damaging ways. In one story, boyd describes a college admissions officer who considered rejecting a black applicant after seeing gang symbols on the student’s social media page. The admissions officer hadn’t considered that the symbols might not have revealed the student’s intrinsic character; posting them might have been a way to survive in a risky situation."
"Social norms are our beliefs about what other people think is acceptable, and norms aren’t de-activated by anonymity. We learn them by observing other people’s behavior and being told what’s expected. "
"in high-stakes discussions like government petitions, one case study from Germany found that aggressive commenters were more likely to reveal their identity than stay anonymous, perhaps in hopes that the comments would be more influential."
"Even in pseudonymous settings, illegal activity can often be traced back to the actors involved, and companies can be compelled by courts to share user information, in the few jurisdictions with responsive law enforcement."
"prejudice and conflict are common challenges that many people face every day, problems that are socially reinforced by community and societal norms."
http://time.com/4583843/stop-hate-influencers/
"Kevin Munger recently found that white males who racially harass others on Twitter reduced their use of slurs when another white male with a large number of followers admonished them with a tweet (black males, and white males with few followers, were not as successful). In schools, Elizabeth Levy Paluck, Hana Shepherd and Peter Aronow showed that students who receive the lion’s share of attention in student social networks have an outsized influence over school social norms: when they stand up against bullying and student-on-student harassment, student conflict drops by up to 30%."
"Schools, universities and localities cannot just play defense and wait for their members to be victimized. Potential perpetrators must clearly understand that everyone around them, regardless of their political views, believes that hate is unacceptable. Elite influencers in every community can help to broadcast this message. Standing with them, there is strength in numbers, and as individuals and communities, we need to come together to speak as loudly and publicly as possible."
*are our thoughts, values and beliefs, even behaviours, unconsciously influenced by the strength of numbers around us?
session one questions:
1. what does it mean "you are online who you are offline."? do you agree? why?
2. do you agree, with the same identity in real life, people's public personas are sometimes different from their private ones? when it comes to personality, will people still be online who they are offline with different identity? is it more possible one's online persona will also be different from that of one's real-life?
3. would online personality influence real-life one? would one's real-life be influenced by online behaviour, with or without online real-name?
bonus question:
"The ability to be anonymous is increasingly important because it gives people control, it lets them be creative, it lets them figure out their identity and explore what they want to do, or to research topics that aren't necessarily 'them' and may not want tied to their real name for perpetuity,"
do you buy it? why?
session two questions:
4. Some people chose a pseudonym, or even avatar, which is different from their gender. Why? What do you think of it? Is it disturbing, fun, or nothing to you? do you prefer to meet someone with their real identity online, or false one?
5. why do people hide their identity? do people prefer doing some things in anonymity? what are those things in your opinion? why do they do it with pseudonym, or prefer not showing real identity? is anonymity a problem? do you agree "people are actually more sensitive to group norms when they are less identifiable to others."?
6. guess there are more proponents than opponents of the online real-name policy. what do you think? what are pros and cons of the policy? why? is there a middle ground to settle the contention/issue?
bonus question:
"if you want to be a dog on the internet in the future, you'll have to have papers to prove it."
what dose it mean? what's your opinion about it?
********************************************************************************************************************************************
Agenda:
6:45 ~ 7:00pm Greetings & Free Talk / Ordering Beverage or Meal / Getting Newcomer’s Information
7:00 ~ 7:10pm Opening Remarks / Newcomer’s Self-introduction / Grouping
(Session I)
7:10 ~ 7:55pm Discussion Session (45 mins)
7:55 ~ 8:10pm Summarization (15 mins)
8:10 ~ 8:20pm Regrouping / Instruction Giving / Taking a 10 Minutes Break (Intermission)
(Session II)
8:20 ~ 9:05pm Discussion Session (45 mins)
9:05 ~ 9:20pm Summarization (15 mins)
9:20 ~ 9:30pm Concluding Remarks / Announcements ********************************************************************************************************************************************
聚會日期：列於該貼文主題內
聚會時間：當天請準時於 6:45 pm 到達 ~ 約 9:30 pm 左右結束
星期二聚會地點：丹堤濟南店
地址、電話：台北市濟南路三段25號 (02) 2740-2350
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走法：出忠孝新生站 3 號出口後，沿著巷子(忠孝東路三段10巷)走約 2 分鐘，到了濟南路口，左轉走約 2 分鐘即可看到。
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給新朋友的話：
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