A study of the Anonymous.

[Tev]

So the Boston Globe ran a nine page story a few days ago that takes a look at anonymous posting and the people that practice it.

I snagged a few highlights but really it would be in your best interest to read the whole thing. I was rather enlightening all things considered.

Commence wall of text!

Anonymous commentary is a push and pull between privacy and trust, and the implications extend beyond news sites to include Web reviews for everything from books to technology to hotel rooms. Online postings can sway political opinion and heavily influence whether products or businesses thrive or fail. They can make or break reputations and livelihoods. On one side, anonymous comments give users the freedom to be completely candid in a public forum. On the other, that freedom can be abused and manipulated to spread lies or mask hidden agendas. With all that in the balance, the thinking goes, shouldn’t we know who’s saying these things?

Clearly, anonymity is under attack. Even the Chinese government has had enough, announcing last month it would begin a push to end unnamed online comments. And, really, there’s not much that officials in Beijing don’t already know about who’s saying what within their borders.
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If we hope to clean up the online conversation, we need a better understanding of the select group of people doing most of the talking. Studies have shown that participation rates in online social communities tend to follow something called the “90-9-1” rule. About 90 percent of the people are “lurkers,” that is, watching but not actively contributing; 9 percent are infrequent contributors; and 1 percent are, to borrow a term from the fast-food industry, the heavy users.

McDonald’s and Burger King have teams of researchers who do nothing but try to understand the patterns, desires, and quirks of their heavy users, their best customers. However, yet another unfortunate byproduct of anonymity is that news sites know precious little about their most active commenters.
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He has no wife, no children, and a job requiring just 20 hours a week. He doesn’t follow sports, doesn’t hang out at bars or go on many trips beyond the occasional visit to play the slots at Twin River, and isn’t involved in any organizations to speak of. But he is extremely active in his community. It just happens to be one that only exists online.

Despite his strong views, he is generally a responsible member of that community. Every once in a while he’ll find one of his comments on Boston.com has been removed because he went too far. (It’s a safe bet it involved Teddy K.) Occasionally, he’ll commit the common commenter sin of weighing in on an article without having read it, and be called on it when his objection turns out to have been covered in the fifth paragraph.

But, overall, he plays by the rules, works hard at this commenter job of his, and, in a way, serves his community. After reading his posts and spending time with him, I believe him when he tells me that, even though he’s anonymous online, he would never write anything that he wouldn’t say “mano a mano.” That, incidentally, strikes me as a pretty good standard for separating the stand-up commenters from the cowardly name-callers.
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But here are the people I didn’t hear back from: the screamers, troublemakers, and trolls (Internet slang for people behind inflammatory posts). Not a single one. The loudest, most aggressive voices grew mum when asked to explain themselves, to engage in an actual discussion. The trolls appear to prize their anonymity more than anyone else.

Michael Sol Pollens is not a troll, but he is a heavy user. He explains that he spent three decades as a private detective, focusing mostly on fraud investigations, before suffering a nervous breakdown. He turned in his detective’s license and began writing detective fiction. He quickly discovered that posting comments online could be a therapeutic way to kick off his early-morning writing schedule. “I get up at 4, fire up a little incense, fire up some rock music, and go at it,” says the 51-year-old.

At his most productive, he posts up to four comments a day. He is every bit as liberal as Xenophonic is conservative, but the appeal for his participation is similar, and he is equally focused on his “Recommends” standing. “I do enjoy the community nature of this,” he says.
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Then again, sometimes those impressions formed online can turn out to be off base. Yoshimi25 is one of the most faithful contributors to On the Front Burner, a Red Sox discussion board on Boston.com. On game nights, she’ll spend five hours or more on the board – posting comments before, during, and after the game.

Once when a troll attacked Yoshimi25, hurling ugly anti-Asian slurs at her, her friends on the boards rose to her defense. Most people assume Yoshimi25 is Asian. In fact, she is a blue-eyed Irish-American named Kelly. (She asked me not to use her last name, but agreed to be photographed for this article.) Her Eastern-sounding handle comes from her days practicing martial arts.

Yoshimi25 says that because the Front Burner message board is such an intimate group, the regulars on it tend to behave well, even though they’re anonymous. “Although I can say anything I want without consequences,” she says, “you should behave as though there are consequences.”
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Owens insists that a no-anonymity rule is not just good journalism but good business as well. “My competitor allows anonymous comments,” he says. “We don’t. We get 10 times what they get. My users are more willing to engage in conversation, because they know who they are arguing with.” Almost all the heavy users I spoke with said they would continue to comment even if they had to provide their real name.

While news organizations debate scrapping anonymity, the ground may be shifting beneath them. With all of our identifying information getting sliced, diced, and sold, by everyone from credit card companies to Facebook, is there really such a thing as the anonymous Web anymore? Consider this demonstration from the late ’90s by Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor Latanya Sweeney. She took three commonly available data points: sex (male), ZIP code (02138), and date of birth (July 31, 1945). Those seemingly anonymous attributes could have described lots of people, right? Actually, no. She proved they could belong to just one person: former governor William Weld. She tells me that 87 percent of Americans can now be identified with just these three data points.

Maybe the best approach to getting people to behave better online is just reminding them how easy it is to figure out who they really are.

Anyway what are your thoughts on the power of anonymity? Do you feel that the trend of forcing accountability back into the system is the way to go? Are there people even here that you feel you might take differently if they were more than an avatar, a screen name, and a random picture in the PYP thread?

Frankly I happen to like the freedom of the internet. I wish I could find the words to really expound on that more. I do realize that with freedom comes responsibility. I also feel that the internet as a whole does a decent job of policing itself within its individual communities.

Though it would still be funny as hell to find out that Smarty, for all his revolutionary ways, is actually a staunch conservative English national who contracts with Halliburton.

[Azisien]

That was a fun article to read.

I guess I like being anonymous on the net, but am I actually anonymous? I use the same username pretty much everywhere, so it is truly my online self now. It wouldn't be hard to link it to evidence of my real name either.

That being said, there's definitely stuff I say online that I wouldn't offline. Those're probably the more uncommon things I'd say while mad that I would refrain from in a physical social situation, though.


I wouldn't have a problem tagging my real identity to my online one though. In fact I do on the new Battlenet. My only concern is identity theft, but nothing really concerning the huge power I get from anonymity.

[bluestarultor]

I still need to read through the article, but I have to say it's a double-edged sword for me. On one hand, I make it no secret who I am, but on the other, I suck at talking to machines. Answering machines, forum posts, I am just not good at it. IM is a bit better and I'm fine on the phone and with email, though. If someone who knew me online would meet me in meatspace, they'd probably be shocked at how different I seem.

Basically, the prospect of a potential employer taking a look at what I do online scares me, because it's a poor representation of who I actually am. But am I anonymous? Not really.

[Mannix]

Anonymity is good. In Korea for most websites you have to sign up with your social security number in order to create an account (the government has proposed making this a law, and Google and Yahoo! have gotten into a little trouble for refusing to implement a real name system for the Korean version of their sites). This has lead to things like people being arrested or sued by the government.

One of the more high profile cases recently was a man that went by the handle "Minerva." He claimed to be a credentialed economist and that the government's policy regarding their response to the 2008 Banking Clusterfuck was going to lead to ruination. Don't remember the exact details, but people panicked, sold a bunch of stock, and made the market take a small dip which I guess embarrassed the government who was trying to talk up the stability of their market to foreign investors. So the government tracked him down and arrested him for libel (turns out the guy wasn't an economist and at least most of his data was made up b.s. [though the truth isn't a libel defense in Korea which is a whole other post]).

Here's a link to a Wired article on the matter.

[Pip Boy]

Isn't that just all the more proof that you should double and triple and sometimes perhaps quadruple check any online info sources for consistancy? I mean, if all this stir was caused by "some guy claiming to be an economist" it could have easily been solved by people learning of a statistic I found online that states 99% of info on the internet is wrong.

[Mannix]

Originally Posted by Megaman FTW

Isn't that just all the more proof that you should double and triple and sometimes perhaps quadruple check any online info sources for consistancy? I mean, if all this stir was caused by "some guy claiming to be an economist" it could have easily been solved by people learning of a statistic I found online that states 99% of info on the internet is wrong.

It surely is. But you should do that with sources whose names you know as well.

[Magus]

I make lots of dirty jokes and off-color comments online I probably wouldn't make in real life, nor do I want an employer looking at them. As such I will make sure to never put my birth date in again! I don't think my zip code is readily available, either, though, so other than my sex I think I'm pretty anonymous and harder to track down.

Obviously if an actual government entity wants to find me they can get my IP off my ISP but as for some future employer's Google searching me I think I'm good as long as they never know my online handle.

As for people making bad decisions based on stuff they read online, I don't think it's evidence enough to make EVERYONE identified because some people are so stupid they believe stuff online. If people knew who I really was I would be stifled in some of my opinions just because I'm not sure if I want people I know to know I have that opinion (then again, I'm pretty vociferous in voicing them in my personal life too, so maybe it wouldn't be an issue). It's probably just the dirty jokes, really. Perhaps it's cowardice, but then again, voting is anonymous for a reason, and I think it's a similar reason for why I think we should be able to post "anonymously", under an online handle.

Anyway, the reason China wants to make it illegal to post anonymously is they want to know who's door to kick down to drag off to prison for thoughtcrime, it's not exactly a good reason to get rid of anonymous posting. Obviously in America you have politicians making posts under false names or fake "reviews" posted by companies, but again, why not just make it illegal for politicians or companies to post anonymously as opposed to everyone.

EDIT: Actually it just occurred to me after reading the full article (man it's long), that personally I wouldn't say certain things online anyway (like racist slurs or mean insults or whatever) not just because I'm not a racist but because quite frankly I've put so much into my "online handle" I don't want those things associated with it! I don't want the other people in the communities I care about looking down on me, just like Yoshimi25 mentions. So quite frankly at this point I'm not even "anonymous", really, in that I can say anything I want, because it would make my online handle look bad. A tenuous insignificant supposedly worthless thing like an online handle has actual value to me, because it's not just an online handle to me.

[Doc ock rokc]

In my opinion anonymity is a double edged sword in a way. Now just to specify so ya'll don't bitch later on here we have Anonymity in one sense. we are also Tied to a name that we give our selves and in turn Create a new Identity instead of forgoing it. I want to talk about True anonymity.
I think Anonymous is a kind of refection on the Pure image of mankind. When we don't have rules and can't get caught How far do we push things? On one side Anon can be Extremely generous. Giving information out for free so others can prosper. Which puts a little faith back into Humanity.
Then their is the other side... the side we all have been burned with. The Monstrous side of our reflection. There is people that ether have No Personality to call their own or have nothing be rage and contempt for others. That Decide to attack or destroy anything they want. While yes It is funny in some situations Not having a name tied to you means that others have nothing to contact you.
That is why I prefer this type of anon. the partial anonymity. where people can act like they want but still have punishments if they are dicks. Where our handle becomes our name our avatar our face and our text our words. This is something that shouldn't be taken away.

[Magus]

Yeah, if someone has built up 4000 posts on one username they probably don't consider themselves anonymous and being able to say anything they want. When I think of the anonymous trolls that annoy people it seems more like the type of people who post on /b/ on 4Chan or who make up a handle every other day because the ten prior ones have been banned from the comments section of such-and-such website.