Who the fuck cares about Randi Zuckerberg. Without Mark would we give a shit what she says?
I only regret that I have but one upvote to give to this comment.
Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
51–60 of 64 posts
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#52Yuck. This argument is consistently framed as a false dichotomy: either get rid of pseudonyms or keep them. Why not both? Some places, like Google+, might be nom-de-plum-free. Some, like reddit, might not. Why make it one way or the other? I can easily foresee an internet that has parts that are "real person only" and parts that are the wild west. For that matter, some parts, like banking access, might be even more l…
This scheme is fine, provided that it's possible to easily maintain multiple identities, pseudonymous or not.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#53Having the ability to speak anonymously allows for people to speak their true mind and show their true personality rather than hiding behind the fear of lash back.
One word. /b/.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Let me clarify. 1) Muggings - If you get mugged by someone you know, it's very easy to find them and punish them. It's no coincidence that muggings tend to happen in big cities where the chances of a mugger attacking someone they know is very low (anonymity). 2) Sexual predator - If a priest rapes a child and the child tells people about it (i.e. removing some of the priest's anonymity regarding his actions) the prie…
Intriguingly, without anonymity there is no real reason to prevent predators from living next to elementary schools nor interacting publicly with children. Everyone around them would know their history, and name then therefore watch them to a close degree. As it is now, we simply try to prevent convicted pedophiles from being near unsuspecting children and parents. --- With a terrorist, the argument is the same. If o…
>With a terrorist, the argument is the same.
I submit that it is not. How would your non-anonymous world stop a madman like Anders Breivik? He did not hide his views. He was a known user of white supremacist sites, and a known affiliate of white supremacist groups. However, no one, not even the fringe groups that he affiliated with could predict that he would carry out his horrible actions.
Breivik was not anonymous. That fact, however, did nothing to stop him from carrying out his crime.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#55In these sort of arguments I don't really understand why civility in and of itself is valued. It only makes sense in a social situation that affords civility. For that you can make "giving up anonymity" opt-in , rather than opt-out (which is mostly what is being done a lot, from forums that force you to use FB accounts to tor users in various countries who have no easy way to opt-out of foregoing anonymity). It is ra…
Thought experiment.
Imagine there's a service (HackerNews, 4chan, whatever) that you use. It gives you the opportunity to opt-in to real identity, at which point, you will only post with your real identity, and only see posts with your real identity.
If you opt out, you may still post and discuss, but you remain pseudonymous. You may share your details and information, or you may share nothing. You can see all comments and reply to anything, but the people who are real-identified don't see your posts or replies to theirs.
If you let this system run, I strongly believe that the number of people posting with real identities would be a fraction of a percent of the community, often doing it to make a specific point and then logging back out.
The "open internet", without enforced identity, is just a more interesting and useful place to visit than Facebook, or any other "exclusively real identity" destination.
(note: I replied to parent because this is related; I don't disagree with it at all)
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#56nonsense.
some of things that post comments or use Internet don't have real identity.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#57The 'Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory' is a hypothesis at best. One that has been refuted by empirical evidence of pro-social behavior under anonymity many times.
For all practical purposes, it's not even a well-formulated hypothesis, and most people (even journalists) never bother to look at any of the findings, it's just a popular meme.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#58In my past life I've worked on the Google Maps identity story when Google Hotpot launched (allowing you to set a maps nickname, while still having friends on Google Maps). I feel that identity on the web is a harder problem than most people realize.
My personal opinion is that you have to strike the right balance between
+ establishing trust in the production of content (you want other people to trust what you post, build an identity). Producing anonymous/pseudonymous content is fine, but how can I, as a consumer of that content (reader of reviews) can make sure I can trust it?
+ offerring users the protection they want from entities bothered by the content you produce. This can range from the extreme cases of freedom of speech, minorities, sensitive issues (medical, sexual orientation) to the more trivial examples of bad reviews for restaurants where the owners might track you down.
+ incentivizing the production of high quality content and discussions (see the quality of YouTube comments for a case of user generated content gone wrong :-) ).
+ making it easy for users to deal with this identity complexity. Understanding that even though you are logged in with your GMail account you are posting as a Nickname, understanding what others can or cannot infer about you.
It's a complicated problem full of tradeoffs any way you want to go. + Go with real-name all the time and you upset the people that are not comfortable exposing their real name. + Go with pseudonymity and you lose the benefits brought by having an identity on the web. + Go with a compromise and you have to deal with complicated user experience problems.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#59In these sort of arguments I don't really understand why civility in and of itself is valued. It only makes sense in a social situation that affords civility. For that you can make "giving up anonymity" opt-in , rather than opt-out (which is mostly what is being done a lot, from forums that force you to use FB accounts to tor users in various countries who have no easy way to opt-out of foregoing anonymity). It is ra…
The argument is that online anonymity itself also creates real-world consequences, such as character assassinations, harassment, and downright internet crime. If "Civility" means "being nice to each other", why shouldn't we value it, in and of itself?
Civility doesn't mean everyone being nice to everyone. It means everyone being nice to the privileged few who can afford clean identities.
Re: Randi Zuckerberg Runs in the Wrong Direction on Pseudonymity Online
#60Who the fuck cares about Randi Zuckerberg. Without Mark would we give a shit what she says?
Her views are relevant because of her position (until yesterday) in Facebook, her surname is just a nice addition to attract more readers, not the reason for the story.