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The anonymity I know

chrishateswriting.com

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Re: The anonymity I know

#41

Post by DanBC »

wpietri wrote: post #19
Zikes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that anonymity breeds meanness suggests that the meanness is created. I think moot's assertion that anonymity facilitates honesty suggests that what is exposed is the meanness that was within people all along.

People have everything within them: we contain multitudes. But we also become what we do, and what we surround ourselves with. Setting aside 4chan, which I don't know well, look at newspaper comments. People positively compete to be giant assholes. They practice being mean. I think there's a big difference between people having the potential for meanness within them and indulging that in a way that magnifies and shar…

Well this is confusing.

You start by saying that 4chan isn't a good example of anonymity being a good example of not-meaness.

Then you say you don't know 4chan very well.

Then you give the example of commentors on newspaper articles competing to be giant arseholes. But often newspaper comments are not anonymous.

I feel like the sands are shifting.

Meanness in online comments is important because some people think real names stops it. Look at HN where the expectation is that people should behave like assholes, and often use real world identifiable IDs, and yet has many examples of mean comments.

Re: The anonymity I know

#42

Post by Antiquarian »

wpietri wrote: post #19
Zikes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The notion that anonymity breeds meanness suggests that the meanness is created. I think moot's assertion that anonymity facilitates honesty suggests that what is exposed is the meanness that was within people all along.

People have everything within them: we contain multitudes. But we also become what we do, and what we surround ourselves with. Setting aside 4chan, which I don't know well, look at newspaper comments. People positively compete to be giant assholes. They practice being mean. I think there's a big difference between people having the potential for meanness within them and indulging that in a way that magnifies and shar…

When you use intemperate language to tell Bob to leave you alone, you are not in an anonymous context.

In an anonymous context, there is no you and no Bob, just alternating post-sources. The same person may be both you and Bob, putting on a Punch and Judy show.

Re: The anonymity I know

#43

Post by dfabulich »

wpietri wrote: post #5

On the one hand, I was an early BBS user, and there was a fair bit of benefit in anonymity or pseudonymity there. On the other, when somebody says that he strongly disagrees with the notion that anonymity breeds meanness and his positive example is 4chan , I'm gobsmacked. We must have such different standards for what qualifies as meanness that I'm not sure we're the same species.

Sam wrote that "anonymity breeds meanness." Moot wrote that "anonymity facilitates honest discourse and enables creativity."

Aren't they both right? 4chan has a lot of honest, mean, creative, offensive discourse.

Re: The anonymity I know

#44

Post by Antiquarian »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #24

>> "What I’ve observed is the opposite—that anonymity facilitates honest discourse, creates a level playing field for ideas to be heard, and enables creativity like none other." One big counterpoint to this I can see is ask.fm. People are given total anonymity and they use it to berate and bully others (I believe it's also lead to several suicides). Anonymity can work great if the community is good. Here on HN I thin…

Is ask.fm ephemeral?

Re: The anonymity I know

#45

Post by bradleysmith »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #22

Slight OT: I'm interested on people's thought on anonymity on HN. - Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our real names? - How would using real names affect the discussion here? - Does the anonymity here go far enough? For example if someone manages to tie our real identity to our HN username their is no way of changing the HN username.

I do most of my posting and discussion on HN with my real name (which is nearly pseudonymous to begin with), and links to my real life. I have other user names for anonymous discussions, which I almost never use. I would need to log in and read comments of these accounts just to remember what my last use-case for anonymity was.

I tend to hold 15-year-old moot's mindset; I just don't see the appeal of participating in anonymous discussion. I will read it (I'll unabashedly lurk SA, 4chan & reddit) but rarely feel the need to chime in without having a tie to my identity. Perhaps it is discounting the power of ideas, but identity is approximately ONE HALF of any communication in my mind; I always want to consider the source, so I don't have much to say without BEING the source. Short of discussions of philosophy or existential beliefs, the source identity is always important to me in evaluating ideas.

Having said that, I've learned a great deal from anonymous users here on HN and each of the forums named above.

I think that the people that comprise them are what give online communities their culture; anonymity does not cause the meanness in these communities, the acceptance or encouragement of meanness by the community causes that meanness. anonymity allows users to remove their filters right quickly; it is the communities that encourage or discourage particular communication patterns.

Anonymous or not, you'll get down-voted and poo-poo'd on HN if you are overtly negative and 'mean' (particularly true when contrasted to other online forums). This is not a function of anonymity; it's a function of HN'ers having an aversion towards these behaviors as a whole.

Re: The anonymity I know

#46

Post by steven2012 »

reddit has some of the most helpful, positive and encouraging communities on the Internet. It really depends on the tone that each particular app/forum cultivates. Sure, there are assholes but for the most part, the communities created in some subreddits are simply fantastic. And their upvoting/downvoting system is far superior to anything, including HN and slashdot, and really helps clean up the noise. Had I never used reddit, I probably would have thought the same thing of Sam Altman, but reddit has such positivity in some of the subreddits that it is really great to see.

Re: The anonymity I know

#47

Post by [deleted] »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #22

Slight OT: I'm interested on people's thought on anonymity on HN. - Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our real names? - How would using real names affect the discussion here? - Does the anonymity here go far enough? For example if someone manages to tie our real identity to our HN username their is no way of changing the HN username.

[deleted]

Re: The anonymity I know

#48

Post by Fasebook »

Kapura wrote: post #40

I always appreciate what moot has to say, and I think he's absolutely correct about anonymity creating a stage in which it's fine to fail publically. There's almost no judgement based on past efforts, which means that you can frequently see new ideas pop up. This is especially true of the boards with topics, which tend to have smaller communities than the random board, allowing for more effective meme propogation. Fo…

Don't tell that to Google, or the 10 million sites that use its libraries.

Re: The anonymity I know

#49

Post by aestra »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #22

Slight OT: I'm interested on people's thought on anonymity on HN. - Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our real names? - How would using real names affect the discussion here? - Does the anonymity here go far enough? For example if someone manages to tie our real identity to our HN username their is no way of changing the HN username.

>- How would using real names affect the discussion here?

We have had many people post candid accounts under throwaways. Some have been informative, some have been mean and hateful. We can take the good with the bad. Some people can post their accounts of sexual or physical abuse, time in jail, unpopular/politically damaging opinions, etc.

>- Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our real names?

Yes. More people are freer to participate. People who don't want to be Googleable for example. People are more free to speak their minds rather than say "could this hurt my career?" or "if the authorities in my country read this, am I going to get in trouble?"

Re: The anonymity I know

#50

Post by Fasebook »

k-mcgrady wrote: post #22

Slight OT: I'm interested on people's thought on anonymity on HN. - Do you think we have better discussions because we don't have to use our real names? - How would using real names affect the discussion here? - Does the anonymity here go far enough? For example if someone manages to tie our real identity to our HN username their is no way of changing the HN username.

I think there is no free speech on HN, due to the misrepresentation present in the UI.
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