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The anonymity I know

chrishateswriting.com

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Re: The anonymity I know

#81

Post by wpietri »

Antiquarian wrote: post #42
wpietri wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is true, but I'm not sure how it's relevant. Alternating post-sources can still be mean about third parties.

Re: The anonymity I know

#83

Post by ChuckMcM »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #75
ChuckMcM wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of Scott Adams participation in anonymous forums with sock puppets was unclear to you?

Was that intended to be an example of a low value comment? The high value response would have been to infer he didn't know the incident you were referring to, and then to explain it to him.

> Was that intended to be an example of a low value comment?

Essentially that is how it ended up. After rewriting it a couple of times from the original link to lmgtfy I probably should have just said to myself "You know, if that was a serious question on his part he would have done a search and known the answer long before I could compose this reply, so just let it sit there." I attribute it to being depressed at the lack of response to the 'Take Action' stuff yesterday which has put a huge damper on my mood today. After this comment I won't say anything more on HN until my mood improves.

Re: The anonymity I know

#84

Post by polemic »

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…

Regarding your anecdote: IMO it works for 4chan because the entire system is built around anonymity and a troll culture. If every message on 4chan is a trolling opportunity but every user is anonymous, trolling looses a lot of it's 'fun'. You get no notoriety, the target is primed for it already and is protected by their own anonymity.

Trolling on 4chan has been elevated to such an art-form that it takes more energy to successfully troll than basically anywhere else on the internet. And that's saying something.

The problem is that very few other platforms can keep that anonymous relationship equal in all cases, and that's where the real problems start. The power relationship becomes unbalanced and the equation tips in favour of bad behaviour.

Take twitter as the classic case. A lot of feminist writers will use semi-anonymous accounts because of the level of vitriol that is commonly thrown at them. Then some particularly nasty individual doxxes their account and the level of personally abusive and physically threatening messages increases dramatically.

Re: The anonymity I know

#85

Post by ben0x539 »

potatolicious wrote: post #71
ben0x539 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The ability to lambast public figures from behind a screen of anonymity seems to bring out the abusive worst in people, I feel like this point is really overstated. I'm much more worried about people in disadvantaged positions suffering abuse from people who do not even feel the need to be anonymous, because society tolerates their abusive behavior. Comparatively, some anonymous screeching on a message board doesn'…

> "Comparatively, some anonymous screeching on a message board doesn't seem all that worrying." If only it was limited to "anonymous screeching". Bear in mind that 4chan invented the term doxxing. We're talking about the anonymous mob inflicting real harm at many levels - from the mildly damaging (review bombs), to the extremely harmful (threats of rape, death, threats against family, home). All of the above has happ…

What I'm saying is that revoking the anonymity of the offenders doesn't seem to do enough to dissuade them.

Re: The anonymity I know

#86

Post by pamelafox »

bguthrie wrote: post #31

I think what both pieces miss is the behavior that asymmetric anonymity seems to encourage. The ability to lambast public figures from behind a screen of anonymity seems to bring out the abusive worst in people, and the target has nowhere to run. Conversely, communities in which everyone is anonymous seem to foster a degree of creativity and respect rarely found elsewhere. I think Altman was thinking about the former…

My only experience on 4chan was due to a Google Alert notifying me that I was the subject of a thread on /d/. That thread was the highest density collection of insults about me that I'd ever seen on the net, and sadly, I'm not yet thick-skinned enough to entirely ignore the "comments on the internet."

When I see things like that, or comments on youtube videos of my talks, I sometimes think "maybe I should retreat and make myself not such a visible target." But I stay because I feel like I'm meant to be a role model for my gender, and people seem to like to hear the things I say. Or at least, I stay for now.

I get the impression that communities like this feel that people put themselves out there purely for their own benefit, and therefore they have the right to attack them, because they are asking for it. I think many of us never asked for it, but given the pros/cons, we stick with it. There are definitely cons, though.

I don't see how to prevent anonymous communities from lambasting public figures, and don't think they should necessarily be prevented. But it sure would be nice if they realized that everyone's a person, and nobody likes to wake up to find they've arbitrarily been chosen as the subject of taunts for the day.

Re: The anonymity I know

#87

Post by teddyh »

MattGrommes wrote: post #59

I used to think that anonymous comments bred ugliness because it gave people a way to be (even temporarily) racist, hateful, etc. with no consequences for their "real" offline self. The most interesting effect of so much commenting going on using Facebook is my discovery that people are just as willing to be outright racist and hateful in a million ways when their real name, picture, and main online identity are invo…

Well, let’s look at it from a historical perspective. In the past, before the Internet, the only place it was even possible to be anonymous was in writing – anonymous pamphlets, books written under pseudonyms, etc. Now, did these contain horrible behavior? No, the horrible behavior (as judged by the standards of the times) was associated with lower classes instead. The anonymous pamphlets and books written under pseudonyms were instead challenges to the status quo and the powers that be.

Re: The anonymity I know

#88

Post by crassus »

wpietri wrote: post #78
crassus wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Scalzi considers "ugly" anyone that is outside a very small neighborhood of idea space. It's fine for his own professional blog, but it's incredibly narrow as a general principle for discussions.

I don't think that's the case. He's pretty strict in enforcing behavior , including the behavior of staying on topic. Another good example in this regard is Quora. They cover an incredibly wide range of topics and viewpoints. But they're pretty insistent on respectful behavior. I think that focus, respectful behavior, is exactly what makes for good real-world discussions. Because on-line fora break the sort of contin…

It's tempting to define "impoliteness" as disagreement with progressive beliefs about feminism or white racial guilt. Judging by what Scalzi has banned people for, he seems to fall victim to this. He uses the banhammer more than any other blogger I've followed. The others don't feel the need to curate the discussion so closely.

It's fine to be so closed off in your personal space, but the intellectual air can get a bit musty.

Re: The anonymity I know

#89

Post by kybernetikos »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #65

Great article moot, and well said. What is particularly intriguing to me on this (hackernews) and 4chan has been how so many people conflate anonymity with "non-identity", which is absolutely not the same. Karma systems attach value to a 'handle' which is its own form of identity. So I can create an account on a forum as xyz123 and say what ever I want, but if the speech is of low value to the community I'll get "dow…

> so many people conflate anonymity with "non-identity", which is absolutely not the same.

Quite a few people have mentioned this in passing, but I think it's actually the central point.

What you're called has no relationship to meanness at all. Whether your actions can have consequences for you is what has a relationship to meanness.

This holds true in real life too. The Stanford Prison experiment degenerated because the prisoners had no meaningful way of creating consequences for the prison guards, not anything to do with names. Abu Ghraib abuses occured because the mechanisms to hold the guards to account were (perhaps even deliberately) not working. They used their real names.

The rule of nature is that groups of people who can suffer no consequences for their actions will tend towards worse and worse behavior.

This is obvious. Imagine a forum where you could call yourself whatever you wanted in conversations (and different names in different conversations), but you have to log into it with a password and passwords cost $50 to acquire and for sufficiently bad behaviour they can be revoked. The fact that you can call yourself whatever you like isn't going to change the fact that people will be careful not to do things that risk their $50.

Reddit and hackernews and stackoverflow tend not to degenerate because the identities on there have history and value. If you behave badly enough, your identity will suffer loss, and you yourself will lose some of the value you've built up.

One of the most wonderful things about the internet is that you can take part in communities where race and sex and family history and class and age are subordinated to achievements, ideas, and skill at expressing them.

Re: The anonymity I know

#90

Post by sorahn »

pamelafox wrote: post #86
bguthrie wrote: post #31

I think what both pieces miss is the behavior that asymmetric anonymity seems to encourage. The ability to lambast public figures from behind a screen of anonymity seems to bring out the abusive worst in people, and the target has nowhere to run. Conversely, communities in which everyone is anonymous seem to foster a degree of creativity and respect rarely found elsewhere. I think Altman was thinking about the former…

My only experience on 4chan was due to a Google Alert notifying me that I was the subject of a thread on /d/. That thread was the highest density collection of insults about me that I'd ever seen on the net, and sadly, I'm not yet thick-skinned enough to entirely ignore the "comments on the internet." When I see things like that, or comments on youtube videos of my talks, I sometimes think "maybe I should retreat and…

Taunting for day is probably the least of your problems. When you make it to meme status, it might be a little harder.
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