We have a right to remain anonymous
Arianna Huffington says in an interview that The Huffington Post will no longer allow anonymous comments on its threads, due to what she says is a steady increase in aggressive, insulting, and threatening posts. From mid-September, all comments in the online newspaper, which currently employs more than 40 moderators and uses several automatic algorithms, will require registering and posting with a real name.
The right to anonymity is one of the main topics of conversation in relation to the management of discussion groups and threads. The popularity of the internet means that, at least in theory, it has never been easier to be anonymous, with opponents saying that this creates an atmosphere in which violence can prosper. The truth is that despite appearances, there is no connection between anonymity and threatening behavior online: the belief that correlation implies causation is one of the most common fallacies in research.
The discussion about anonymity comes precisely at a time when this right is being threatened by the powers that be: a practice that was once practiced only by authoritarian and non-democratic regimes is now being exercised by theoretically democratic governments that believe they can win public support for censorship by saying that they trying to tackle terrorism and child pornography, for example.
So why is it a mistake to remove the right of anonymity from a thread or online discussion group? Quite simply because the decision is usually based on several accumulated conceptual errors. The first is to believe that anonymity provides impunity, an invisibility shield. This mistaken idea, typically held as much by the managers of threads as well as users thereof, can be easily tackled by appropriate moderation policies and practices: making it clear to abusers that their comment will not appear, and that they will be deprived of any visibility is usually enough to put an end to such behavior.
The use of blacklists of pseudonyms, IP addresses, or certain words is another way of preventing sites from becoming bullying grounds, which when not checked, invariably lead to further violence, as the much-cited broken windows theory shows. Involving the community brings even better results in terms of involvement and commitment. And we are talking about an effort that, in reality, is usually only required to be applied for a short period of time: a sense of community is quickly created when violence is checked, stimuli to encourage this kind of behavior disappear, and the task of moderation is applied only to the newly arrived, or on rare occasions related to certain subjects, or those who get carried away and forget themselves.
An atmosphere of violence on a thread is not the result of tolerating anonymity, but of the way that moderation is being carried out, based usually on inadequate criteria, inconsistency, excessive tolerance, or misunderstandings.
The second mistake is to believe that it is possible to be anonymous on the internet. Real anonymity requires the use of complicated technology. Anonymity on the internet is far from easy to achieve, and is generally beyond the technical capabilities of the average user.
Believing that just because you are sitting behind a screen your are anonymous is a big mistake: the reality is that everything we do online is recorded in a log file that is usually more easily traceable than tracking somebody down in the real world would be. And make no mistake, anybody who threatens, insults or abuses others online, and who fails to observe the basic rules that govern social interaction deserves to be pursued and made an example of.
Furthermore, thread and discussion group managers have a responsibility not just to prevent threatening comments from appearing, but to inform the authorities, and placing all related metadata at their disposal.
The third mistake is to fail to understand the importance of anonymity as a means by which we can make important contributions to a thread or online discussion. There are many reasons why we might want to remain anonymous online: many discussions, particularly in the world of business, an ambit I have experience in are enriched precisely by anonymous contributions, or those made using a pseudonym.
Ending the right to anonymity will mean losing diversity and will not enrich discussions; at the same time it is a move that restricts an important and legitimate right to expression that, for example, a company director might wish to take advantage of to criticize his or her own company, or another, without triggering a scandal or unwanted consequences; similarly, anonymity is the best way to encourage somebody to report discrimination or abuse without exposing him or herself to threats.
Obliging contributors to online discussions and threads to identify themselves may seem like a way of protecting the vulnerable, but the more likely outcome is impose silence on those who cannot comment without fear of reprisal. It is precisely those who see themselves as proponents of cyber-libertarianism who should be defending the right to anonymity, recognizing the benefits it produces. An internet without the right of anonymity is not a more-developed internet, but one that has lost a great deal in terms of freedom of expression.
To see Arianna Huffington subject The Huffington Post to the same kind of controls as the Chinese government or the NSA simply to avoid a few insults or threats that could be eliminated through appropriate moderation practices is shameful. Restricting the right to anonymity will do nothing to solve the problem of violence on threads and in discussion groups, will impoverish us much more than it will enrich us, and takes us down a path that in all honesty, I for one, am not minded to follow.
