Anonymity

The ability to be anonymous online is both one of the privileges and the downfalls of the internet. In one regard, being anomalous could have the potential to allow people to be more open and honest. It could allow a space for someone to open up or ask questions that they would be too afraid to do with their identity attached. I think of forums that people talk about everything from hobbies to health concerns and when you look at the usernames of these people they are often very cryptic in order to conceal identity. But then there is this other angle where being anonymous gives users the opportunity to post negative or threatening material or even to go under an altogether different identity to deceive people (like in the many scary stories you hear about talking online to a stranger who makes themselves out to be someone that they are not.)

Yik Yak is a particularly interesting way to be anonymous online because it is very local. People are positing about shared experiences (within a small radius) and even about people that they know. As mentioned in the New York Times article “Much of the chatter is harmless. Some of it is not.” Just looking at the Tufts feed there are humorous posts about the giant hill on campus and how we should “petition to flatten it.” Occasionally, however, you come across a post with an identifiable name in it to a direct and inappropriate stab at a certain professor or a crude post about a certain sorority. These posts if they had not been anonymous would be punishable content. If one had made that their Facebook status, for example, I do not doubt that the person would be held accountable by the school. This extends our discussion about the norms of different mediums by adding a new level, what is acceptable to post under your name and what must you post anonymously. Although in extreme cases yin yak has revealed identities of posters (like in the event of a threat) but for the most part it is a forum to say what you would be too scared to say in any other context or medium. It is very interesting to see how people take advantage of this power of “invisibility”.