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Poole To Zuckerberg: You’re Doing It Wrong
An anonymous reader writes "At South by Southwest Interactive 2011 in Austin, Texas this week, 4chan founder Christopher Poole (also known as 'moot') took the stage to talk about various online issues. One of these was how important anonymity is on the Internet and how Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg doesn't get it."
Shame he'll not be able to hear how wrong he is through his insulating walls of billions of dollars. In fact it's surprising moot isn't aware of this issue given his similarly vast wealth.
Exactly. Sorry Moot, you have a good point, but Zuckerberg didn't hear you over the sound of how much money he made in the time it took you to make that statement. Moot seems to genuinely care about online anonymity, but Zuckerberg cares about making money and doesn't think twice about selling every piece of info he has on you to anyone who wants it.
Society is a balance between privacy and sharing. When a so-called "social" website decides that everything that goes in the website should be "public by default" that really violates the public/private social balance.
In the absence of strong information/data privacy laws, only a fool would use Facebook to put more than even the basic public details about themselves; you only need take a look at the growing legal, workplace and criminal ramifications to see the end results.
The real tough part is that rabid facebook users can get you listed on Facebook just by "tagging" your photo. So you have to join to even purge the stupid... this is anti-social.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
This illustrates part of Moot's point, I think; before you can begin to receive his idea, let alone process it, you already know who made the statement, and that has colored your perception in some way (you aren't obviously for or against 4chan, but you clearly know what it is). Anonymity is therefore arguably better for the transmission and sharing of ideas, because each idea is forced/allowed to stand on its own. Obviously there is also a place for credited work, such as peer-reviewed submissions, but I think his position is a strong one.
I think he's missing the point of Facebook a little bit, though; it isn't (at least in my experience) an exchange of ideas or the nexus of a creative endeavor. It's a really fancy online address book.
I don't think 4chan is worthless.
Vulgar, irreverent, mob mentality... Can you honestly say facebook is none of those things? Wouldn't you say that it is all of those things, if you were honest? Is the veneer of "manners" and censorship really so important for its own sake?
Maybe your mom would feel more comfortable in the lie (see what I did there?), but 4chan's /b/ is just as valid a form of human interaction and expression as facebook -- it merely operates by different rules, with different norms, and a different history. To deny that 4chan is important as a feature of the human condition is to deny that anyone has a mental life: the life that we don't blurt out in public for fear of social repercussions. Nevertheless, this aspect of humans does still exist, and you won't make it disappear just because you get rid of 4chan and other anonymous modes of communication. Repression makes things worse, never better.
You do need both -- and you can't assert that 4chan is "worthless" and be self-consistent. Facebook, in all its corporate data-farm glory, is no more legitimately "good" no matter how much less child porn, no matter how much less gore, no matter how popular it is, and no matter how wealthy its owners.
You're a a soft-skulled, sophomoric, self-righteous hypocrite. It doesn't say anything good about /. that you were modded up (why expect an enlightened, objective moderation response from the anonymous internet, though).
Still. Parent remains profoundly inane.
Hah, when you're anonymous it's easier to debate because personal qualities of the people making the arguments are unknown; therefore, the arguments are more likely to stand on their own (although people do speculate).
That "stand behind it" crap is really all just manly-sounding bullshit.
Do you know any previously-closeted gays? Or currently-closed ones that haven't come out to everyone yet?
Have you ever lived in a small community?
Have you ever tried asking friends and family members about something personal and embarrassing to you, like erectile dysfunction? In a restaurant, or at a ball game?
Beyond the rare cases where one is actually threatened with death or imprisonment, social ostracization occurs all the time, and stigmas are attached to practically everything, especially in small communities. These make it difficult, even unbearable, to live openly. I recommend you read these Wiki articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiral_of_silence
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shame_society
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guilt_society
One can hope for a perfect world where nobody has anything to fear from sharing everything with anyone, but such a world is unrealistic in the extreme.
I can go on 4chan and find people asking about things like erectile dysfunction, but I can't imagine that many people are willing to join groups about that on Facebook. That's the value of anonymity.
Yes. Moot point is moot. /rabbits
+0 Meh