Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Do We Need Pseudonymous Social Networking?
An anonymous reader writes "While the idea of anonymous social networking sounds like an oxymoron, the use of pseudonyms to mask a user's online identity has a long history that stretches back to the earliest days of the Internet and local bulletin board systems (BBS). Such imperfect anonymity, which can often be unmasked with a few well-defined Google searches, has led to abuses like the invention of 'spambots' and the persistence of forum trolls. But, as the BBC reports, pseudonyms have their place in online communities, especially where identities are a risky commodity, under oppressive state regimes and governments where corporate interests increasingly dominate the interests of individuals: 'Some users choose to hide their identity to avoid being found by people they would not like to be contacted by. Others live in countries where identification could have serious implications for those who have expressed political views or associated themselves with others who have.' Should Google+ and maybe even the notorious Facebook evolve into two-tiered sites where those who choose to remain anonymous are 'identified' as such and denied access to certain site features, while being free to post, blog, or tweet their views, without summarily getting their accounts suspended or revoked?"
I always use my real name, and all others must, too.
Take a look at Wikipedia's list of social networking sites.
The application of the name may be fairly recent, but the idea of social networking sites has been around forever. (In fact you could easily make a case for including Slashdot in the list on the basis of the friends/foes system and journal posts.) And very few of them have required the use of "real" names, and even fewer of those have actually tried to enforce it on a serious basis.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
from your friendly social network provider. This reminder is being brought to you, John Doe, on behalf of your favourite toilet paper. Please avoid using any and all aliases in your friendly and ultra-useful social networking realm as it interferes with targeted advertising/shareholder reven....errrr.....the quality of your user experience.
Please do however continue clicking through the adverts you enjoy, purchasing the products you use in daily life, and applying for the various bank accounts and credit cards you wish. None of these services, their providers, your advertisers, or of course your friendly social network are in any way related and should not concern you in the least.
regards:
the book of faces.
P.S. Do consider a new subscription to netflix to complement the television you just purchased, your friend will bring the Doritos he has confirmed enjoyment of, and you both can appreciate the lice he recently cured with his purchase from WalMart Pharmacy.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The entire thing about being online is that text communication does not include any identifiable clues. You can't see the face, you can't hear the voice, you can't even measure the timing of the key strikes.
Worse, it is very easy to get and use someone else's password. (A password dictionary of the top 100 passwords will work in at least 5% of cases).
To require real identification would involve a massive change in technology that would unnecessarily invade a lot of privacy for things NOT done on social networks.
The internet is designed for privacy, not security. Pretending otherwise just makes you look like a fool
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
I tried to use my real name, but it was already taken.
While it isn't false that users in repressive regimes have an obvious interest in privacy, the notion that the feds are your primary concern is so hopelessly naive that I almost find it hard to believe that it isn't purposefully deceptive.
So, let's look at the social-networking life of your average resident of a Not-Repressive(tm) contemporary society: The secret police aren't going to be bashing down the door for saying the wrong thing, so nothing to worry about, eh? Well, yeah, not exactly...
How many schools(for the under-21s in the crowd) will treat a picture of you with a red plastic cup as presumptive evidence of illegal drinking? How many companies will skip you for being a touch controversial online? How about that canadian case of an insurance company deciding that a picture of the patient smiling was evidence that they were not depressed, and further support could be cut? Heck, to ignore organizations entirely, how about the 'timmy thinks he might be of the homosexual persuasion, doesn't really want ma and pa bible-belt to find out' use case?
While repressive regimes do suck, and anybody who runs one should definitely trip and hit their head on a bullet, the notion that the state is your primary concern(among people who have plenty of leisure internet and broadly unfettered access) is openly absurd. It's the private sector: schools, colleges, corporations, parents, etc. who you really need to watch out for.
There's a simple problem with social networking with pseudonyms: you can't find people from real life.
For something like Slashdot it makes no difference, I don't care if people commenting here are people I know in real life, we build the community based on the user names we have here. But for Facebook, which is all about connecting with people you actually know, it would be impossible for the system to exist if everyone used aliases. It works if a few people use pseudonyms because that person can still find friends using their real names, but it breaks if someone using a pseudonym is trying to find someone else who also uses a pseudonym. Because large-scale use of pseudonyms would be very detrimental to their use model, I think it's perfectly understandable why facebook and Google+ don't want pseudonyms.
-Russell S. Harris
Google+ isn't the problem. Google's use of "crowdsourcing" in search results is the problem.
Google values links, reviews, and now "likes". All can be, and are, be spammed using anonymous accounts on social networks and blogs. This is why there are so many spam posts on blogs, phony reviews, and phony accounts on social networks. Those aren't there for humans - they're there to feed Google's ranking system.
This was a nagging problem for years, but didn't get much attention outside the "search engine optimization" community. It went over the top in Q4 2010, when Google Places was merged into Google web search, and the payoff for social spam increased. Now there are articles in the New York Times about it. 40% of the jobs on Amazon's Mechanical Turk are for spamming.
Now the trend is toward requiring a login from some non-anonymous social network to post on blogs and forums. That reduces spam targeted at Google. None of this has anything to do with human readers.
Do we need pseudonyms? Yes.
Here's why: because for every troll you manage to thwart by making them more identifiable and thus hopefully more accountable, there are innumerable people out there that for various reasons wish to remain anonymous but have useful things to contribute. Sometimes the only way in which they are able to safely contribute is via anonymous or pseudonymous accounts (e.g., for reasons of job or personal security). Otherwise they will remain silent.
You may have some idea of how many trolls you've stopped, but trolls will inevitably still be there and you'll never know how many people you have discouraged from participating that aren't trolls.
Let me put it this way. I've only ever contributed to Slashdot as AC. Nevertheless, I have submitted numerous posts that have received +5 Insightful from the mods, and I've had 3 or 4 story submissions accepted too over the years. I wouldn't have submitted them without AC.
It's also why I don't have a Facebook page, and why I'm no longer interested in Google+.
Why do I need your real name, or the thing you claim is your real name? What, exactly, am I to do with it that is legitimate use? Am I to look up your address so as to stalk you? Seriously, why do I, as a social website member, need anything other than some unique identifier so conversations can be directed? Frankly, I don't need your real name, nor do I want it. The question here really is: Who does want your real name -- and why?
Facebook and Google want your real name. They want it because they're going to sell it; it, and the habits they associate with it, by tracking every move you make that they are able to. They're going to sell it to corporations; give it to the government; etc. If you're ok with that, then fine, give 'em your real name. What I wonder, really, is why you'd be ok with that. Too young to remember McCarthyism, perhaps? Don't understand the reasons why privacy was given such primacy in the constitution? Just plain... dim? It's an interesting question, certainly.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Admit that you'll never know if anyone's name online is their real name, let them put whatever name they want, but then limit what they can do until they build up some reputation.
If they are a new user, don't let them run around spamming on everyone else's posts and throttle the number of activities they can take until it's been verified by other more trusted members. Allow people to flag posts or identities as spam, and follow up with moderators (or even algorithms analyzing the flags) to suspend or outright ban the offender.
There's no need to reinvent the wheel here.
I don't mind allowing the option for anonymity for those who need or want it, but I also want the ability to disable viewing anonymous drivel; which a large percentage of the time (IMO) these are links to goatse and rickrolls. For instance, here on /. I disable viewing posts scored 0 or less and don't even look at AC posts until someone else has gone through the pain to verify that the post isn't crap.
In other words, I fully support others' right to free speech and anonymity, but I even more desire my right to not fucking hear it.
If you imagined a twitter where noone can ever block you, censor you, or trace you - then this is actually already true. We forget about Google+ and FB - we think decentralized and independent :)
Sone is actually implementing Twitter-like functionality in Freenet. While still in beta, it works surprisingly fast! Posts appear in minute or so after posting, which is blazing-fast as for strong crypto-network that is not centralized and can not be censored.
Since last week (version 1386) Freenet finally is no longer a burden to computer! IO and hdd use was fixed and compared to last years it is really not a problem to use this software on even medium computers.
Freenetproject.org instalation takes 3-5 minutes. Then from main page bookmark "Sone" - link to .jar file USK@.......jar should be copied into Configuration > Plugins - add unofficiall plugin from freenet (it is still in beta), also add WoT (web of trust) plugin from the list there - solve some captchas while creating Pseudonym (the new main menu tab Community) and then create your free twitter (Sone) by clicking top menu "Sone".
See you there ;) any questions - both Sone and Freenet developers are on IRC freeNODE - #freenet afaik.
"While the idea of anonymous social networking sounds like an oxymoron, the use of pseudonyms to mask a user's online identity has a long history that stretches back to the earliest days of the Internet and local bulletin board systems (BBS)."
The use of pseudonymous communication goes a bit further back than that. The value to society is rather plainly displayed in the body of the Federalist Papers, by Publius -- a pseudonym for Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. Anyone who argues that pseudonymity is a bad thing has to explain how The Federalist Papers would have been better without it, or how The United States would have been better without The Federalist Papers.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
This goes back a lot further than social networks. We all maintain multiple identities across different social circles, starting with the language we use while watching the hockey game with Dad when Mom is out of the house.
Blakley on Fashion and Intellectual Property
Fashion has always functioned as an identity hack. I'm as much into fashion as any fashionista, but not sartorial fashion; I mince, but not in drag; I'm queen of the lateral link; Uruk-hai ninja of the face-palm rebuttal. But not on my cravat or my crevice sack, by which I declare myself Puritan of Pattern Recognition. Nor have I scribbled on my leather pyjamas: I can't figure out which anthropic landscape to pick from; it seems premature. Blakley got my goat a bit by presuming that the game is only played on sartorial terms. Forgive me if that paragraph is not my regular office gab.
Hey, I've got an idea. Let's do it all online. What I say in the locker room, what I say to the girl I spoke about in the locker room, what I tell my parents when I come home late after speaking to said girl, let's make the whole thing part of a unified dossier. What could possibly go wrong?
I might work for a company that couldn't care less about my verbal excursions. But they might want to present me to an investor as a level-headed character who is the brains behind the operation. Now, the investors already know that it's a coin flip whether the brains behind the operation is a total flake in his private life. (So true.) Mostly, they don't really care. But if you rub their nose in it, they have to care. CF CYA.
A flake with the good grace to hide the fact will suffice if the job gets done. This becomes a tenuous proposition on Fishbowl+. (I'll learn to love that + sign yet. It goes anywhere. I could even print a T-shirt --Fishbowl+ if I weren't so busy hiding my other half; or my other half wasn't so busy hiding from me.)
It's also a sign of social grace is knowing when to let it go and not peering over the fence into ever aspect of the social lives of the people you work for, with, or employ.
From Mark Brezinski at Sennheiser CX 980 Comparison
We'll all be accessorizing for creepy people if this direction continues. Kudos to Mr Brezinski for this wonderful send-up of coolspotting.
Hi, my name is Todd VerBeek, and I'm gay.
I can say that. My family know, most of my friends know (if they're paying attention), I've even been on local TV talking about it. I don't have much legal protection, but I'm probably not going to get fired for it (again). I live in a community where people probably won't beat me for it (any more), and my government pretty much just treats me with neglect, not persecution.
But not everyone is so lucky.
One of my earliest forays into what's now called "social networking" was on CompuServ, back in late 1980s, where there was one section of one forum where people could talk openly about their experiences as gay/lesbian/bi people. That particular forum offered a level of anonymity: no full names. It would not have worked otherwise. And I might not have made it here without it.
Yeah, it's a quarter century later now, but there are parts of the world (even parts of my own country) that are further behind than that. And not everyone has a quarter century of practice at dealing with self-disclosure. So yes: people like me in places like that need pseudonymous social networking. Obvious answer. Full stop. Next question?
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
There is a problem that the mainstream cloud storage options like DropBox, SkyDrive, MobileMe, Google Music, etc. all store your data unencrypted, meaning eventually the MafiAA will sue your asses based upon the media that you've archived there. Wuala encrypts documents using the document's own SHA as the symmetric key for deduplication, meaning they cannot read your documents, but any MafiAA like party can still identify your documents.
Afaik, you still need command line tools like duplicity, git-annex, and jgit for encrypted cloud storage via Amazon S3 or others. Syncany might fix this.
Imho, we need an encrypted cloud storage solution that is resistant to even traffic analysis and offer social functionality. It might resemble the following :
Layer 1. Anonymized ad serving and/or payment via digital cash systems : An advertiser gives you a coin when your app claims you've showed an ad, you anonymize that coin and give it to the hosing provider, hosting provider redeems coin with advertiser, adjusting their payout based upon the advertisers identity. Ideally, the hosting provider and advertiser shouldn't be able to trace their relationship to you unless they violate the protocol by comparing IP address, which you may defeat by using a trusted anonymizing bank. Anonymized payments could be are handled similarly but might create issues with banking laws if the coins represent real currency. Tor, I2P, and Freenet could also use this layer help their users earn money.
Layer 2. Anonymized automated bitlocker based storage : Your application creates a 'thread' on a host by uploading a 8192 bit RSA public key, creating a symmetric AES 512 key to save alongside the private key. Threads contain three types of messages : unsigned public messages that applications will ignore unless they're encrypted using the symmetric key, signed public messages that may be unencrypted, like maybe deleting an old message or closing the thread, and private hello messages that applications will ignore unless they're encrypted using the private key. Hosts are federated allowing users to submit their signed messages through other hosts to prevent their preferred host from identifying the thread owners IP address.
Threads are identified by their public key's SHA512. You may grant anyone read & 'reply' access to a thread by giving them the threads id and symmetric key. You may hash identifying information like your real name or email using SHA512 and submit that plus a thread id to lookup servers. You're real threads should NOT however be available for lookup. Instead, your application replies to hello messages by sending some real thread, ala work, family, whatever.
Oh, all thread content is accessible by anyone, all privacy is accomplished through cryptography. It's actually a feature that all this data becomes public once quantum computers can break 8192 bit RSA keys, which'll happen long after your dead.
Layer 3. You're application provides a 'social versioned file system' using a hosting layer thread or ten and pays the hosting provider using the ad serving layer. Imho, the underlying file format should be packed git repository extended to offer quasi-instant messaging attached to objects, roughly like github's comments.
End result : People archive their photo, video, music, etc. collections online, grant their friends access, and chat with their friends in instant messages affiliated with the files, roughly like facebook comments. Of course, the whole system works perfectly for collaborative private projects, like university homework assignments. All users are just some collection of threads they control but nobody knows what threads do what.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Furthermore, what is the effective difference? Some people have supplemented their "actual identity" with another that may actually be far more known to people....wether the person behind the account known as "Foo" is actually Ralph Smith or not doesn't matter. He is known as Foo.
...so far as the police department is concerned any name you have ever used--even variations/abbreviations and misspellings of your real name--is considered an alias. So why doesn't Google just chill the hell out and wait until the local police catch up and document your online aliases as well? It's bound to happen anyway.
I grew up in the heyday of the BBS. We would have meetups where we would just call each other by our respective handles. Why? That's how we knew one another. After years of correspondence your real name was effectively irrelevant, not to mention difficult to attach to the name we already knew for years. There are a few of those guys I still talk to and we still call each other by our handles. It's just easier.
So whoever can't stand the idea of no anonymity will create real sounding pseudonyms. Then they will be known as that. At that point what is the difference?
I guess my main question is, functionally, what is the difference between an "actual identity" and a pseudonym? Nothing except for the government or other 'official' body...unless there is money to be made, of course.
My entire last post was essentially a satire on Constantly Risking Absurdity, one of perhaps three nuggets I've retained from my private school education. Knew it would come in handy, some day.
When I first read that poem during my years at Pretentious High I regarded it as a send-up of narcissism. I reluctantly completed many written assignments by starting out complaining that I had nothing to write about (which is effectively writing about oneself) and then seguing into something more interesting from which the useless first page could later be shorn. Always found more to say after clearing my throat of the hairball of hostility.
Not long ago I set myself up with a blog. Never write there, even though I write compulsively every day. I just don't like performing under an integrated identity. I like my circus costumes. I'm sure there have been movies about that, about actors who can't function without the costume. Not quite Wings of Desire. Seriously, that movie could have been about anything. Reminds me of so many poems that left me speechless.
I'm writing far more than usual lately trying to get the costume out of my system. Doubt I'm succeeding. There are sober things I would like to say under the auspice of a perpetual self.
Entrechats, my ass. Way too fucking feminine. Damn I wish I had said that in my essay long ago. I get it, there's a second reading: beauty's a bitch. In my case, it's more like playing hopscotch with Elvish chalk and a magic decoder ring. Not the glam elves, the ones grabbing your ankles from the Dead Marshes, canted in trapezoids. Facebook prime.
I probably write as much for what I erase as what I say. The brush sweeps transverse to the chalk. I'm constantly barfing up memes of disengagement. I write to assimilate, and I write to purge. How many opinions written here are white flags of the soul? Petite mots of surrender? Glib self-loathings of reconciliation?
For a trapeze artist, there's something unseemly about stringing your own wires. A blog feels more like bricks than ballet shoes. Little bricks you keep politely hidden on the third page of Google's search results.
It almost seems like identity has jumped the shark for a generation indoctrinated on commoditizing eyeballs. I have no idea really who I am. With a lot of scratching for words, a few clues emerge. It's not a yard sale of self-documentation.
A funny poem. On Slashdot, usually that's the guy I'm barrel rolling, quarrelling coons in the canopy.
"There are only two ways of telling the complete truth--anonymously and posthumously." -- Thomas Sowell
Slashdot = Sarcasm