Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Exec: Online Anonymity Must Go Away
Chaonici writes "The EFF has a blog post about what appears to be Facebook's stance on anonymity on the Internet. Speaking last week at a social media conference hosted by Marie Claire magazine, Facebook's Marketing Director, Randi Zuckerburg, is quoted: 'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.' This position appears to apply to the entire Internet, not just Facebook (which already requires that its users post real names instead of pseudonyms). The EFF goes on to point out how this would be a bad choice for civil liberties online."
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
Anonymous Online person: Corporate people must go away !
Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. People behave a lot better when they have their real names down. I think people hide behind anonymity and they feel like they can say whatever they want behind closed doors.'
This quote makes it sound like this is a very recent realization and that this problem hasn't existed since the beginning of the internet. Furthermore, it totally overlooks one half of the double edged sword of anonymity online. You may retain your privacy through anonymity, you may be safer from stalkers and thieves by remaining anonymous and you can speak without fear of retaliation -- whether that be deserved (the only cases Randi Zuckerberg seems to be able to conjure up) or undeserved.
I mean, we're posting on a site that seems to handle anonymity just fine. Is it impossible for Facebook to spend the effort to discover how they could accomplish the same thing?
Furthermore what in the world is she saying "on the Internet" for? Here's an idea: you stick to Facebook and the rest of the sovereign internet will follow or not follow your lead.
And yet further, I would argue that implementing a verification system is more complicated and more risky than simply dealing with spam and trolls in an intuitive way. Do you propose we each have some secret identification string that establishes our true identity on a given site? And when those are lifted wholesale by a foreign entity what then, Randi?
Side rant: Holy nepotism, Batman! Hey, Mark, did you ever think that maybe Facebook wouldn't be so hated and being thrashed so much in Public Relations if the person in charge of it actually earned that position by merit? How do I know your sister didn't achieve this position by merit? If she was good enough to hold this high of a position at one of the most valuable internet companies, she would have known to issue a non-statement on anonymity as she would have researched this problem just a little bit more than relying on her psychology degree to say "Gee, people are jerks when they can say whatever they want--let's just stop that." She didn't offer a solution and all she did was piss a bunch of people off. GO TEAM ZUCKERBERG!
My work here is dung.
Company with vested interest in tracking people by their actual names online thinks everyone should use their real names online?
It seems only fair to let them lead by example. Anybody know what it would cost(in round numbers) to get more or less panopticon-caliber surveillance done, 24/7 on the upper echelons of the house that Zuck built? Perhaps some of Rupert's boys are back on the market?
Anonymity will be the standard, since the laws of humans are no match for the laws of mathematics.
Lack of anonymity invites intimidation, surveillance, censorship and prejudice. This is what must go.
(captcha: attacks)
P.S. Reputation can be conveyed pseudonymously. If the holder of public key A is known for good behaviour, you may be justified in trusting them, even without any high authority (to whom you'd have doubtless no access anyway) knowing what color of underwear they prefer to buy, and how frequently they do it.
Who cares what some manager at the next Geocities has to say about it? Facebook is a fad, it too will pass.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
It's kind of funny that The People(tm) argue about the Internet as if it is completely unrelated to the real world. no one (I hope..) would say "I think anonymity on the streets has to go away. People behave a lot better when they are tagged with their real names."
I'm cool with using my real name in the web (see my account at /.), but I would never accept regulations that ban pseudonyms.
"The Internet" is not Facebook, no matter how much it may feel that way for Facebook principals. If Facebook, or Google+, or whatever trendy social network fad of the year wants to require real names, fine. I can think of many cases where such a policy is desirable. The operator of this or that service should be free to adopt the policy that meets their needs, but extended that policy to the Internet as a whole is just absurd.
A friend of mine used to be pretty open about her online identity... until she got a box of sex toys mailed to her with no return address.
The arguments for lack-of-privacy are fundamentally inconsistent. We are told that people "behave better" when there is a risk of consequences, but also that there are no harmful consequences. These cannot both be true. While most people don't need privacy most of the time, you rarely know in advance that you will later turn out to have needed privacy.
People tend to make arguments like "well, don't do anything you'd be ashamed of", but this only works if you have a guarantee that the rest of the people in the world are all basically sane. They're not. Furthermore, lots of people don't get a choice; you don't get to say "hmm, lots of people object to transgendered people, guess I won't be one."
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
No no. Randi Zuckerberg is a dipshit whose business model revolves around getting hired by family! Regardless of her opinion on the matter or Facebook's vested interests in such a move, that was a stupid thing to say. Not something you would typically expect from a "marketing director".
"This position appears to apply to the entire Internet, not just Facebook (which already requires that its users post real names instead of pseudonyms)"
Yes, and it's long proven how well it works on Facebook too. Just the other day I was searching for Anders Breivik's profile on there to have a nosey and had the pleasure of stumbling across around 50 groups praising the guy as a Saint, and a whole bunch more trolling Norwegians over it. So yes, obviously people behave so much better with their true identities that Facebook "enforce".
No seriously, dickheads act like dickheads when you can't punch them in the face, anonymous or not.
It does not surprise me that Facebook would take such a stance, as they are a glorified data mining company.
I just hope the internet does not completely lose its wild west feeling. It is hard to not be concerned, though, as between walled gardens, paywalls, ever-more-draconian anti-piracy measures, bandwidth data caps, bandwidth throttling, multi-tiered internet, and cross-site tracking it is clear that corporations and government wants to change the web and internet as we know it. Then you have Google coming out and saying that they are banning accounts that do not use real names.
When IPv6 finally becomes mainstream and goes in to widespread use it will only get worse, in my opinion. With IPv6 every man, woman, child, dog, and toaster can have its own IP address. Not only would it be trivial to track most people by their IPv6 addresses, but as TV sets and other devices get connected it will be trivial to track and monitor the activity on these devices and tie that activity to their owners. The more tech savvy will be able to sidestep some of it if my prediction comes to pass, but the general public won't know enough or care enough to do it.
It's cute that she thinks everybody on FB uses a real name. I'll be sure to pass that along to my friend Charlie Unknown*, and many others.
*Not the actual pseudonym, I wouldn't want somebody to get reported to the bureaucrats....
Slightly disreputable, albeit gregarious
So, people tend to say whatever they want behind "closed doors", and you have a problem with that, Randi Zuckerburg?
Fine, then you won't mind if I put a webcam in every room in your house, right? I mean after all, people tend to say AND do whatever they want behind "closed doors", and we can't possibly have any of that without the rest of the world being well aware of exactly who is doing what behind "closed doors", right?
Keep it up, Farcebook. You won't be relevant enough for people to even give a shit if you keep pulling moves like this. There's a damn good reason anonymity existed well before privacy lawsuits, Farcebook or even the internet, and it's the same reason it will continue to exist well after you're gone.
This from the company who's officials are regularly quotes under demand of anonymity? Let the facebook staff be first who give up all their details online.
'For we walk by faith, not by sight.' II Corinthians 5:7
If commercial and governmental entities keep pushing us in a direction where are forced to use our real life identity then I believe the meaning of identity will change.
Just because I happen to live in a country, have a bank account there and have a VISA card means I have a valid identity? I can even have officially my name changed. Is that the true meaning of identity?
I think it won't be long before the Coconut Islands will begin to offer identities for $50,- per month. You can get to choose your name, get a passport and a bank account. Installation fee: $75,- and renaming cost you only $25,- plus shipping charges for your new passport.
Who said you can't have multiple identities? In the internet we already had them for a long time in less official form of nicknames. Even artists have a artist identity to protect their private lives for the public. Also forbidden in the future?
If you squeeze tight enough people will run through your fingers.
'I think anonymity on the Internet has to go away. I have no way of knowing if my user, Clem Kadiddlehopper is the same person as Willy Lump Lump and Bolivar Shagnasty on other sites That costs me money, money I deserve. If I can correlate the information about users across sites I can build up an even more valuable trove of information to sell. It's time for this quaint notion of privacy and an individual's right to it to go away; after all it is pre-internet thinking and we're in a new economy. It's money we're talking about, real money.'
As deep throat said, "Follow the money."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
The real reason for this of-course has nothing to do with people being pricks on the web. The real reason for this is the bottom line of FB, which would improve greatly if they could have everybody on file, with their real names, addresses, S/Ns, birth dates, certificates (long form, right?), etc.
They want you to be a better product for their customers - advertisers. What better way of doing this if not by making sure everybody is known exactly for who they are, where they live, where they work, what they do, where they shop, how much they make, what their family situation is, medical data, what their future plans are, etc.etc.etc.
Of-course if you provide FB with this sort of information, FB gains enormous power over your lives, they become more powerful than you could ever imagine, product #241125
You can't handle the truth.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Actually, I find that whenever someone is telling you to give up your rights for your own good, it's not really safety they have in mind. Usually they're just trying to shaft you somehow, but they can't just say "bend over and squeal like a pig, I'm gonna make big money out of shafting you peons." So they have to pack it in some idiocy about how it's for your own good.
Applies to everything from 10'th century warlords promising you protection if you just put your thumbprint here and sell yourself into serfdom, to politicians, to the likes of Zuckerburg.
In his case, it's not even hard to see why. I mean, really, you could summarize the summary as "Guy who gets his money by selling your data to marketers, says your right to privacy has got to go. Reaches for the standard 'it's to protect you from other pricks' canned excuse. Film at 11." Well, whop-de-do. Big surprise that he wants that, eh?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
BZuck is not alone, many people confound politeness (civil discourse, minimal insults, etc) with the quality of the discussion. They seem to say, if you cannot say it politely, it should not be said at all. Or worse, if you can't be civil, you must shut up.
This unstated warrent is entirely wrong -- it confuses style for content. Perhaps because the believers are incapable of evaluating content.
Fundamentally, communication is about teaching and learning. This is necessarily somewhat uncomfortable as old ideas (generally) have to be abandoned or at least modified by the new message. Often politeness helps this transition, but not always. Some people cannot be polite, others choose not to. Silencing them by banning anonymity is to impose on everyone the shallow value of style-over-content.
This is not necessary, hence is meddling. Rather dictatorial which BZuck can be for Facebook, but not elsewhere. People can choose what to read when they open a book, newspaper, blog or email. Filtering is easy and a necessary skill. But many are those who would impose their values upon others.
I detest facebook exactly for this reason, i have no privacy left now, all my friends know who all my friends are, and if i say something to someone, others can read it...it makes total sense, and i think they could even go further and lift even more privacy off facebook, this way when it becomes a standard in the near future...no one will be able to steal your identity, especially if your bank has your facebook account attached to it, in terms of validating who you are....when you open a bank account, you associate your facebook account, this will enforce identity validation. the person might see a picture of your facebook page appear on her screen when you go in to try and take out 20,000$ from your bank account...and when she sees the face is not the same, which at this point becomes harder to do if you add twitter and myspace and all the others....it becomes like a fort knox equivalent, where no one will even try it due to an already established premise that it is impenetrable.
Less theft = less bank loss.... hoepfully = less bank charges.
oh gosh what a pile of bullshit.
Apparently, all these youngsters have no idea what a real online community looks like. Back in the BBS days, everyone had a "handle". Since we rarely changed them, it was closer to pseudonymity than anonymity, but it served a purpose.
That's what these piles of garbage who've gotten filthy rich over breaking other people's privacy and then telling the world that's the new black don't get: Purpose of seperation.
I have a couple hobbies where I change identity. In LARP or online gaming, I'm known under a different name than my family knows me as. And while I go as "Tom" in various social circles, they often do not overlap. The same three characters do not express the same identity.
I would, in fact, prefer to have several linked accounts on Facebook, Google+, etc. - because what I post, write or comment as the "Tom" of my own online games isn't all that interesting to my real-world friends. And vice-versa, the players of my games probably don't care what I'm doing this evening. Most of them don't even understand the postings I make in my native language.
This is not even about hiding anything. It's about being better than blarring everything about you on broadcast, whether or not anyone cares.
Maybe you have to be a celebrity like Mark to lose touch with this basic reality: That your life is seperated into various roles you play. Heck, that's sociology 101. Few things about our social lives are as fundamental as that. So how can a social network ignore basic facts about what it means to be social?
There's also some information theory 101: Too much information becomes indistinguishable from noise. If our connection is because we share some online hobby, then I usually don't care about your personal life because it has no impact on me. I don't care where you go this evening because I couldn't join you there anyways, you're hundreds or thousands of kilometers away from me.
And even if you're my friend, I don't give a flying fuck about your latest accomplishment in FarmVille!
Basically, what social networks lack to be actually social instead of just being the most simple and primitive kind of network imaginable is the ability to classify "friends". Google+ has a good start with its circles, but that's one baby step up from Facebooks unbelievably stupid binary friendship concept.
Twenty years from now, we'll look at Facebook the way we look at hand-copied bibles today, shaking our heads in disbelief that people went to all that effort for so little gain.
And the fact that you simply aren't the same person to different people is one of the things that will change in those social networks, because it's a fact of human nature and human nature doesn't adapt to toys, it forces the toys to adapt or changes them as soon as a better one comes around.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Don't be fooled by this call for accountability. Ethical posturing from the slimebags at Facebook is a laughable farce.
This is all about the Facebook business model, which is founded on SELLING YOU OUT. The radical expansion of their revenues will come as they encourage efforts to abolish not merely anonymity - but privacy itself.
It's not anonymity that needs to disappear from the Internet, but Facebook, which in itself presents a far greater evil and threat to individual rights and well being than does the entire aggregation of anonymous expressions...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Hell, I don't even feel like it's a good idea for me to say I'm an atheist. I don't live under an oppressive regime. I am an American computer programmer living in a politically balanced area. But I don't want any Tom Dick or Harry to be able to Google me and learn everything there is to know about me and everything that I post on the internet. I don't want Google keeping track of the fact that I did a search on herpes (which may lead some people to think I actually have herpes), or what kind of porn I like to look at. Because that information leaks out sooner or later. My ex girlfriend who is a facebook friend has a facebook app that logs IP addresses of people who look at her profile. She thinks I look at her profile too much...which I don't. I can't even click on her profile without her monitoring my activity and misinterpreting my actions as "pining for her". So, the things I click on are logged. It's to the point where our activities online will become more visible to everyone than in the real world. In the real world I could go to the public library and read a sympathetic magazine article about Muslim terrorists without creating an electronic trail that puts me on a bloody watch list. In the real world I don't have to worry about people evaluating every action I make in order to determine if I'm behaving normally or not. I can sit around with a group of friends and I can say something embarrassing and everyone will forget about it after a while. If I say it online, it lasts forever, and everyone in the world with a browser can see it. I'll keep my anonymity thank you very much.
I can, but I don't want to post as AC. I am not scared because I see their game. Time almost up and we shall be ready to watch THEIR endgame.
Twitter: @dainsanefh