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Are 'Real Names' Policies an Abuse of Power?
telekon writes "Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd argues in this article that 'The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.' This comes in the wake of criticism aimed at Facebook and Google for their stance on anonymity and pseudonymity. A related article from the Atlantic discusses how revolutionary the real name requirement really is."
Dont use Facebook or Google+.
Plenty of other methods of communication.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Google is not obligated to join you on whatever your crusade is, no matter how worthy. There are real plusses and minuses to anonymity, and it is reasonable for a social network operator to either allow or disallow pseudonymity.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Trolls, frauds, spammers, etc. hate having to identify themselves. Most people are proud of who they are and have no need to hide.
No one said social media sites had to be safe for activists under repressive regimes. In fact, were I in that situation, Facebook and Google+ would be the last place I'd want to be posting.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
A smooth site that lets you generate a random "real" name.
http://randomname.alwaysdata.net/ Happy hiding!
Pseudonymity is such a core part of Internet culture. "Real names" are a very recent artifact of companies trying to monetize the web. It offers no value to users.
"real" name when I'm arrested, put in gitmo, and water boarded for participating in DDoS attack protesting the "real" name policy.
So do a lot of people who are none of those things.
Not wanting to attach your real name to every message you put on the Internet doesn't imply that you're ashamed of who you are or what you're saying.
On a long enough time line, EVERY ONE has something to hide.
That includes the high and mighty. Actually, it's probably even more true for the high and mighty.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
i am not putting my real name & address or photo on any social networking website, because i know there are some people out there that would milk it for all its worth as far as identity theft or blackmail or just plain meanness to make me look bad,
(besides i do a good enough job of making myself look bad and i dont want any help from anyone else)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
On the other hand, there are MANY MANY MORE reasons to not use real names.
The question is, which is the bigger market size? Which do people want? From what I can tell, the far majority of people do not want to use real names.
Frankly, if you want to make a forum safe for kids, then yes, real names would be appropriate. But I am not a child. I can take an insult. My privacy and protection is far more important to me, and to most people.
The idea to use real names for a general forum for use by everyone is an insane idea. Companies and corporations want it, people don't. Build a website based on what the users want, not the corporations, governments. etc.
I would love to use Google+ - if they let me keep my privacy. I won't use it as is.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It is going to be Windows Genuine Pseudonym Advantage (tm). Will be release at 7 trim levels. From Starter Edition to Ultimate to "All your bases are belong to us" level. Gartner is releasing a Total Cost of Owenership study. It got advance notice about this product because it a member of the Windows Genuine Shill program.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So was Publius a troll, fraud, or a spammer? What about George Orwell? What about Mark Twain?
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
It is because of these policies that I set my profiles to private and not searchable, and why I don't put my picassa pictures to public. I'd share more if I didn't have to provide my real name, but as it is, I share as little as possible and still have the services be usable.
Seriously?! When you have the option to opt-out (as in not to use them) you are really asking if it is an abuse of power?
Let me clarify what would be an abuse of power: them pointing a gun to your head making you register to those services and making you use your real name.
It's that what happens? No? Then what was the question again?
Sometimes I think people just have too much idle time and boring lives not worth living to wonder about such "predicaments"........
If one lives under a reasonable government that is not prone to snatching people up and applying torture or death with trivial reasons for so doing it is one thing. But if you are under the thumb of very repressive regimes it is quite another problem. For Americans we can not assume that half way reasonable forms of justice and government will always continue. Attached to the issues of being anonymous there also resides the issue of making all communications transparent. After all if Mr. Smith can encrypt materials and Mr. Jones sends them down the wires then the identity of the sender is obscured. So the government that insists upon using the right name will also insist that they can easily read all communications. I don't know about all states but in at least some states in the US it is a felony to use a false name if business is transacted. As long as no money changes hands or the communications are not designed to cause money to change hands then you can call yourself by any name. Take one penny and you can be in the soup.
Unless requiring people to wear nametags at social events is an "abuse of power" as well. They're providing a service and thereby dictate the terms upon which people use it. Don't like it? Don't use it.
It's sad how people feel entitled to dictate how others run their business. If that business has a requirement you don't like, suck it up or don't do business with them. It isn't rocket science.
So, you send all your cheques in stamped and address stickered on ziplock baggies then, right? Because you have nothing to hide.
Then you don't go posting about it online...
Free speech is the ability for you state your beliefs without having to worry about the government jailing you for saying it. Nothing about doing it anonymously. Free Speech is something to be valued and not used anonymously. If you are going to stand out and say something important then you should do it so people know who you are, and realize that even in a place of Free Speech there is risks.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Why not just allow the users to choose to use a verified profile or not and then decide if they want to communicate with unverified profiles?
Yes, I want to hide my privacy. But I really don't care about that, because for me it simply changes my nickname. Instead of using a single 8 letter word with some numbers, now I use two nicknames put together. Like Jack Blacksheep, or Valentine Icebucket and so on.
Even when everyone used nicknames there were a lot of people using their real names JohnSmith and so on. It's all a matter of perspective. Until they ask for my SSN, I really don't care, when that happens, well ... there are other solutions to keep your privacy, and to be honest, you don't need a social network to keep up with the news or send email.
Widespread requirements by social media to give one's "real name" are, on the surface, only harmful to those who would prefer to remain anonymous but would rather give up anonymity than the utility of these sites.
One may simply say "if you want to remain anonymous don't give up your information. There's no one forcing you to use these sites" But there's a side-effect of this requirement.
Like it or not "what a lot of people do" always defines what is okay and good and normal. to most people. It makes it much easier to pass laws that forbid anonymity in many areas offline and on. So even though I don't use facebook, google plus, or other such services specifically because I prefer to remain anonymous, this "real name" crap is indirectly harming me.
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
Yeah, after searching for your wiener (or your titties, as the case may be), I discovered you really do have nothing to hide.
Idiot
I understand the need to prevent anonymity on the net, but there are certain cases where anonymity is the only way to fight for your rights without getting caught by the bad guys.
My profile with a pseudonym, Drew from Zhrodague, is blocked by Google+, despite my repeated requests. I've been posting on the Internet for a long time as such, and even my resume, business cards, printed authorship credits, and other online profiles identify me as such. I'd love to use Google+, but there is currently no way for me to do that. I do not use my real birth name online, for obvious reasons.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
When facebook was still .edu only and decided to open up, one of the details I learned (wasn't on it) was that most people use their real name. I thought "oh there's no way that will fly once they open up", but they had already achieved a certain critical mass where new sign ups just figured that's the way it works, and that's the way it is, so they went along with it. I could almost see it in the .edu only context, but it still astounds me to this day that relatives of mine who will bitch mercilessly about the man trying to get over on them and whatnot will post their whole life up for the world to see under their real name. Nothing GOOD ever happens from people finding you by your name, it's usually something crappy. Like if you've got a really popular online persona and you apply for a job, you can point to sourceforge or whatever and take credit for the good. But when has an HR person ever went scrounging for an applicant's real name, found pics of them drunk and pissing off a bridge, and given them the job because of it. The disconnect from people who seem like they should care a lot, according to their own standards, is striking.
Repressive regimes want to identify all citizen speech. Most socities are proud to let their people act freely without need to monitor.
No one said social media sites had to be profitable for companies under a free society. In fact, were I in that situation, Facebook and Google+ would be the last place I'd want to be investing.
And My Wife's name is Goa Tseru.
You're a fucking idiot. Go fling yourself from a bridge.
I remember a slashdot article some time back about the permanence of the internet. I have friends that have been unable to 'start over' because of this very fact. Combining that reality with a requirement for real names is dangerous. Some comment you made on Facebook 25 years before will impact your ability to get a job, run for public office, etc.
The rhetoric against anonymity on the internet with all its wide-ranging arguments boils down to a single mechanism of action - that the person who would otherwise say something anonymously should now be fearful of punishment (formally or informally) from the majority.
This means typically those who control public perception (usually the majority, although the media may have a different political pov. than the population) will favour enforced real names, whilst the minority will be in favour of it. All in the guise of improving something or whatever, but really with the motivation of either rooting out the opposition and making them feel shamed and harassed, or, saying things the majority finds unpalatable.
On top of this you have a layer of collectivism vs individualism - collectivists believe that the individual should never be able to put the collective at risk or cause wide feelings of upset, hence the collectivist will always want to be able to direct collectivist anger at those individuals. You can only direct that anger if you have a named target.
Since the world is currently moving in a collectivist direction, in spite of how insane and sick that is, it's no surprise that we see much more of this.
The author got a lot right in this article. The thing about using real identities is the effects are asymmetrical, it's not some egalitarian system that always improves discourse. The people in positions of power, authority, privilege, etc. are the ones who determine what is and isn't acceptable to begin with, so obviously they have nothing to lose by being identified. When we say "civility" we mean don't really mean "civility" according to everyone, just according to whoever defines the status quo. There's a reason Facebook is now mostly parents posting baby pictures and employers doing corporate promotions, that's all its useful for when everyone can see it and everyone can identify everyone else who uses it.
What I call someone, what they call themselves, and their real identity are three different things. Why force them to be the same?
A) if Google/Facebook only grant accounts (or verified account status, as others have suggested) to people who disclose their personal identity... that's the company's choice. It certainly makes me more likely to use their service (for the obvious spam/troll prevention reasons).
B) but there's no reason they need to publish that information for anyone else. They could then let my friend Robert Snee sign up for an account, choose his public name to be "Dread Pirate Snee" and then, most importantly, let me override his name and avatar with one of my own choice... probably Bob Snee with a picture of something other than his newborn baby.
C) And if Rob wants to use a total psueodonym but still accept his friend request/add him to a circle... he'll need to tell me in private "who he is" and prove it to me. Possibly by *choosing* to reveal his google/FB-verified real-identity. If he doesn't, I'm not going to let him into my friends/circles... which is the difference between social network-based sites and open communication tools like email/forums which have global acceptance for historical/practical reasons.
G
The problem is that you may say something that you have no reason to hide now, but every reason to hide in the future.
E.g. there may be no reason to hide the fact that you're not a big fan of Colonel X of the army now. But 3 months later, after a successful coup attempt, and rounding up of those critical of him, you may very well have every reason to want to hide it.
Anonymity means you don't have to worry about those future situations, be that an extreme such as the above, or something far more innocuous.
The down side is the 'greater internet fuckwad theory'.
I think Google+ is right in suggesting real names to keep out the fuckwads (even though there's plenty of pseudonyms already), who will still have their soapboxes on facebook, myspace, IRC, some random other forum, etc. Those who insist on anonymity whilst not being fuckwads may be condemned to those same places - that may be the price they pay.
While I understand the reasoning that people are nastier when anonymous, I don't think this is really valid for Facebook. I admit I use a pseudonym, but every single friend I have on there knows who I am in real life, so I'm still not anon to people who give a shit about.
Facebook is horrible for meeting new people and having discussions with strangers. It's much more geared towards friends in real life, so really, the anon-makes-asshole argument goes out the window.
I'm pseudonymous so that shithead employers and freaks from my past can't find me, and also to protect myself in the case where some idiot tags a photo or posts something incriminating on my wall. It has nothing to do with wanting to be an ass, as everyone who I interact with knows who I am anyway!
I'm reminded of the "Real Names" policies on many of the BBSes (especially the early IBM PC-based ones) of the pre-Internet era. It wasn't about any real advantage, percieved or not, with using real names in online discorse.
It was solely about a petty dictator and his fiefdom, and maintaining some sense of "control."
I now view Facebook and Google with the same pity and indignation as I viewed the dickish SysOps of the pre-Internet era, who were more worried about somebody stepping on their dick than building a community. Congratulations.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Really, what is it?
I know many people from non english countries who have "english" names.
Or they have different names depending on your relationship to them.
My real name may be
Johnathon Smith Jr.
But the following may also be my "real name"
Johnathon Smith
J Smith
John
Jonnie
Son
Jr
Dad
Grandmaster B
They're all "real names" and they could even be my legal name in many circumstances.
Finally pseudo-anonymity does have some value. Some great literary works may have never been published, save for the use of a pen name.
You know, "George Orwell" and "Mark Twain" weren't their real names, right?
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme." Mark Twain
It's interesting how you speak as if you know everyone's situation and intentions. What if someone merely likes being anonymous (but isn't a troll, a scam artist, or whatever else you may call them)? What if it gives them a sense of security? What if they simply find it fun? I'd suggest that you stop pretending to be a mind reader. Oh, and there is such a thing as corruption and human error. That may be why some people wish to be anonymous as well.
Furthermore, I couldn't care less about trolls. I personally think that people should get thicker skin.
Real names make it easy to find people you know on a social network, and to remember the identities of people you connect with on them. Social networks are most valuable for "loose connections" like friends from grade school or non-immediate relatives. You might be interested in their lives, but can't commit the energy or mental capacity to identifying them in the first place or remembering the association function between their pseudonym and their identity.
You or others like you might not care about weak social ties, but (evidently) a vast majority of computer users do.
My other sig is clever.
Most of you are too young to remember, but once upon a time there were no pseudonyms on the Internet. All schools, companies, and organizations on the Internet voluntarily adhered to a policy where each user's online identity was easily linked to their real world identity. It was staunchly enforced by admins who believed the net would fall apart into a morass of misbehavior if people were allowed to post anonymously.
There were a few people running their own servers who bucked the trend, but it wasn't until AOL joined USENET that pseudonyms became a fact of life. AOL allowed each account to have up to 5 usernames, to facilitate families sharing a single AOL account. Obviously these extra usernames were quickly taken up by people wishing to post things anonymously online, which was good for free speech. But not surprisingly, spam was invented shortly thereafter.
So it's actually anonymity which is the "recent artifact". All that's happening now is that the pendulum is starting to swing the other way as netizens struggle to figure out the best balance between real names and pseudonyms.
THere is a place for anonymity and there is a place for disclosure. WE cant have everything straddle both sides. If you have a message that is sensitive, think long and hard about delivering it. While we like to think that freedom of speech as front line protection, its merely a last defense. If you piss off people in power, they will come at you, this is the natural order of the universe.
Good-bye
The problem is that you may feel that you have nothing to hide, but you may not realize that you have divulged information that can be used to do you harm. Posted a picture of you at some location? That proves you were in that location. Linked to your mom on Facebook? She may have her maiden name somewhere in HER profile, frequently right up on top in parentheses so her buddies from before her marriage can find her. That means that a very common security question is now in the hands of whoever can do a little research. The possibilities are limited only by the amount of data that could be mined from what you put up.
I'm not ashamed of who I am, but I'll tell you, I'd prefer to not have to worry about someone using information that they gleaned from me to do something that could cause me or my family harm.
I suppose the answer is to not use social networking, and to a certain degree, that is fair. You don't need it for your job and no one is mandating that you use it. However, it does deprive you of potentially useful method of socializing and networking. Obviously, the lack of privacy is due to your own postings and the needs of the hosting company to make money on your profile. This means that on two counts, you are screwed if you wanted to ensure your own privacy, but again, being worried about that does not make you somehow a person who is ashamed of himself.
That's the point.
Sometimes knowledge of who a speaker is can poison the idea.
Being able to speak anonymously allows ideas to be judged on their merit rather than on the speakers attributes.
Many good ideas or discussions have been derailed by attacking the speaker instead of the idea.
Being able to protect yourself from people who will attack or vilify people with opposing view points is important, but it seems you want to life in a world where the strong can silence the weak with intimidation and violence, or in your words, where the weak should accept the risks of having and voicing a different opinion to the strong.
She wanted him to acknowledge her existence.
Your suggested resolution would be counter-productive.
I've got a lot of things to hide, only they are not illegal.
And trolls DO serve a function, if nothing to remind everyone that not everyone else is interested in civil discourse. A troll is still a human, as it were.
Good-bye
See the difference? They all used real names, just not their own. Google can't verify you are who who say you are. If Mark Twain went by the pseudonym "waddgodd" he never would have become famous.
What if my name really is IP Freely?
Pretty sure that was his point.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/True_Names
If you never have read this book, you need to drop everything and get this right now by any means necessary and read it.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Wrong, free speech has to have it inherently built in to allow for anonymous free speech. To go elsewhere is just as the article states (And I am NO fan of Micro$oft propaganda articles or studies) but in this case I think she is correct in that it is an authoritarian assertion of power over vulnerable people
Two quick examples of U.S. law the link anonymous speech directly to the Constitution Right to Free Speech that I found are "Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960), the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature."
If you half an open mind, you might also want to check out the EFF site and try to look at it from another point of view. https://www.eff.org/issues/anonymity
Anonymity/pseudonimity is not purely for Trolls and F**wads.
Wherever you go... There you are. B.B.
I strongly disagree. Anonymity is a necessity for true freedom of speech, in order to ensure that people can speak their minds without fear of any consequences whatsoever. Anything else gives you a chilling effect on speech, wherein people may censor themselves because they don't want to be ostracized by their community, or fired from their job for going against the corporate political position.
What support do you have for your assertion that you should always attach your identity to anything important that you publicly say? Do you realize how many important historical figures have used anonymity and pseudonymity to publish their speech without fear of oppression?
I personally have no problems using my real name on Facebook and Google+, but I I also have not had any problems doing so yet. If I said any more, I would be obviously too biased and ignorant to contribute to intelligent conversation here.
That said, I look forward to seeing where this goes and who will take what stance.
The more you know, the more you have to say and the more you should listen.
Same here.
not that /. is one of them, but my handle here is apposite.
Except that "Mark Twain" was a riverboating expression and not a name that any actual person would have given to their kid.
My real name is on LinkedIn. The rest of the internet, I use 2 pseudonyms.
So either it's professional and you can find my CV on LinkedIn, or it's friendsonly and elsewhere with a fitting pseudonym. I'll use one for IT/business related websites and another for lifestyle related websites. One of my pseudonyms can be made to look like a real name, and that's what I used on Facebook. Works, because friends have found me there.
Or it would be, if I'd logged in on this box...
Works every time.
Everyone has something to hide.
It's called their identity.
Something that can be stolen.
Something that can be overwhelmed by the vastness that is the Internet.
Or have you not heard about people who let facts get away from them, where they run rampant around the Internet on an unstoppable circle of chain mail, and searchable archives.
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/medical/shergold.asp
People and companies who have to change their phones, move, etc. ... and THOSE people don't make telemarketing war dialers for a living!
Way back in the 1980s there was a Macintosh discussion group on FidoNet. Most people used their real names.
A person nicknamed Ska Ninja came in and used the same handle he'd used on other groups or networks where using a handle was expected.
He got a lot of peer pressure to use his real name. Eventually he conceded but I don't think he was happy about it.
Real names, psuedonymns, or anonymous names - ideally the choice should generally be driven by the needs of the forum and allowed to happen organically.
-Anonymous Coward
I posted this on the Atlantic, but here it is for /."
What people are really failing to understand here is that Google's real name policy is utterly unenforceable, and thus, irrelevant. When I joined Google+ the other day, I used my real name, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. It would make my friends able to find me easier, and vice versa.
If I wanted to use a psuedonym, to use Google+, I could easily do so by not using one like "3L33TPoZtR" and instead use a REAL NAME psuedonym like John Smith. How would Google ever know John Smith is not me? Of course they never would.
People will just start using fake names that Google can't show are fake to become anonymous. Will they gain the benefits of using Google+ by doing so? Probably not so much, but the point is it's unenforceable. No one seems to talk about this.
Also, there's a very good reason for using Psuedonym...if you are a DJ, for example, people know you by your DJ name. Say, DJ Aphrodite or Kaskade. How ludicrous would it be for Google+ to require DJ Aphrodite to use his real name, when no one knows what that is? How can he invite his friends into his circle to listen to his music of he has to use a real name?
Who left the door to the nothing-to-hide-nothing-to-fear station open? It has to be locked at any time! Now see, what happened!
Oh, the beautiful gloss of greality!
Or your employer firing your, a potential future employee not giving a job to you, or a lone lunatic deciding you need to die.
Humans are a social species living in interdependent societies, and as long as that remains true you need anonymity to have free speech.
Tough words, "jellomizer". Do you have the guts to stand behind them, or did you just spam the discussion with something even you think is unimportant?
Or is this one of those things that only apply to others?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
You're the guy who owns that gourmet hamburger restaurant chain, right?
Dropping a letter from your name may help you hide from Google but not from me!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
How about the Lesbian from Lebanon? This was a farce.
I call BS.
"Anonymity" is a nonsense commodity generated by the information age, and which has had much emo-currency invested in it by those with vested interests, but which is a complete sham.
Until the age of the telephone, anonymity was a rare and unusual thing.
You were known by what you said, and your words carried meaning. Because of the general immobility of the population, these words hung around you like a cloud, which then made up (along with deeds) your 'reputation'. This could last GENERATIONS.
Like playing with a loaded gun, people generally realized that they needed to be cautious with their words, lest it boomerang unexpectedly on them or their descendants.
Are we better off today?
-Styopa
Let me just hop onto anonops and ask for the Annonymous cert. I'm sure nothing bad will come from that.
probably signed by GoDaddy...
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Trolls, frauds, spammers, etc. hate having to identify themselves. Most people are proud of who they are and have no need to hide.
Dude, do you have curtains? What are you hiding?
(from an old slashdot comment I can't be bothered to find)
Basically: no one has a right to my privacy. I do not need to argue whether I have something to hide or not.
You need to argue why you need to know whatever it is that is none of your business.
And if your best argument is "why would you want to hide that?", then we're back to square one (response: "why would you want to know that?"). And if your argument is "you must be hiding something": none of your $PROFANITY business.
A good reason would be something relating to me, not to you (or your need to know something about me).
PS: Posting this anonymously is quite the icing on the cake :)
Almost as astoundingly ignorant as your failure to notice that the author is female.
Your critique is also baseless, as the point the author was making about online persistence is that it doesn't mirror real life, despite Google and Facebook's claims to the contrary.
>> free speech sans anonymity
Free speech is free speech is it not? Important is what important says with no small emphasis on interpretation. It does not, nor should it matter from where free speech originates (nor is how you may or may not interpret said speech relevant(blah blah)). The source of free speech is an individual and whether or not the speaker can be identified or should be identifiable is completely irrelevant. In fact, I would argue that requiring the source of given speech to be identifiable is not only detrimental (in all sorts of ways) but a direct inhibitor to the existence of it at all.
\r
Not everyone is proud of everything they do (and have ever done). For example I have posted some dumb-ass things on Slashdot that I regret. Those will never come back to bite me in a job interview though because they're not attached to the same name that is on my resume.
I believe that the intended use case of Facebook/Google+, to post a lot of updates and photos under one's real name, is a fundamentally bad idea. The reason it's a bad idea is that if I make the slightest mistake and upload something I regret, I can't redact that later. The Internet never forgives and never forgets. So I only use my real name online in a professional or semi-professional context (tech forums and the like).
I notice you use an alias yourself, unless I'm mistaken and you actually are named 'msobkow' on your birth certificate. So I think even you must admit you saw some value in anonymity, at least when you created your Slashdot account.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
You know, "George Orwell" and "Mark Twain" weren't their real names, right?
Yeah I think that was his point.
I am quite sure at this point no one is forced to be on google+. Yes, this may change if google starts leveraging its other services to pressure or force people onto goolge+, but that would be an abuse of their monopoly, not the authoritative abuse of power postulated in this article.
Since when has google had authority over any of us?
Wake up people! Just because you got an invite, doesn't mean you have to.
"Real names enforcement" was just a bad idea, and just because it sucks. And for no other reason, except maybe that it blew up in their face.
Free speech is the ability for you state your beliefs without having to worry about the government jailing you for saying it. Nothing about doing it anonymously
Interesting perspective. Interesting, but wrong. Provably wrong in the context of anonymous political speech, under the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States:
-- McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Comm'n (93-986), 514 U.S. 334 (1995).
Wrong, really, on two levels: anonymity can be protected speech, and the First Amendment's effects can be beyond pure restraint of State Force ("to protect...unpopular ideas from suppression at the hand of an intolerant society").
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Except that everyone knows that "Mark Twain" was in fact Samuel Langhorne Clemens.
No anonymity there.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
"Many names were almost as good as none, when a being wished not to be found. But some name was necessary, if a being wished to be found sometimes."
--Daniel Keys Moran, Emerald Eyes
"Free Speech is something to be valued and not used anonymously."
Frankly, I'm surprised at the number of people taking this attitude lately. It goes along hand in hand with the thinking, "if you don't want anyone to know about it, you probably shouldn't be doing it." I, for one, think people should be less judgmental of situational considerations they are not privy to and just accept that situations do exist which break from over-simplified reasoning.
For example, it is essential to enable expression of dissent anonymously; if what you have to say is certain to anger some folks, then there is a real risk to life and limb. Suggesting that it should not have been said if it was going to bring the speaker harm is a false argument. It would be impossible to bring about change in the face of tyranny if nobody speaks for fear of their lives. There are many places in the world that suffer from this plight, please don't encourage the U.S. to become one of them.
Don't forget George Eliot. That man could write!
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
they may be on FB specifically to catch the moron demographic
You might be right, Brawndo is on Facebook.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
This is the same line of reasoning that the police use when they try to convince you to let them search your person or property without probable cause. All regimes are potentially repressive and one does not need to be an "activist" to legitimately seek to minimize exposure.
Pseudonyms are also needed in person real-life.
Those who haven't found that they also need to use a false name in person have lived a rather dull life.
Better Solution: Have a [real_name] gmail account and a [internet_name] gmail account. Set up mail forwarding and tagging from your internet account to your real account.
But oh no! My Internet self can't have a Google+ or Facebook account. That's not the point of Google+ or Facebook. Those parts of the internet are designated real people zones. That is what they are there for. You have the entire rest of the internet to play with, now make your internet self leave that corner alone.
Seriously, grown adults wailing and bawling about what amounts to their own ineptitude.
That's not realistic. Think of all those folks that had converted to Islam during the 90s, do you really think it's reasonable for them to have expected the backlash following 9/11 when the made their choice?
The point is that you can't be sure what's going to be OK at some arbitrary point in the future to be on record as having said.
Or all those tapes that Bill Maher had on Christine O'Donnell. Granted they were stupid things for somebody professing to be a conservative Christian to say on tape, but still, I doubt she would have predicted them being harmful in a future run for office.
I saw you were posting under a pseudonym, so I modded you troll.
Frankly, if you want to make a forum safe for kids, then yes, real names would be appropriate
Huh? I say it is the very reverse of that. Unless you think having your kid read a bunch of swear words that they probably hear at school everyday is a greater risk than some malicious stranger figuring out how to make contact with your kid in real life.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Can you anonymously make a transaction with your bank? (Money is recently viewed as "speech" by the supreme court? I haven't tried walking in with a mask lately..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
It reduces flame wars etc.
No, it really does not. Assholes are assholes, regardless of perceived anonymity.
If you'd ever had to deal with someone stalking you, you'd understand why having pseudonyms can be so important.
Yup,one ex-GF (from more than 20 years ago!) is known to be still fixated on me, and has an actual license-to-kill (i.e. certified insane, legally). This is one of the reasons I don't use my real name online very much, and don't publicize names for my wife and teenage kids. Thankfully, I have a very famous "predecessor" who copiously pollutes all but the most skillful Google searches. So, apart from defensively making and abandoning a slew of diversionary FB accounts with my real name, I prefer to use a few pseudonyms.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
The US Supreme Court has decided that corporations, which are effectively anonymous, have the same right to free speech as individuals. Not only that but through a corporate shield, wealthy anonymous individuals can spend millions of dollars to spread the message and effectively bribe public officials through campaign contributions. We can't seriously argue against anonymity of free speech until that decision is repealed.
Maybe someone will come up with a competing service that focus on privacy, and will bite a large portion of the market share for social apps. If Google and Facebook keep messing around with information that users consider private, this can be a huge opportunity for somebody to improve upon and come up with something that works for people.
But companies should be able to offer corners of the internet - or even large rooms of the internet - where anonymous speech is prohibited. And they should be able to offer corners, or large rooms, where non-anonymous speech is prohibited.
Then, people can exercise their rights of free association to decide whether they want to participate in environments where anonymous speech is restricted, required, or any where in between..
Personally, I prefer environments where anonymous speech is restricted. I can understand that, if I lived in China, I may have a different opinion, but then I can use a different platform.
Either way, just because someone offers something doesn't mean they have to offer it in a way that everyone wants them to.
paintball
While I agree with you that the first amendment is about controlling the government suppressing speech and not a lot of other things that people try to stretch it into, there's a corollary. That is, any time someone has to resort to anonymity because of a genuinely well founded fear of a private stalker, nut-case fan (like Letterman's), paparazzi, identity thief or similar, that person has immediately had enormous damage done in a free society. The stalker, identity thief, or whatever has taken away their normal right to sign their name to what they believe, made it so that the person looks like a coward who won't identify themselves with their political (or related) speech instead of that person hiding because of the criminal.
The stalker (again add identity thieves, or whatever other criminals you think fit) has deprived their victim of normal chances to be taken seriously by many other people, and so hurt all the other people who were affected if they did what seems superficially logical and ignored speech from people who appear to be too cowardly to stand behind what they say.
This means that the penalties for being a stalker, identity thief, etc. ought to be extremely much more severe than they are. All these crimes are revealed as hate crimes, with many victims other than the obvious one.
Possibly you or I were hurt right here on Slashdot, because somebody would have posted something either of us might have valued, if it had it been posted as other than AC. All it takes is the quite reasonable decision to filter ACs or often just to read at above -1, to avoid all the people who genuinely deserve the C part of AC. If only the others didn't have a private situation making them choose that option we might have appreciated that post, and so long as that's true, we become secondary victims (admittedly to a much, much lesser extent than the primary victim, but still victims).
So what's a reasonable penalty for stalking? What's reasonable for identity theft? Even if some parts of being followed by cameramen and reporters are simply a price of being famous and should stay legal, what's a reasonable penalty if the press crosses the line into beyond legal? Sounds like all those things should be up there with murder, rape and arson.
Who is John Cabal?
Facebook and Google want to mine user data. I understand that. The solution to me would be to introduce an account info page unviewable by other users while allow each user to choose a pseudonym. The company gets to make money and users retain their anonymity. What's keeping this from happening?
As for the Ad hominem attack on my social ties, (irrelevant and just put in to insult me - don't worry, I can take it). I tell you three things: 1. Any person that thinks the internet is a good way to make strong social ties needs to get OUT a lot more. Social Ties are built in the real world, not online.
2. If you can't commit the energy to identify them then you are NOT really interested in those people
Please site the study for your totally unsupported claim that the vast majority of computer users agree with your rather foolish argument. The main argument I have heard to join Google+ is "Its not Facebook", which indicates most people agree with me, not you.
People join FaceBook/Google+ DESPITE the privacy invasions, not the because of them.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You curse, you can be kicked off and you can't get back on because you have to use your real name.
As for the stranger, if people have to use the real name then the stranger leaves a record, enabling them to EASILY be caught.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Absolutely. My bank never checks my ID or asks who I am when I want to deposit money. They just want the account number to put the money into. Also, I'm sure there's similar circumstances toward anonymity with swiss bank accounts, even though they're a little less private than they used to be.
---jstlook ---For that is the way of Elves, for they say both yes AND no, and mean every word of it. --- J.R.R.T.
Gp said:
Trolls, frauds, spammers, etc. hate having to identify themselves.
Parent said:
So was Publius a troll, fraud, or a spammer? What about George Orwell? What about Mark Twain?
You said:
You know, "George Orwell" and "Mark Twain" weren't their real names, right?
- missing the whole fucking point of the parent.
Geeze!
Argument by analogy, replace privacy of personal information with privacy of person, the protecting right against unreasonable search and seizure:
Criminals and thieves hate allowing people to search their property. Most people properly own all their property and have no need to refuse searches.
No one said communities have to be safe for people with embarrassing property. In fact, were I in that situation, hiding my property would be the LAST thing I would do.
The argument "good people have nothing to hide" is ridiculous, and wrong-headed. There are tons of good, legal, moral, and ethical reasons why someone would want to keep their information private, just as there are good, legal, moral, and ethical reasons why someone would want to keep their privacy of person intact from unreasonable search and seizure.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
Then you don't go posting about it online...
Free speech is the ability for you state your beliefs without having to worry about the government jailing you for saying it. Nothing about doing it anonymously. Free Speech is something to be valued and not used anonymously. If you are going to stand out and say something important then you should do it so people know who you are, and realize that even in a place of Free Speech there is risks.
Apparently, you are unaware that Free speech includes a right to anonymous speech:
In Talley v. California, 362 U.S. 60 (1960), the Court struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance that made it a crime to distribute anonymous pamphlets. In McIntyre v. Ohio Elections Commission, 514 U.S. 334 (1995), the Court struck down an Ohio statute that made it a crime to distribute anonymous campaign literature. However, in Meese v. Keene,, 481 U.S. 465 (1987), the Court upheld the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, under which several Canadian films were defined as "political propaganda," requiring their sponsors to be identified.
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
'twas. For those watching at home, the birth names were: "an amalgam of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay", "Samuel Clemens", and "Eric Blair"
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
First of all, ket's kill this nonsense idea about businesses and their private property rights. Inside your own private home, you can implement whatever racist, sexist, discriminatory policies you like.
Once you form a corporation and open to the public for business, you agree to play by different rules. When you file a corporate charter, you make the explicit black-letter deal that in exchange for limited liability and tax considerations, you are going to serve the public good. Just as it's time we put an end to cops claiming "privacy" rights in the course of performing their duties, and it's time we put an end to business's claiming they have "private property" rights in the course of their business. You've already agreed you're not a "private person" when you made the deal for a corpoate charter.
You can absolutely say "I don't want any minorities in my home." You absolutely can NOT say "I don't want any minorities in my business."
Now, my country, the USA, has certain values that stem from our history. We don't like kings, we don't like searches except under extreme circumstances, we believe you should be free to speak your mind or pray to any god you choose.
Yeah, it was hard to type that with a straight face.
Any way, just in case you were educated in Texas, here's something you should know. The American Revolution was kickstarted by men working under psuedonyms. Our most beloved author, Samuel Clemens, worked under a psuedonym. (You Texas kids, go ahead and google it. I'll wait.) Our most beloved badass actor, Marion Morrison, worked under a psuedonym (Everyone under 40, go ahead and google it.).
We like psuedonyms in this country, because as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held, speech isn't free if expressing an unpopular opinion costs you your livelihood -- Google "Red Scare Fifties" for more on that.
Google may not be obligated to join any crusades, by they are obliged to respect the basic mores that make modern democracies possible.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Usenet's persistence is a great tool. There's a stalker/spammer nut who uses the alias David Mabus, and with a little hunting on Usenet you can follow his current insanity all the way back to 1994 when he was first starting to crack in university.
Unfortunately even with hundreds of complaints about his harassment and death threats the police have taken no action.
On the plus side there's enough info out there now to arrange a flash mob of pizzas to his home and workplace...
Real names make it easy to find people you know on a social network, and to remember the identities of people you connect with on them. Social networks are most valuable for "loose connections" like friends from grade school or non-immediate relatives. You might be interested in their lives, but can't commit the energy or mental capacity to identifying them in the first place or remembering the association function between their pseudonym and their identity. You or others like you might not care about weak social ties, but (evidently) a vast majority of computer users do.
I use my real name on social networks. But that was my decision, based on the kind of stuff I post. That facebook and google want you to force people to use their real name is simply unacceptable in my opinion. Fortunately, they have no real way of enforcing this policy for now at least.
Google and facebook nowadays try to nudge users to provide a cell phone number, but even if they made that a hard requirement (which would turn off many users) phones can be anonymous as well with prepaid in most countries.
(First, sorry about very terrible english as it is my third language)
I dont mind if Google knows who I am and what I do and when, as long I can opt out of that when I want.
I have android phone, I use Google services like GMail, Google+, Picasa, Youtube, Google Reader, Google Calender, Latitude, Google Maps, Google Navigator, Places, Street View, Google Books, Google Finance and so on. (I dont use Chrome but Chromium. I dont upload videos to Youtube but to other services)
I have multiple accounts to almost any other service, but Google knows much from me.
I dont mind it, because as data what Google gets from me, it can deliver me better services and ads. And I must say, I like ads when I dont actually mind about them but sometimes I find good ads (better than what are on TV, Radio or usually webpage) and good services/products trough them.
So why I would mind about that?
When wanted, I can logout from Google services to not get logged by Google personally to my account. Yes, Google has cookies for ads and so on. But as long I can keep "my profile" better focused for me, I like it.
So then what? If I want to be anonym in Internet, I should not be afraid Google. I should be afraid the ISP. The ISP knows _everything_ what I do. It could actually do anykind Man-in-the-Middle attacks what is technically possible.
I dont know who or when someone is following my network traffic, or traffic what is coming from same area where I live or to internet corner where I visit.
The ISP's are bigger, meanier and evil companies. They do it just for pure business and information to them is even more important than for Google. As ISP are responsible to everything of the web when it comes to delivery.
I can skip Google fair easily if wanted almost fully. Using noscript to block Google cookies and Adblock for Google ads. But I can never skip ISP.
And ISP's does lots of work with governments and other big companies (Like microsoft) who have direct access to their machines and services.
Why I should be afraid that Google have my contacts in their contact service in Gmail when ISP knows every email, phone number, SMS and other data what I do with my phone and in EU they need to follow laws so that data is stored for 6-36 months somewhere for police, security agencies and governments to access them.
Not even Google has that data, and that is far more personal for me as governments knows things like where I live, where I work, who are my family, who were my school friends, it has my passport, my driving license, my wedding license, my birth license, my social ID, my tax information, my banking information (where I have bank accounts and other basic infos and it can calculate well my income/savings roughly from taxes).
And if someone is not afraid about that, he/she should be. As smaller companies have bonus cards and other things what are used to track you. Have you ever tought that every single bonus card what stores gives, is used to track you? (Not specifically YOU but still tracking you as a user).
Companies joins to these bonus systems, they share their customer data. You can pull all kind mashups from that data. Like where you move and when. What you buy and when. They can even analyze easily when you are having a baby and what gender it is just by looking the stuff what you buy. They know your income by calculating how much you spend on month. They can even find out who you date and who you meet when you are shopping together.
And then they pull a magical trick by saying "you save money". With that excuse they can rise the prices to gain more money and say "you pay less" when you have a bonus card. It is way to track and send you a customized ad flyers to home trough post office.
Google is very young and small "tracker" when it comes to other companies what tracks people trough bonus and credit cards and bonus systems.
Banks owns shares of those systems. They can calculate your economical status, insurance companies owns shares of bonus systems s
That's it. Use that name for social networking sites, and they'll leave you alone because it looks real. Email correspondence to jt62551@mailinator.com and you are set.
... not necessarily in that order.
The real-name policy that many websites are starting to enforce is BULLSHIT!!!!
Absolutely. It's like saying "Where are your papers?".
Her name is danah boyd (or danah michele boyd if you want to be completist). It seems ironic that an article on "real" names doesn't use danah's real name.
Ian
Make no mistake about it people, this is all about increasing the value of the data they collect on you!
--anonymous coward
""Anonymity" is a nonsense commodity generated by the information age, and which has had much emo-currency invested in it by those with vested interests, but which is a complete sham."
Tell that to Mark Twain, George Eliot, and Homer. All of them had a vested interest in anonymity--resulting in their pseudonymity.
--Ear Phantom
The people who most heavily rely on pseudonyms in online spaces are those who are most marginalized by systems of power.
Actually, to me they seem to be the ones who troll the most at Slashdot.
That is all.
Never really thought much about it until now. I just thought this was the way of the internet until now.
My bank never checks my ID or asks who I am when I want to deposit money.
My bank, however wants some verification when I try to take money out, even if I give them a correct account number.
Until the age of the telephone, anonymity was a rare and unusual thing.
Many of The Federalist Papers were written under pseudonyms.
Have gnu, will travel.
Is it anything about WHO you are, or only something you know? I was able to walk in and take out $2k in cash (from my own account) using only my ATM card & PIN (I went to a real teller, not the ATM).
Security of the account using something you know is (in my mind) perfectly reasonable.
You curse, you can be kicked off and you can't get back on because you have to use your real name.
And, as I thought was obvious from my response, cursing is not a serious risk to children.
As for the stranger, if people have to use the real name then the stranger leaves a record, enabling them to EASILY be caught.
Sorry, you really haven't thought this through. That "real name" thing isn't an impediment to Danger Stranger, but it is the key that lets him open up all the other databases that help him do his dirty deeds.
Danger Stranger sees the kid's actions online - like photos and talking about school and such. Danger Stranger then consults other databases using the kid's real last name to figure out where the kid lives (property records are public and almost all are online now) and parent's names (on the deed for their house). Danger Stranger waits on route between nearest school and kid's house, intercepts kid, social engineers kid into car using information from kid's own public facebook profile and other public databases and a day later kid is dead
All that without leaving much of record to get himself caught and that's assuming he has not figured out a way to spoof the real-name thing in the first place- after all, none of the verification methods are a problem for anyone willing to put in a little bit of work forging an ID.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
For the first time ever I used my real name on G+. I have avoided my real name on the internet because I have some blood relations that could and would cause me serious harm if they could find me. Why did I suddenly reverse my entire internet habit? I just changed my name legally. Since they are not tech savvy beyond the basics of Google searches, I feel that being a half a continent away, and using a fully different name will protect me. Not everyone wants to change their legal name, though.
I'd imagine that if you'd ever had to deal with someone stalking you, you would avoid Facebook or Google+; because, you know, they require your real name.
The fact the otherwise smart people do not seem to grasp the concept of voluntary participation, just surprises me.
-dZ.
Carol vs. Ghost
The vote is the ultimate form of political speech. It must be anonymous to have its power.
Exactly. My non-use of social media has made me (more of?) an antisocial weirdo to most people. Facebook has redefined social norms, and even relies on the erosion of humanity's concept of privacy to grow.
So you can say there's no place for you there. IRL individuality tends to be more important to your acquaintances when you imply that VERY general personal values are in play that you do not want to get into. If you say anything like "privacy" and so on, they'll just start pulling examples that to them mean you are wrong, rather than something stating that YOU deserver your opinion.
After telling a few non-techs that you aren't in the networks, you grow your in skill telling the tech friends that easily would shut you down or bring biased counterexamples. It gets easier if you don't over-explain yourself, too. People make the same assumptions, but bother you less if they have less of a target to shoot against.
Having a separate catch-all e-mail address for all those people who don't understand your requests to stop sending e-mail chains and social media invites is a huge helper too. I have had job recruiters and coworkers mail me invites, but ignoring them and never talking about it seems to do the trick. If the day ever comes to be forced to join FB because tomorrow's job if in social-media technology and your boss/interviewer demands it for their application, then you can pull the initials-only stunt and have a skeleton page.
Its highly ironic that you would chastise danah boyd (a woman incidentally) for ignorance - even going as far as to say that she shouldnt be commenting on privacy issues - when you clearly have no idea who she is. Allow me to bring you up to speed: danah is something of a star among those who research the internet and its social implications professionally (you know, for a *living* rather than to seem smart to people who read slashdot). Her publication history really speaks for itself. I particularly suggest you check out some of her seminal early work on identity play. I also suggest that in future if you are going to take aim at someone, particularly on the grounds of their apparent "ignorance", you might perhaps check that you yourself are not guilty of the same.
Banding together or using government to deal with annoying as opposed to criminal activity is the problem here. When the perpetrator (ie facebook google et al) offers a free service they can't be "robbed". Unless we are getting "screaming fire in a crowded theater" type consequences the worst things that are happening is the infuriation of some readers of some annonymous posts, and violations of "inteelectual property" and/or "privacy. I see NO EXCUSE for laws protecting against any of that. Whats wrong with pissing people off, telling true stuff they don't want told, or redistributing so-called "intellectual property", especially in the later case if one has paid for one's own copy? Sure most people disagree with me but F what most people think, its almost always wrong and in my not at all humble opinion, totally irrelevant.
But ... but ... who would want to do that, other than tehrusts and pediofiddlers?
Free delivery in a ten block radius. Ask about our flaming torches.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So, do you think Angela Merkel will be reelected?
Everyone knows now. Did they (apart from his family, publisher) know then?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Publius was never a christening name used on the North American continent. It may have been used in Ancient Rome, but by 1783, it was a BIT out of vogue. Mark Twain is from an old method of sounding depths, where marks were knots in a weighted rope, one fathom apart, and twain was a term for two (thus the sounding man's cry "mark twain" meant 2 fathoms deep, or 12'): it's just about as likely to be used for a child's name as Boot Black, and for a similar reason: it's an indicator of a less-than-lucrative profession. I chose those two specially as pseudonyms that would completely fail most checks for Real Names, and threw in Orwell as a bonus. I can easily transform waddgodd back to it's original usage and make it into an acceptable (if rather risque) name for both facebook and G+. I took the name from John Holmes's original stage name (or pseudonym, if you will), Johnny Wadd (hey, I didn't want to go there, but AC kind of said that the name wouldn't make someone famous).
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Fair enough, "he" willl get equal billing next time XD
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
As an anarchist, I know this very well: those needing anonymity are the ones who suffer the most from the holders of power in society. Only the powerful can use their real names. The weak ones are forced to live anonymously because otherwise they are dead.
Go ahead. Grab a corporate charter. I'll wait.
Read it. Every one of the fifty states have some line about serving the public good. It's the ENTIRE reason we shield them from liability and give them tax breaks. Up unitl the 1980s, this wasn't even a question. Of course, businesses have moral, ethical and community concerns. Their whole purpose is to serve the public good. The reason we allow these legal fictions to exist in the first place is to serve the public. We're using the profit motive to get them to do that. We use carrots to get mules to move, but the purpose of a mule is to pull the plow, not eat carrots.
Then the 1980s came and the big lie began. Carl Icahn and T. Boone Pickens an other corporate raiders started to argue that businesses had no responsiility but their bottom line.
They got laughed out of the room. No one even bothered to seriously argue it. It was such a greedy, venal, nonsense argument, no one took it seriously. So Pickens dug his hands into education in Texas, and started paying colleges to take it seriously. Repeat it often enough and The Big Lie can get a foothold.
Stop a minute and think about what you're saying. Why would we as a society EVER want to grant the favor of a corporate charter to a group of men who have no scruples about anything? EVERY citizen of the United States has civic duties and responsibilties, and if corporations are to be considered "citizens," then why on Earth shouldn't they carry the same duties as the rest of us?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
I am Sparticus!
Turn it inside out..... reread the thread:
"Widespread Hijacking of Search Traffic In the US"
i.e. What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
I suspect it is clear and outright fraud to redirect
traffic to a proxy that does anything beyond
improve response and bandwidth.
But since this proxy abuse is so invisible and insidious
it makes sense to use https and multiple personas.
For example I NEVER search for the best price for
"Depends" using my own name. I reserve a second hand
yard sale laptop for that and then only at open WiFi sites.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
It's an interesting intersection between the public thoroughfare and the privately created and owned public accommodations of a mall, already somewhat litigated. Facebook, etc., is apparently afraid of legal and financial liability for something somebody posts anonymously or in a fictitious name, which shouldn't be a problem and certainly one Congress could cure if the existing law isn't broad enough to do that, which I have not researched in depth.
Anonymous political speech, for example, has a long and honorable history in America, as the Supreme Court has noted. Ben Franklin and Thomas Paine pamphleteered anonymously. Madison, Hamilton, and Jay wrote and published the Federalist Papers, the case for the Constitution, in the pseudonym "Publius." The Supreme Court noted the real possibility for retaliation and chilling when it protected the names of members of and contributors to an organization in NAACP v. Button.
I'm a retired lawyer. Trust me on this one, you can get into grave trouble, and physical as well as financial and professional peril, if you stand up, or powerful people are afraid you might be about to bring a suit, for the incestuously molested child victim of a socially prominent and politically and officially powerful personage, or even some kid from a poor family if it might embarrass the powers that be who hadn't protected her or taken action against her molester whose political 'suck," if any, I never cold trace. [The irony is that the client for whom certain people were reportedly afraid such suit would be filed never asked, though the child of another politician did, and both suits were barred by limitations before I jumped off the proverbial turnip truck and met them.] It is also sometimes necessary to conceal your identity to avoid identifying and embarrassing your client or someone else with whom you may have privileged and confidential relationships, especially but not only if you are dealing with certain intensely personal and private subjects like that. The fact that you are X's attorney in any court matter is typically open public record and, especially in a small town, your friends are known, even before your office and safe file are burglarized and her file stolen and covered by arson. Lawyers and others who have told me detailed accounts of evidence are too terrorized of certain persons in positions of public trust to provide affidavits or testimony, or even call and talk privately with state lawyers about what they know and have told me. The Washington Post and other "mainstream media" use, quote, and protect anonymous sources all the time, many of whom probably wouldn't face that kind of real danger, but only political flashback, if exposed.
I opened a Facebook account but rarely post anything, including the things I often post to other sites like this one, to it, and may close it down. A lot of what I post, since being forced to retire, would make no sense except for the context of the article under which it is posted, which would risk DMCA copyright problems. Googling myself in preparation for a lawsuit, in which you can sometimes be required to disclose such things on the theory that they might lead to discovery of relevant and admissible evidence, I was just a bit unnerved to realize that one can find out more about me than about just about any candidate for high political office.
And now consider the case of the wikipedia pages that are ruled by hired guns and sock-puppets, take a look at places like the New York Times message blogs and so on... ask yourself how we can possibly build an infra-structure of the future without real ids to work with. Lancet doesn't publish medical research by anonymous contributors, why should wikipedia carry summaries of that research by effectively anonymous agents?
Not only do we need "real name policies", we need real names that are verified in some way, e.g. by a ten cent charge on a credit card.
Yes, there's also a role for anonimizing services like wikileaks and openleaks, but that really shouldn't be the default way we deal with the world.
And by the way, there's a tendency for people to post a lot of stuff while hiding behind a pseudonym, and then get an unpleasant shock when they realize that their pseudonym has been penetrated. Try asking a different question: is it irresponsible to promise people anonymity when in reality, that's not so easy to deliver?
Footnote: can we please agree that using a pseudonym is equivalent to being anonymous? Places like slashdot have really corrupted the meaning of "anonymous".
Clearly, anyone who has been victimized by a violent stalker should be forced to change their lives even more, give up more freedoms and opportunities, and be further marginalized from society.
C'mon, get real. The fact is that participation in social networks - IRL, online, or a hybrid of the two - is now a social norm, and advising those who have been victimized to simply withdraw further from society only serves to further the perpetuation of the stalker's attempt to seek power over the victim.
Since I'd guess that at least 80% of the readers on this thread are male, let me tell 'ya a little story that might help put the issue in context.
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I'm a UX architect + developer with a specialization in social integration - so the ability to engage on social networks is not negotiable, it's part of my job. I'm also the only person in the world with my name, so I try to be cautious - maximum privacy settings always on any time, never reveal location information associated with my real name, etc., etc.
But thanks to a strategic misrepresentation of a 'real names policy', a violent ex was able to locate me, follow me 4000 miles across the country, moved down the street from my house, started showing up on my train, at my morning cafe, and then at my doorstep. He found my phone number, and when I changed it, he found it again. How did he find me? Yelp breached the terms of their privacy policy that said they wouldn't expose your last name - true, on their site they didn't, but they made it fully searchable via google, allowing even the least competent stalker to easily figure out how to find you when they see what coffee shop you mentioned you went to on a Thursday morning.
After 2 years, I finally was able to get a restraining order that blocks him not only from physical contact and speaking about me in a public forum, but the order also prohibits him from visiting or using any sites I work on, as well as those to which I contribute content under either my birth name OR my long-standing pseudonym.
Even so, I found him accessing my profile on a dating site, and when I alerted that service provider, along with the background information and a request for an address to send copies of the documentation to, they refused to terminate his account. You'd would think that a dating service would want take action to protect its members (and its own reputation) from someone who admitted to attempting to kill someone in court... but even with photographs, police reports and a restraining order in hand, I would have had to take the service provider to court to prove that it was really him.
So although I certainly agree with what most of what danah says, she isn't addressing about the more important issue: the key component that's missing from all of these sites is the ability for a users set filters to restricting access to their content based on a variety of criteria. Content contributors should be able to define more completely who should be able to access their content: including unknown/unauthenticated users, as well as those using any specified pseudonyms, 'real' names, geographic area based on user description and/or reverse geocoding, IP addresses, etc., even if that information is not publicly exposed. And I'd go as far to suggest that it would be the right thing to do to alert the user if and when any of their filters are triggered, or if there are any questionable usage patterns from unknown users so that the users have the information they need in order to take action to protect themselves.
Personally, I think that users should be able to select any display name, but the only real solution is to mandate real names on the backend, with verified identity via bank information, credit card numbers, or other info of that sort by an independent party, and that misrepresenting one's identity to gain access to information on any social network should be explicitly made an arrestable offence - it should be a felony, backed by significant jail time.
No, this problem mustn't
Does this mean the Bachman books should not be available online?
Just as it's time we put an end to cops claiming "privacy" rights in the course of performing their duties, and it's time we put an end to business's claiming they have "private property" rights in the course of their business.
While I agree with most of your reasoning, I don't see how being a cop has to mean that you don't have any rights of your own while being on duty.
Yes, all of these horrible cop-protection laws are extremely misguided, and making it a crime to video-tape a cop fits better with an authoritarian law-and-order state than with a democracy. But still: It is horrible if the local TV news show the video tape of a drunk driver over and over again before there was even a court conviction. And it is equally horrible to do it to a cop.
Video taping an arrest is a good thing, it creates evidence. Video taping abusive cops is even better. And sometimes authorities only react to concerns when information is made public. But all that can be done without exposing all the information of the cops involved, without playing judge, without vigilantism.
There is a significant difference to a corporation: A public employee is still a person, even while on duty. And that person should be guaranteed some basic rights. Everything a teacher does can be posted on the internet, because as a public employee, we basically own her? That is similar to the claim corporations make about their employees: I pay for you, I own you, you have no rights of your own, while you are here, if you don't like it, go home.
I think basic right a unalienable, and privacy is one of these rights, even though the American constitution forgot to list it. Rights of course often come in conflict, and often the rights of others may trump the privacy rights of a police officer, but that doesn't mean, they shouldn't have these rights.
First, go pull out your old freshman macroeconomics textbook. Open the first page. Here's the quote you're looking for:
"The purpose of business is the efficient distribution of goods and services throughout society. Profit is used as a means to that end."
The whole point of allowing a business a bottom line is to encourage them to serve the needs and interests of the community they operate in. Again, the purpose of a mule is to pull a plow, not to eat carrots.
If you want to make an argument for personal freedom as a basis of economic activity, I'll totally agree with you as soon as those businesses pay the going tax rate and bear their own liability as sole proprietorships and the various flavors of partnership. The second you ask society to cut you a deal for favored tax treatment and limited liability as a corporation, your "personal freedom" is no longer an issue.
Second, you lack the courage of your convictions. You want to say businesses should be purely self-interested amoral entities, but not "sociopathic." Unfortunately, the clinical definition of a sociopath is "an amoral, purely self-interested entity."
Third, you must work in marketing. Perception is not reality. (Yeah, I saw "Sneakers" too, bank runs and insolvency, yeah, yeah, yeah.)
As the ghosts of the Challenger, Deepwater Horizon and Massey Industries will be happy to tell you, Perception is not reality. Reality is reality. Ask an engineer, they'll be happy to explain it. :-)
If you want to partcipate in and enjoy the fruits of a Democracy, then there are responsibilities you must live up to.
Tell you what. I'll be happy to revisit the issue of corporate citizenship when one of Google's board members dies defending this country as members of my family have.
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
name: a word or phrase that constitutes the distinctive designation of a person or thing
pseudonym: a fictitious name; especially : pen name
An online alias is not a pseudonym, it is by definition a real name. In some jurisdictions, such as the USA (In re McUlta), it is also your "legal name".
(I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice.)
Luke-Jr