Abstract
The world wide web is rife with communities serving basically every topic imaginable. In over 20 years the web has grown so much that there is a place online for any interest a person may have, from the common interests of the average person to the perverse, the weird and sometimes illegal. In this paper I will discuss the impact these communities can have, both negative and positive and delve into the reasons users choose to use their real identity, a fake identity, and sometimes somewhere in between and why they choose to use a particular identity in certain circumstances.
As this topic is very vast I will attempt to summarise and cover the similarities between the very large number of different online communities and the reasons why users choose their online identity and what they do with them.
Introduction
Online communities have existed since not long after the creation of the Internet. They mainly serve to connect people who have common interests. As the Internet grew larger over time and eventually the world wide web became publicly available, the proliferation of online communities has been unending and continues to grow larger. As the adoption of the home computer and access to the web increased over the last 20+ years users have found that they could connect with people with the same interests as them. These people have their reasons why they participate in online communities, whether it be to enjoy a chat with like-minded individuals, make new friends, or get support from others. What compels people to communicate this way as opposed to more traditional methods?
The expansion and virtualisation of community
One of the earliest forms of an online community were BBSs (bulletin board systems) which gained popularity in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s with Usenet coming along soon after.
Like BBSs Usenet allowed people to enter ‘rooms’ and chat with people about specific topics. Users exchanged information about the topic at hand and Usenet gained popularity as a new virtual way to connect people together, with many millions of people accessing the network to share information (Donath, J. 1999). In these early days the question was often asked ‘why do people choose to communicate online as opposed to more traditional methods?’. One reason is that the Internet and its users can’t judge the user on superficial appearances, and other users can’t see skin colour, gender or age, they can only judge others on the words they have typed (Kollock, P. 1999). They only know what you tell them and anything else is a mystery.
Another reason, and definitely not the last, is that some people have disabilities that prevent them from communicating in the traditional way. “Peter is a 23 yr old physics graduate student… heart disease, can’t go outside much. Uses the online game to communicate with people” (Turkle, S. 1994). These examples not only free people from discrimination but allow them more freedom to communicate than their real life can afford.
There are many reasons why people choose to communicate online and why the online discussion world has grown so large over the last 50 years or so. Of course unlike when the members of your local real life community are asleep, the Internet never closes, there will always be another like minded individual waiting to have a chat about your favourite topic of interest.
Deceit may not always be a negative thing
The one thing that may seem strange to modern users of online communities about Usenet was that it required the users to use their real identity. It didn’t show what a person looked like or have a profile of weight and age however every post had a header of information including each poster’s email address (Donath, J. 1999). As home Internet access wasn’t that common at the time some users were posting to Usenet from their employer’s network and their workplace email accounts meaning that not only were the users easily identifiable but at the same time creating a sense of responsibility as any negativity or hostility could have ramifications in their real life.
As the Internet grew larger and was adopted into many more homes over the years and decades online communities grew with it. Forums and discussion boards were created to cater for anyone’s taste. There was a difference though, a lot of these online communities did not require the user to reveal their true identity, they could be anyone they wanted to be. Some people choose to publicly display their real identity and in some cases also their profile photo, and others use a pseudonym.
Pseudonyms can be useful in many ways, among other things they can protect users from malicious actors trying to harvest personal information or potentially committing a crime that would affect other people (Poulsen, K. 2006), they can make someone feel better about who they are by pretending to be a different character, or more importantly they can allow a user to communicate with others about sensitive topics that may be embarrassing to them if anyone in their social circle found out (i.e. unrevealed homosexuality, planned apostasy, etc). By using a pseudonym they can communicate, get advice, and learn from other like minded people and potentially feel better about their situation without the fear of being unmasked. Essentially the user is deceiving other users as to their real identity however unless there is malicious intent, seemingly there is no harm done.
Some would argue that anonymity can cause incivility in online communities as evidenced by research from Professor Arthur Santana from the University of Houston (Santana, A.D. 2013) however I would argue that the level of incivility is limited to the topics of the chosen community as heated debates such as political topics can cause people to react in an uncivil manner combined with the well known fact that it is quite difficult to convey tone in typed sentences, it is sometimes open to interpretation. In saying that, the real world does not suffer from a lack of people who cannot communicate in a civil manner.
Sites such as Facebook expect their users to use their real names and photos however as they don’t enforce any identification checking so as long as the name sounds real anyone can sign up to the service. This enables people to communicate honestly with others online but still keep a level of privacy. However it can also enable others to hide behind their fake online identity to perform malicious activities (Schonfeld, E. 2009).
Should the Internet be regulated to a degree where everyone knows your name though? Does the Internet have too much freedom and therefore enables bad actors to do what they want with no fear of repercussions? Or does the good outweigh the bad?
Taking the good with the bad
Not all online communities have universal appeal and the Internet has had its fair share of controversies relating to groups posting objectionable material to their community. Occasionally there are calls to shut down online communities that others feel are ‘abhorrent’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘spreading hate’. The perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch massacre was found to posting plans of his attack on a particular mostly unmoderated message board and some Internet Service Providers removed their customers access to that particular site and two others. This sparked a debate about whether it was the right thing to do. On one side of the debate most people found the attackers actions to be abhorrent however the message board in question has a much larger population that have discussions about a wide range of normal everyday topics such as politics, celebrities, music, etc. One person’s actions has taken away other the users ability to communicate with the community they have chosen.
One thing that people may forget when controversies happen is that the people who participate in any online community are no different to the people who participate in a real life community. There will always be people who can communicate in a civil manner and others who cannot, people who agree and those that don’t. By blocking access to certain online communities it is only moving those discussions to another place online, not eliminating them entirely. If a particular community has indicated that they may cause harm to other members of the population then the ideal solution would be to use that community to hold the malicious actors responsible instead of pushing them further underground. The internet will never be free of controversy and neither will the ‘real world’.
With the nature of the Internet and the freedom that it provides to give people a voice and communicate with people they would not normally meet, there are far more useful and good aspects to this freedom then there are bad, despite the devastation that a small minority can cause to people and corporate entities. There is a lot more kindness on the Internet than there is nastiness as evidence by survey results conducted by the Pew Research Center which found that respondents said that “70% of internet users say they had been treated kindly or generously by others online. That compares with 25% who say they have been treated unkindly or been attacked by someone online” and that “56% of internet users say they have seen an online group come together to help a person or a community solve a problem. That compares with 25% who say they have left an online group because the interaction became too heated or members were unpleasant to one another.” (Fox, S & Rainie, L. 2014).
However academics such as Professor Clifford Nass of Stanford University have found that “Negative emotions generally involve more thinking, and the information is processed more thoroughly than positive ones. Thus, we tend to ruminate more about unpleasant events — and use stronger words to describe them — than happy ones.” (Nass, C. 2010). This naturally occurring behaviour can sometimes lead to a negative view of the communication medium when in fact the opposite can be true.
Online communities aren’t just for chatting about common interests, there are plenty of communities that serve to help others with problems they may have. Communities such as wikipedia.org, stackoverflow.com, wikipedia, and answers.microsoft.com all have users that are willing to give up their time to help other users with any problems they may have without any perceivable gain. The discussion forum prisontalk.com not only gives users advice on an impending incarceration but also offers support for family and friends of people who have been sentenced to prison all over the developed world. This can be useful for people who don’t have anyone in their local real life community to talk to about these issues, or just feel embarrassed talking about them in person.
All of these communities and more also have moderators who are tasked with making sure the community runs smoothly without any hostility, or discussions that may stray off-topic, etc. The question that some may have is ‘why do people do this?’ What motivates them to spend their time helping others? What benefit do they get out of it? Is it because of human nature to be kind and helpful?
Peter Kollock, an Associate Professor of Sociology suggests that participants of online communities rise to the ranks of moderators because they want the recognition of helping the community and its members (Kollock, P. 1999). Other users may wish to moderate their community because they have real life ties to it, such as a Facebook community noticeboard / discussion forum for their local area. In the first example there is a likelihood that the majority would be using pseudonyms therefore the only recognition they would be getting is from their online community members whereas in the latter example there is a likelihood that other members of the group may have come across them in the real life community.
Other sites such as reddit.com chose to implement a voting format where other users decide which posts and comments are valuable and worth reading and which are not, meaning that the community is in charge of what content they feel is worth reading and viewing. The website still has volunteer moderators however they are mainly tasked with removing offensive or off-topic content. This has worked well when used in the way it was intended as it means that the quality content is easily seen whereas the ‘downvoted’ content is only viewable if the user chooses to do so (Medvedev, A., Lambiotte, R., & Delvenne, J. 2018). This is just one of the reasons why reddit.com is favoured by many and is usually listed as one of the most visited sites on the web, the ability to remain anonymous while discussing a topic is another.
Conclusion
Online communities do not replace traditional communities, there is no one or the other. If anything online communities complement traditional communities by giving the users something that’s missing in both, whether that be due to a lack of local population who participate in a person’s interests or a lack of face to face communication, to name just two. Online communities bring people together forming new friendships, they connect people who would not normally have access to the others and they create this bond without judgement on factors such as class, gender or race. Sites such as Facebook allow users to stay in contact with friends and family even if they reside or travel to the other side of the world.
Pseudonyms play a grand role in the modern online group of communities and the benefits far outweigh the negatives. The Internet, the world wide web, and in turn online communities have enable the population of the world to freely interact with one another and discuss whatever topic they want without fear of being shut down or persecuted for their ideas and viewpoints (with the exception of certain dictatorships). This powerful tool can be abused by some however many more users act responsibly while communicating online than those who don’t and even though mental, physical, and/or financial damage can be caused while communcating online, we can’t let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, the choice of anonymity is one that should not be taken away.
References
Donath, J. (1996). Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community. Retrieved from http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/Judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html
Smith, M., & Kollock, P. (1999). Communities in cyberspace. London: Routledge.
POULSEN, K. (2006). MySpace Predator Caught by Code. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2006/10/myspace-predator-caught-by-code/
Santana, A. (2013). Virtuous or Vitriolic. Journalism Practice, 8(1), 18-33. doi: 10.1080/17512786.2013.813194
Schonfeld, E. (2009). Thousands Of MySpace Sex Offender Refugees Found On Facebook. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2009/02/03/thousands-of-myspace-sex-offender-refugees-found-on-facebook/
Fox, S & Rainie, L (2014) Part 2: Americans’ views about the role of the internet in their lives. Retrieved from https://www.pewinternet.org/2014/02/27/part-2-americans-views-about-the-role-of-the-internet-in-their-lives/
Nass, C., & Yen, C. (2010). The man who lied to his laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships. New York: Penguin.
Medvedev, A., Lambiotte, R., & Delvenne, J. (2018). The anatomy of Reddit: An overview of academic research. Retrieved from https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.10881
This is a really interesting and well put together perspective of online identity. I would wholeheartedly agree that online communities do not and will not replace traditional communities since each provide such different tools and methods for communication. The question of whether the internet should be regulated in order to provide more accountability is an interesting one, as in some circumstances there is no doubt that people must be held accountable for their actions e.g. anti-social behavior such as threats of violence. However if this was required across the board I feel some of the magic of the internet as a mode of communication could be lost. The anonymity that the internet allows can make people feel comfortable discussing topics that they feel uncomfortable bringing up in person.
Unfortunately some governments have a history of punishing everyone for the actions of the few so I think it’s more a question of do they want to protect other people or is it just another thing they want to control for other reasons?
So true, the debate surrounding privacy and security is a complex one surrounded by distrust of the powers that be. During research for my paper I looked into online role playing games where many users found a sort of therapy in acting out a fantasy as a form of escapism. I feel this is an important aspect of online culture and perhaps one that would not be taken seriously due to the stigma video games hold. However this community requires minimal accountability with peers. This lack of accountability does not seem to create anymore deception than any other online community, in fact I would argue deceptive behavior is more common on social media platforms.
An interesting read!
There really is a fine line between Freedom of Speech and preventing online harms. I have unfortunately come to the conclusion that humanity can’t be trusted. Ewan McGaughey from the London School of Economics argues that technology has endangered democracy. We have seen this in practice with Trump and Brexit. Every democracy around the world is potentially at threat from manipulation. Those with money and power are using SNS to spread their harmful ideologies and narratives. The actions of a few people can have enormous societal impacts. What is the solution? I don’t advocate a Putin or Xi style solution of absolute control by the state. However, I also don’t think technology companies can be trusted to do what’s right – as they motivated by profit. In Germany, the ‘Netzwerkdurchsetzungsgesetz’ or Network Enforcement Act is an important first step. I think we need a new model of control and the conversation needs to start right now.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/fraud-unravels-everything-brexit/
That’s a great take David, you really can see the impact of social media in the political sphere right now, Trump being a great example. It’s a scary world and we definitely need more accountability in certain online communities. However as I said in my previous comment I feel the potential for anonymity online is extremely important for the internet as an eco system, there is nothing else available that allows a user the same anonymity as the internet. I feel having a platform to speak anonymously whether it be to gain advice or simply have discussions that the user may be uncomfortable discussing otherwise is extremely valuable.
Hi Aidan
I am certainly not against anonymity on the internet. From a ‘Fake news’ point of view it not the profile or persona that delivers it which is the critical issue – it’s the type of information that is being posted or shared – check out the link from the EAVI. And you don’t need to hide behind anonymity to do that – you only have to look at the number of falsehoods Donald Trump has spread in his time as president. Some news outlets such as CNN put it at over 10,000 since he came into office.
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/04/29/politics/donald-trump-lies-washington-post/index.html
https://eavi.eu/beyond-fake-news-10-types-misleading-info/
* Does it really matter if someone knows your real name? They can still steal your fake identity. Should we really be so concerned with our identity being stolen? What are peoples’ concerns here with identity theft? What are you worried will happen exactly? I’m not trying to be nasty here, I am genuinely curious. Has anyone here had identity theft issues online?
“The internet will never be free of controversy and neither will the ‘real world’.” – so true, and others that have written about identity so far also seem to come to this conclusion.
On another note, your comment about governments wanting to protect people made me think of online ownership. My article discusses this in regards to indigenous identity online – I think it’s important that people/companies own their identities however they choose to and not be dictated to or organised by other influences.
> Does it really matter if someone knows your real name? They can still steal your fake identity. Should we really be so concerned with our identity being stolen? What are peoples’ concerns here with identity theft? What are you worried will happen exactly?
It’s a very good question you ask and I would say that it all depends on what you are doing online.
I’ll give you an example, If you’re going about your daily business doing nothing wrong just posting photos of your dog and your lunch on Facebook then no-one has any reason to target you because you’re one in a million and if you do get targeted then it was most probably a random attack and an unfortunate situation.
However, I won’t reveal the extent of my experience but it is very vast and long running yet no longer. Take the piracy and hacking scene for example, most experienced people in that scene go to great lengths to protect their identity because of the fact that what they do is not considered to be legal in most countries around the world. They protect their identity while simultaneously conversing with others in the scene but do so without revealing too much identifying information. Sure, they may reveal the general area of where they live in the world, they may reveal that they’re married or have a cat, however specific details that would identify them are usually not revealed mainly because of the threat of law enforcement leaning on others which may mean that they in turn would get arrested for what they’ve been doing. They consider their online cohorts as friends but also don’t consider them worthy of knowing exactly who they are.
I’ve been told by Jane in the comments in my essay that some of it relies on personal experience but I’ve been around a long time when it comes to different communities online and what I’ve seen varies a lot in the way people reveal or hide their true identity. For example, I’ve met some of my online ‘friends’ in person a couple of times and all I know is what they look like and what their username is, we addressed each other by our usernames in person. That’s as far as they were willing to go, it was all business, no personal. I don’t use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or any of that under my real name, the people that matter to me know where to find me and the reason I do that is because I know how easy it is to find out nearly everything to do with the people that post personal details on the Internet, some people share too much and it is very easy to connect the dots.
So to answer your question, it all depends on what you’re doing online and whether you think it’s worth giving your personal details to a free service where mostly anyone can look you up. I hate this term because I’ve heard it too much over the years but it has some truth to it… “If you’re not paying for the product, then you are the product”. In other words, it’s not just the people looking you up you’re giving information to, you’re also voluntarily giving personal details to a large corporation that doesn’t care about you so they can build a profile about you. Some agree that this is beneficial because it means adverts are more targeted and they don’t get irrelevant advertising anymore, some people find it a bit creepy. I have no opinion either way, I am still on the fence about it because companies like Facebook will never reveal their true intentions as to why they harvest this data.
I don’t judge people on what they do with their social media, I think it has it’s place in the world, I just choose not to use it for any of my personal stuff based on my own experiences and how malicious some people can be if they choose to be that way.
As I mentioned in the second paragraph, if you get targeted and haven’t pissed anyone off then you’re just unlucky. However if you’re doing things that are attracting attention then it’s best to not give anyone a chance to harvest the personal details of you and your family. It doesn’t matter if they’re a cyber criminal or just a vindictive ex-partner, why give them the chance?
I know I may sound paranoid about all of this and it’s a much larger debate then we all have time for but I bet you the people that work in high level cyber security aren’t splashing their personal details all over Facebook and I would bet it is because they know how detrimental it can be to various parts of their life for various reasons.
EDit: Apologies for the long winded post but as I mentioned, this is no small debate 🙂
Sorry for the double post but in relation to what data you voluntarily put on social media websites is this interesting article written last week by Dr Zeynep Tufekci from the University of North Carolina.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/21/opinion/computational-inference.html
Appreciate the long comment! I’m trying to keep mine short but all the identity articles are so interesting.
And thank you for the article link.
Bottom line – yes, you sound paranoid, haha! But that’s not a bad thing. I think we need to be sometimes in order to avoid sticky situations.
I agree that it depends on what you do and share online, however, I think that perhaps Web 2.0 simply gives us the tools to make old behaviours new and easily accessible.
None of the online behaviours is new; I could think of ‘old school’ examples to go with Dr Tufekci’s digital concerns.
Interestingly, the Dr suggests in the conclusion that government regulation could help, when earlier in the article it is stated that:
“The Chinese government, having gathered biometric data on its citizens, is trying to use big data and artificial intelligence to single out “threats” to Communist rule, including the country’s Uighurs, a mostly Muslim ethnic group.”
I think this confusion is why we should be constantly debating and questioning ourselves in regards to the Internet – perhaps there is no fixed solution as such.
Hello again, after reading Tufekci’s article mentioned above I found another one on a potential solution to privacy issues online in terms of data collection/big data:
https://www.wired.com/story/machines-shouldnt-have-to-spy-on-us-to-learn/
Very interesting reading and good to hear people, especially bigger corporations, are beginning to listen to concerns and search for solutions.
This is a great discussion, something that has been bugging me since we started the unit is whether we can still really use the words real world versus online world/community etc.
I notice that towards the end you put it in inverted comma’s and personally I think that as social media has become so intrinsic in our everyday lives there really is little distinction now between the virtual and ‘real’ world. For most people I would argue that the networks and communities they interact with online are their real world. It is no less real just because you post a picture on Instagram or FB for friends to see than it is to send a photograph in the mail to a family member. Both would feel equally real to the sender of the image.
I’ve just been interested on other’s thoughts on this distinction as it starts to feel less relevant today than it did a few years ago when some of the articles we have been reading were written.
You are right in your observation that some of the reading texts were from a time that doesn’t seem that long ago to us however in ‘Internet time’ they are a vast age away in the way that the online world has evolved.
Another good point to consider in this evolution is that only 10 to 15 years ago people still looked at others in a weird way when they say they met their partner on the Internet however apps like Tinder, Grindr, and POF, et al seem like the norm these days (although maybe not to the older generation).
Food for thought.
Online is definitely the real world these days- it is just easier to separate it in our heads as online vs. offline because online involves (at least at the moment!) a computer of some description at our fingertips. And, as JEastcott has referred to in the comments section, most of us debating the issue now can remember before computers became mainstream and so compare the two constantly.
Perhaps once the internet is made even more accessible (think Google glasses) to everyday items we will stop thinking of online and offline as separate entities.
I think that is already happening with the younger generation who’ve never known any different. Either I am not getting out and about as much anymore or the frequency of hearing those terms ‘offline/online’ used to differentiate are being used less frequently as the years go by.
Indeed, I’m in agreement there and I am not trying to get hung up on the way we word things. Online and offline are good descriptors still and I actually prefer this way of describing how we interact rather than the use of real world vs online or virtual world. The real world is in both online and offline. I think that old descriptor stemmed from a time when people saw anything online as not real which is a bit bizarre from the start. Perhaps I’m just getting caught up in semantics!
This is a really interesting discussion. As you point out in your paper, there are many reasons for using a pseudonym in online communities, not just with malicious intent in mind. Many people may be involved in communities from which they receive support or information and they don’t wish this identity and community to overlap into other areas of their lives. Anonymity can assist in maintaining privacy for these people, allowing them to feel safe in these communities. During my research into Indigenous activism online, I found often younger people prefer not to identify as Indigenous online due the racism they experience.
My reasons for not using my real name online are due to both privacy and surveillance. I don’t really have a problem with targeted advertising – I’ve learned to ignore that fairly well both on and offline. And I’m not really that concerned about my identity being stolen. However, I am a private person and do not wish my data to be sold to anonymous third parties to do with as they please. By creating a fake identity for social media, which is not just a name but a whole persona I am hopefully creating bogus data.
I am old enough to remember when the debate about “The Australia Card” flared in 1986 when the government tried to pass legislation for a national identity card. The public backlash about the invasion of privacy was enormous. I find it somewhat ironic that the government only had to wait another 25 or so years for the public to willingly and without question provide details of their entire lives, now available for not just the government to collect but who knows who else.
Australia Card Bill 1986 – Parliament of Australia https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/bd/bd1986/1986bd159
Thanks for your great paper JEastcott, and for my newly learned word “apostasy”. My paper also deals with how online groups can help us express our identity, however, yours brilliantly delves deeper into the expression of identity through anonymity.
“There is a lot more kindness on the Internet than there is nastiness as evidence by survey results conducted by the Pew Research Center which found that respondents said that “70% of internet users say they had been treated kindly or generously by others online. That compares with 25% who say they have been treated unkindly or been attacked by someone online” and that “56% of internet users say they have seen an online group come together to help a person or a community solve a problem.”
I would suppose that this correlates directly with the “real life” experience. I agree with your argument that online Groups tend to be as civil or dangerous/inappropriate as the motivation of its members rings true, there is never an uncivil word on “Queensland Spinners and Weavers” Facebook Group with which I am acquainted. I agree with Stephanie, when she earlier asked, are there really such things as “real life” and “online life” any more? These two things are so interconnected in my life now there is no defining marker. My family are connected online and my online groups often have in person meet ups, every community I belong to off line has an online component facilitating it.
Thank you for posting such an interesting and easy to understand article JEastcott. I too have just discovered apostasy! I would imagine that closing down online communities because of acts of terrorism by one member will just encourage others who believe in the same ideals to take their groups to the dark web. In fact in an article on the dark web, Weimann (2016) states: ” A recent study found that 57% of the Dark Web is occupied by illegal content like pornography, illicit finances, drug hubs, weapons trafficking, counterfeit currency, terrorist communication, and much more.” (p.40) Also according to Weimann an al- Qaeda group distributed a manual to its followers on how to keep their anonymity while using the Dark Web. Interesting times!
Weimann, G. (2016). Terrorist migration to the dark web. Perspectives on terrorism, 10(3),
40-44. Retrieved from
http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/513/1013
Hi JEastcott,
You’ve written an insightful paper, thank you.
I remember the early days of internet chat rooms (showing my age here!), it was an exciting time with the potential to chat to anyone from around the world. It was anonymous, fleeting and not as engaged as it is today.
I remember joining online forums around the year 2000 and everyone used an avatar, we hid behind these small caricatures and images whilst talking about all manner of personal stuff, events and thoughts. I think having an avatar allowed us to be less censored with what we had to say, and there were definitely people who played a character rather than showing their true self. I never saw it as malicious, instead they became characters and personalities in themselves – always entertaining.
You pose some interesting questions. I don’t think the internet should be regulated, I definitely don’t want my personal information and name to be ‘out there’. I think there are always going to be instigators who like acting a certain way to get a reaction – but I don’t think we should police the internet as a result, that would be impossible and an infringement on freedom/freedom of speech.
I really enjoyed the argument you are presenting here and agree that the anonymity that can be reached online is not necessarily a bad thing, however I still feel like it has a dangerous side to it as well, as it provides the perfect cover for people with malicious intentions. This anonymity gives criminals the freedom to spread hate and dangerous thoughts without the worry that they may get caught, unless the government gets involved of course.
Do you think the providers at least should be able to track their users locations and use their online access to gather information about these anonymous users. I think in this case when someone publishes bad content online then at least the online providers can track down and force the individual to stop.
> Do you think the providers at least should be able to track their users locations and use their online access to gather information about these anonymous users. I think in this case when someone publishes bad content online then at least the online providers can track down and force the individual to stop.
They already at least know your IP address unless you’re using a VPN that doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement but whether it’s up to the online providers to police their customers behaviour is a debate that’s been happening for quite a while.
Recent examples are the iiNet vs Dallas Buyers Club court case and the various blocklists Australian ISP’s have been coerced to implement. The ISP’s don’t really consider it their job to stop people from doing what they want however sometimes Governments around the world don’t realise that their paper shields are useless to even the average 12 yr old.
Hi JEastcott,
Interesting paper and comments.
I am a social media user but for specific purposes so really I do not publish my real life on those platforms and I do not also publish my children’s. I feel that it is their decision as to how they develop their online identity when they are old enough and I don’t want to do that for them. However, I don’t have family and friends that are long distances from me so I can share everything privately but for some of my friends they put their lives on social media in order to stay in touch with family and friends who are far away. This is a very cheap means of communication compared to calling or mail and can be done in real time. So in that respect sometimes it is the audience you are communicating with or in a community with that can shape you online identity (oversharer/undersharer).
I think online and offline identities are very similar. As humans we show sides of ourselves to others we want them to see and then in turn they make their own perceptions of us. I know people I work with see me differently to those who are my friends which is also true of online communities. I act differently and share different material depending on the community I am a part of. I think while we have the power to hide or show our identities it is also up to those we communicate with on how they perceive that.