The problem with the multiple-vs-unique-ID debate is that people tend to ignore what these systems are really built for: data mining, behavioural analysis, targeted advertising etc.
Users will agree with moot that separate identities are better and safer, but this is not how the real FB/Google customers see it; advertisers and marketeers want to know that user-A is an engineer AND loves cooking AND has a pet AND goes on 4chan.org/tv, not just one OR the others.
That's why FB/Google try so hard to reconcile all your activities under one ID: to better represent the unique intersection of interests that will be resold to marketeers. Any feature they implement to "manage your faceted identity" will only give you an illusion of separation, and will inevitably link all your activities anyway, because that's necessary for their business model.
Note that this is not a rant (I use FB and G+ every day), I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.
I'm not sure why Google would care to know those things. The most profitable form of advertising is a direct search. "Bears tickets" is advertising gold. Joe liking the Bears on Facebook is not on the same level. Google might get incremental value on having the additional data but I don't think it's worth the reputation hit.
I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.
Absolutely. That's the dishonest part about this conversation. G+ and FB make more money if you use your real name. Asking whether they are right or wrong about identity is allowing them to keep the conversation one step away from where it should be. G+ and FB use you real name. Fine. Here's the conversations that need to follow: 1) To what extent can they leverage that for profit? 2) Is this leading us to an internet that is non-anonymous by default, and do we want that?
Poole is right, but he's really just talking strategy. I do agree that G+ and FB are creating a vacuum to be filled with anonymous social services.
It looks like a social network that allowed you to actively use multiple identities with one single login - what many people already do using special software, but in a cumbersome way - would hit the jackpot: Give users what they want, and give customers what they want too. If G+ did this, it would REALLY differentiate itself from FB.
On the other hand, most of Google's (adwords) customers still target their ads based on keywords. That is, they don't care if their audience is an engineer or a farmer, as long as they are currently interested in their product. And it clearly works well, based on the prices of keywords. So it's not like adsense won't work without G+
> I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.
I am not sure that this is overlooked. I think most people know it is as so obviously true that it doesn't need restating anymore.
We present ourselves differently in different contexts,
and that's key to our creativity and self-expression.
"It's not 'who you share with,' it's 'who you share as,'"
Poole told us. "Identity is prismatic."
moot just kinda blew my mind. And it makes total sense. I'd go so far as to say it's almost painfully obvious once it's pointed out to you. I hope someone's got it on video and posts it somewhere.
The most insightful discussion of online identity I've heard to date.
Facebook has painted themselves into a corner, and Google isn't creative enough with their approach. Twitter is better, but only because they don't have the same policies and don't try to get in the way.
Chris came up with a great metaphor to explain online identity.
Most of the people leading major product decisions in this area either have very common names or are already famous. But for the rest of us, using our real name online means that anyone who meets us can discover our online identity with a google search.
When I "meet" someone online (such as reading a comment he/she wrote on HN) I really don't care what his/her real name is. I don't understand why Google cares.
Google cares because it allows them to correlate all that juicy information you give them online with all those things you interact with offline. Together, these will combine into more targeted advertising (or "direct-to-individual marketing").
There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names.
As someone who used to post a lot on forums, I agree that being able to have multiple pseudonyms is great. On the other hand, I also appreciate the value of enforcing real names in online discussions.
If you've ever read the comments on news articles on Facebook (MSNBC/Breaking News/etc.), it's amazing the hateful, racist, bigoted shit people will post under their REAL NAMES. I can only imagine how bad it would be if people could choose to post anonymously.
We're mostly anonymous here, and it seems to work fine. Social mores are determined by the group. For some people on facebook, the makeup of their social circle means the posting of hateful content is ok. Others would never dream of it, due to the backlash they'd receive. The same is true anywhere. HN is far more like 4chan than facebook as far as anonymity is concerned, yet the level of discourse couldn't be more different.
Again, norms are determined by the group, just as they are in real life. There are some things I'd feel comfortable saying to a group of friends that I would never say to a stranger, and others that I could say to a group of strangers but never dream of saying to my friends. In this sense, moot is absolutely right.
Moderation is the solution to he problem you are describing, not identity. It is a bizarre logic to say "A is better than B. Here is an example of how A fails. Therefore A is better than B."
Mainstram media forums are full of idiotic posts because the mainstream is primarily composed of idiots.
You may want to visit Mr. Poole's first website, 4chan, which requires anonymous posting on some areas but allows a limited identity in others (through tripcodes). The effect of anonymous posting on content quality is immediately apparent.
As someone who, until recently, worked at a local news TV station, it was downright embarrassing the vocal minority of people who are actively spewing their hate. We even had a few people who regularly would write in to race-bait black reporters and slam people in general. And you're right, it's under their real name, and they're very proud.
Poole is spot on. I'll add as a corollary, that users also don't want real-time communication that is a mirror. This is one of the reasons that videoconferencing has failed repeatedly since 1964. The entire cosmetics and fashion industries exist to provide avatars for when we must endure the gaze. And yet, we continue to work on videoconferencing and tele-immersion. Sigh.
What on earth makes you think that video conferencing has failed? I might not use it for business calls, or to organise an evening out with friends, but I use Skype video every weekend to catch up with my family... Sure, it doesn't replace every type of telephone call, but it certainly does replace some.
This point (anti-point?) is often made, but I'm not sure it actually means anything. After all, you could have said the same about AOL at the time when the few forward thinking among us were saying "Hey, there's more to the internet than this walled-garden stuff."
On paper AOL looked great (at the time), but they'd made a grave conceptual error in their product design that eventually became apparent to all. Perhaps we're in the same early stage with regard to identity?
Yup. The thing is, people don't need to choose between real life identities and personas on the internet. Most people want both: they want to be in touch with their real life peer group and they want escapist personas that can be provocative, obtuse, interested in niche subjects or authoritative in a way that would only be undermined by their real life lack of credentials. And in different arenas, they can.
It's the former area that naturally tends towards large, unified networks worth billions though. Its understandable that Facebook prefers not to lose the factors that made it unique by permitting joke accounts and impostors and devils advocates and trolls, even if many people find them find entertaining. Not to mention all the other things that come with a truly liberal policy on identity (like hundreds of millions of autofriending spambots).
Google and Facebook didn't get it wrong, they just don't want pseudonyms or at least limit each person so they can conquer/monetize the identity space. Two examples, (1) online commerce trust Google and Facebook identities sufficiently to allow them to purchase, similarly some poll sites can trust those identities, i.e., a single person can't vote a X times but creating X fake identities.
In 2007 I was part of a committee looking at the OOXML proposal for ISO acceptance. I had to listen to Google and IBM release twisted media releases about what was going on. I learnt during those few months that those two companies are in everything for the money. After that process was finished I consider Google a blight on this planet that I'd like to see gone.
One point that stuck with me was talking about the trade effects on the pacific island nations. Nations without proper access to anything thanks to isolation. I remember listening to FOSS make the case the case that those islands should be using Linux and not windows.
I remember making the conjecture these people where basic users, without access to proper education, and needed a monolithic MS style set up to keep them afloat, also people often without internet access, or reliable power (or even drinking water ATM). The response back was a blunt "oh well bad luck for them, thats not our problem".
That was the first time I became aware FOSS being used as an economic weapon, and in such a way that could cause entire populations of people to suffer.
And why? it sure as hell wasn't about making the world a better place, they made that perfectly clear. No it was about making money for themselves by hurting other people.
I think moot's observation is less psychological and more sociological. If he's right, then Facebook and G+ are unsuited to their goal of becoming the hub for social interaction on the Internet, and they'll inevitably burn out when their networks become too large and dense for users to sustain a single identity.
Identity is prismatic, but the faces of that prism aren't disjointed. They're all part of the same whole and for this reason I'm not sure his metaphor works with his point about how we present ourselves differently in different contexts.
I've always used my real name on everything I do since I got in trouble in high school for being part of a group prank under a pseudonym. My father told me that unless I want what I do to be associated with my real name, I just probably shouldn't do it. I've found those to be good words to live by. And if you've ever explored 4chan for even a minute you'll see why this is important, the anonymity there turns those people into, well, freaks. I think "real names" can be considered a product of evolution, they came about for a good reason.
And if you've ever explored 4chan for even a minute you'll see why this is important, the anonymity there turns those people into, well, freaks.
Pseudonyms have been used all over the web from the very beginning. 4chan has problems because there is less accountability than other sites (like this one), not because they allow people to be anonymous.
The problem is more about contexts. There are some things which exist on social networks that you may not want to be shared. If you cannot separate the contexts in your life then this may cause serious problems.
Think about your job. Depending on your workplace, it could be a huge disadvantage to get found out as a geek. You could get overlooked for promotion because you "play with toys" or "spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft". Being a geek probably doesn't affect your performance in the workplace but it could get you shunned by people with prejudices against that sort of thing. That's an innocent example, there are far more complex and difficult examples which you are ignoring. What about if you are gay but you want to keep it secret from your family or you are living in a country where it is dangerous to be openly homosexual. I could go on listing traits, vices and attributes that could cause people problems.
Saying that someone simply "shouldn't do it" dismisses the fact that some things people wish to keep secret are part of their true identity. Someone shouldn't be forced to hide their true identity but it is an unfortunate reality that in many cases you must in order to protect your career, your family and even yourself.
Seems that email is the unifying online id and emphasizes the importance having an email address at a domain that you own and control so that you don't lose it when these social networks disappear or violate your privacy to the point that you need to walk away.
Would it be worthwhile to have a service that managed all of your online identities? You could register multiple avatars/aliases and the service would create email addresses for each of them that could be used to sign up for different networks. Then all of those email notifications, etc. could be forwarded to one confidential email address at a domain that the user owns and registers with the service.
Google captures your intent, Facebook captures your social graph. It's not Google and Facebook does it wrong, they just represent part of us. A service that tries to generalize the whole embodiment of human interaction where they only capture a piece of what we do is not going to work. I think it's human tendency to have multiple identities on the web based on context.
Another corollary is that we need better tools for lying. Prismatic identity management require that you can manage the persona on each facet and lie about the occluded personas. One of the killer features of the telephone that is often overlooked is how well it has supported lying.
This is a problem for Linkedin, as well. We have many facted personalities for work, but we are only allowed one-dimensional presentation. It's terrible, but most folks don't care or just don't know.
[+] [-] toyg|14 years ago|reply
Users will agree with moot that separate identities are better and safer, but this is not how the real FB/Google customers see it; advertisers and marketeers want to know that user-A is an engineer AND loves cooking AND has a pet AND goes on 4chan.org/tv, not just one OR the others.
That's why FB/Google try so hard to reconcile all your activities under one ID: to better represent the unique intersection of interests that will be resold to marketeers. Any feature they implement to "manage your faceted identity" will only give you an illusion of separation, and will inevitably link all your activities anyway, because that's necessary for their business model.
Note that this is not a rant (I use FB and G+ every day), I just think this point tends to be overlooked when talking about "social" websites, almost like it was not polite to point out where these businesses make their money.
[+] [-] MatthewPhillips|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] markkat|14 years ago|reply
Absolutely. That's the dishonest part about this conversation. G+ and FB make more money if you use your real name. Asking whether they are right or wrong about identity is allowing them to keep the conversation one step away from where it should be. G+ and FB use you real name. Fine. Here's the conversations that need to follow: 1) To what extent can they leverage that for profit? 2) Is this leading us to an internet that is non-anonymous by default, and do we want that?
Poole is right, but he's really just talking strategy. I do agree that G+ and FB are creating a vacuum to be filled with anonymous social services.
[+] [-] danmaz74|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerostar07|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crc|14 years ago|reply
I am not sure that this is overlooked. I think most people know it is as so obviously true that it doesn't need restating anymore.
[+] [-] jeffool|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|14 years ago|reply
http://yfrog.com/hsokxkwj
[+] [-] moot|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citricsquid|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AbyCodes|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianl|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jroseattle|14 years ago|reply
Facebook has painted themselves into a corner, and Google isn't creative enough with their approach. Twitter is better, but only because they don't have the same policies and don't try to get in the way.
[+] [-] grandalf|14 years ago|reply
Most of the people leading major product decisions in this area either have very common names or are already famous. But for the rest of us, using our real name online means that anyone who meets us can discover our online identity with a google search.
When I "meet" someone online (such as reading a comment he/she wrote on HN) I really don't care what his/her real name is. I don't understand why Google cares.
[+] [-] SoftwareMaven|14 years ago|reply
There is a HUGE financial incentive to force people into using their real names.
[+] [-] jarin|14 years ago|reply
If you've ever read the comments on news articles on Facebook (MSNBC/Breaking News/etc.), it's amazing the hateful, racist, bigoted shit people will post under their REAL NAMES. I can only imagine how bad it would be if people could choose to post anonymously.
[+] [-] redthrowaway|14 years ago|reply
Again, norms are determined by the group, just as they are in real life. There are some things I'd feel comfortable saying to a group of friends that I would never say to a stranger, and others that I could say to a group of strangers but never dream of saying to my friends. In this sense, moot is absolutely right.
[+] [-] MrMatters|14 years ago|reply
You don't have to imagine the past very hard. Was it really that bad just a few years ago?
[+] [-] gujk|14 years ago|reply
Mainstram media forums are full of idiotic posts because the mainstream is primarily composed of idiots.
[+] [-] benbscholz|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeffool|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] troymc|14 years ago|reply
"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes." - Walt Whitman
[+] [-] bteitelb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] demallien|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mey|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jhickner|14 years ago|reply
On paper AOL looked great (at the time), but they'd made a grave conceptual error in their product design that eventually became apparent to all. Perhaps we're in the same early stage with regard to identity?
[+] [-] notahacker|14 years ago|reply
It's the former area that naturally tends towards large, unified networks worth billions though. Its understandable that Facebook prefers not to lose the factors that made it unique by permitting joke accounts and impostors and devils advocates and trolls, even if many people find them find entertaining. Not to mention all the other things that come with a truly liberal policy on identity (like hundreds of millions of autofriending spambots).
There's the rest of the Internet for that...
[+] [-] nethsix|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjd|14 years ago|reply
One point that stuck with me was talking about the trade effects on the pacific island nations. Nations without proper access to anything thanks to isolation. I remember listening to FOSS make the case the case that those islands should be using Linux and not windows.
I remember making the conjecture these people where basic users, without access to proper education, and needed a monolithic MS style set up to keep them afloat, also people often without internet access, or reliable power (or even drinking water ATM). The response back was a blunt "oh well bad luck for them, thats not our problem".
That was the first time I became aware FOSS being used as an economic weapon, and in such a way that could cause entire populations of people to suffer.
And why? it sure as hell wasn't about making the world a better place, they made that perfectly clear. No it was about making money for themselves by hurting other people.
[+] [-] skymt|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] artursapek|14 years ago|reply
I've always used my real name on everything I do since I got in trouble in high school for being part of a group prank under a pseudonym. My father told me that unless I want what I do to be associated with my real name, I just probably shouldn't do it. I've found those to be good words to live by. And if you've ever explored 4chan for even a minute you'll see why this is important, the anonymity there turns those people into, well, freaks. I think "real names" can be considered a product of evolution, they came about for a good reason.
[+] [-] naner|14 years ago|reply
Pseudonyms have been used all over the web from the very beginning. 4chan has problems because there is less accountability than other sites (like this one), not because they allow people to be anonymous.
[+] [-] Tsagadai|14 years ago|reply
Think about your job. Depending on your workplace, it could be a huge disadvantage to get found out as a geek. You could get overlooked for promotion because you "play with toys" or "spend a lot of time playing World of Warcraft". Being a geek probably doesn't affect your performance in the workplace but it could get you shunned by people with prejudices against that sort of thing. That's an innocent example, there are far more complex and difficult examples which you are ignoring. What about if you are gay but you want to keep it secret from your family or you are living in a country where it is dangerous to be openly homosexual. I could go on listing traits, vices and attributes that could cause people problems.
Saying that someone simply "shouldn't do it" dismisses the fact that some things people wish to keep secret are part of their true identity. Someone shouldn't be forced to hide their true identity but it is an unfortunate reality that in many cases you must in order to protect your career, your family and even yourself.
[+] [-] dhugiaskmak|14 years ago|reply
This sounds an awful lot like "if you aren't doing anything wrong then you don't have anything to hide" to me.
[+] [-] teki|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] twakefield|14 years ago|reply
Would it be worthwhile to have a service that managed all of your online identities? You could register multiple avatars/aliases and the service would create email addresses for each of them that could be used to sign up for different networks. Then all of those email notifications, etc. could be forwarded to one confidential email address at a domain that the user owns and registers with the service.
[+] [-] traveldotto1|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|14 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] abava|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bteitelb|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] taariqlewis|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yuhong|14 years ago|reply