This is really quite interesting, but only from a social sciences perspective. Here's where social sciences and real socialization differ: the plural of anecdote is data in the real world. Here's a great example: "He asserts that being restricted to a real name (G+ no longer does this) rather than anonymity or a pseudonym is incorrect, because it restricts what we do and share. Is he wrong? Yes, absolutely."
How many gay teens are posting on LGBT support and community sites using pseudonyms because they don't want to publicly out themselves? How many people are posting about breaking DRM anonymously or under pseudonyms to get around draconian laws? These directly fly in the face of the assertion that requiring your discussions and actions to be tied to your real name doesn't impact what you say or do. There's value in real-life identities, but that does not in any way diminish the value of anonymity and pseudonymity.
For that case, I agree with you. Where I refute Moot is where he calls the model of reality-reflected identity on Facebook incorrect, which comes off as essentialist. Imagine if Facebook at the start tells you to choose any name of your liking. On a social network, how effective would the content that you'd rather post under a pseudonym be? The idea is that without Facebook, the share-ability of such content would be diminished. So my argument, admittedly unclear in the post, is that pseudonymity and anonymity actually derive their audience from the effects of rigidly reflected identities--but if you throw out the strictness that Facebook imposes entirely, on Facebook in particular, your audience size dries up considerably. People feel comfortable SHARING from a point of forced identity, but their will to EXPRESS themselves is most manifest in anonymity and pseudonymity. Expression without an audience is almost meaningless. It's a foundational issue.
Jesus man, I'm very interested in this topic yet I still had a terrible time working through that brain dump. Superfluous acronyms, overly verbose, excerpts from (egads!) your undergrad papers! What the hell, man. Are you trying to appear smart for your professor or are you trying to persuade nerds with ADD? It can't be both.
Sorry, naner. When I try to be precise about things and not essentialize, it does require some amount of padding with jargon (pertaining to specificity) which would otherwise be taken as bullshit-like if not read by the fielded eye. What I try to do is stay away from generalizing and making indefensible claims. Next time, I'll stick with graphs, which is how I formulate my ideas and relate different social forces in the first place. To be dry: I wanted to be as accurate as possible, but it clouded all meaning.
All this talk about real identity on the web is a cover for the only real issue. Corporations can track, market to, and monetize what they learn about you more effectively with real id policies for internet use. Governments can track, monitor and control you more effectively with real id policies for internet use. The end.
I had trouble following the train of thought in this article; it may be too "stream of consciousness" for this particular audience. While this may be a problem between my keyboard and chair, I do not generally find HN articles hard to follow.
After reading and responding to the comments, I want to add an overall, more clear message:
The argument is that without rigid identity on the web, anonymity and pen names could not really take off and receive audience. Many individuals' first encounter with the Internet and any web communities is with Facebook, and this is because these people would not feel comfortable starting out on a place like Reddit for 4chan. For this reason, rigid identity is a necessary foundation for the usefulness of pen names and anonymity. Moot's argument that pen names are the way to go is flawed insofar as it undermines the "necessary evil" of rigid identity, which is a natural, socially evolved stepping stone for anonymity's value.
Without people going online and possessing monuments to themselves (facebook profiles) in a way they feel comfortable and secure in, anything posted online (including content under pen names) is in aggregate less valuable. Rigid identity is a necessary characteristic of social media content which can result in inexperienced web users taking the plunge to explore the rest of the less-rigid web.
Anonymous communities existed before rigid identity on the web. Those anonymous communities clearly provided some kind of value to their members and, thusly, must be considered useful.
How, then, can you argue that rigid identity is a necessary foundation for the usefulness of pen names and anonymity?
Further, I find your claim that men didn't have an identity prior to the advent of leisure time, frankly, extraordinary and, as such, the claim requires extraordinary evidence. Can you provide such evidence? Hell, even the argument that nomads don't engage in leisure time seems dubious. Wild animals have leisure time.
I think you need to be much clearer about the exceptions to your theory, otherwise it's far too easy to refute by example.
I'd guess that most people on HN have been online since before Facebook was a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye, and long since before it became popular. They created massive amounts of content, both long-lasting and ephemeral, and did so without the benefit of a Facebook profile. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that they had proto-Facebook profiles, or 'home pages' as they were known, and these served the same basic purpose. I don't think that a home page is a proto-Facebook profile, and I think that this refutes your argument that a profile or substitute profile is a necessary precondition for taking part in online discussion.
Almost every online interaction requires some kind of identity. IRC nicknames, handles or usernames on most websites, the contents of your sig on Usenet or mailing lists; these are all used to identify individuals. But there's no sense in which these need to be 'real' names, or that these different identities need to be correlated across different online social spaces. Plenty of ordinary people used AOL chat years ago without needing a rigid identity as a stepping stone. There might be a case that extremely socially conservative people ('settlers' in 'values modes' theory [1]) might need to feel that they're part of a community of 'real' people in order to interact online, and it's notable that the groups most upset at G+'s 'real names' policy were those least socially conservative, but the causality is tricky here. Either way, I don't think your argument holds up as anything close to a universal argument.
[1] http://www.cultdyn.co.uk/valuesmodes.html - I don't claim this is at all factual, but it's useful in the context of analysing how groups adopt technology differently
It is well accepted that anonymity brings out the worst in people (the author has said so himself). It is also understood that context guides behaviours. For example, one might be more disinhibited on a tropical holiday. Another example is footballers behaving badly on tours. Another one is the unbelievable atrocities soldiers commit away from their home "context".
Moot's thesis is that people become interesting when you provide them a different context, while the author is saying that it is far healthier to have one well integrated identity.
To connect the dots here: I think both Moot and I employ a sort of essentialist rhetoric to get attention, the same way you would write something enormously more controversial under a pen name. A more strict interpretation of Moot's argument is that Facebook should be filled with pen names, as people need to be creative instead of simply informative, and that rigidity kills creativity. A strict interpretation of my argument is just as you said, but also that the well integrated identity comes before anonymity before anonymity may become useful / audienced. Moot's simple championing of anonymity misses the point that you need an audience first, which is gathered by putting people in a position where they can willingly be exposed to its content. It's the same as why farmville isn't 100% evil: it brings people to the web who otherwise would never be there, and acts as a positive externality on all other web sub-industries.
> [Autobiographical memory] might be boosted by anonymity and pseudonyms, as a way to pull down barriers to risky behavior, but anonymity and pseudonyms do much less for aggregate [utility per person] than postmodern, perceivably rigid reflections of reality on Facebook do.
There's a lot here about self-gratification through performative identity, but nothing about the value society derives from the unflinching evaluation of unpopular ideas. I find this to be nearly absent in "this will go on your permanent record" oriented venues, which in turn is why I find those all but useless. It's reception and counters to my arguments that I value; what I write would be anonymous (and on slashdot it was) if a dissociated pseudonym weren't required.
Identity comes from the concept of identification/classification. These are notions which evolved with modernism in Western society, or the ability to measure things exactly for the sake of predicting and knowing. There is no exact meaning for identity due to its elusive nature, as its meaning belongs to the fluid individual. My post presumes the definition, and yes, that makes it just an assertion.
I am amazed that someone would write so much so thoroughly yet completely miss the point that some people don't give a damn about UPP or identity. Want to know what my reputation is? Too bad, it doesn't exist. Excepting the handful of close, personal friends, everyone who communicates with me is forced to judge me based purely on the merits of what I am saying, and not any sort of accumulated respect.
That's exactly the way I like it, because it's honest. If I say something stupid, I want people to say it's stupid. If I say something intelligent, I want them to say it's intelligent. The concept that I would be dishonest or hold my tongue instead of saying exactly what I thought for fear of what the listener would think of me is little better than lying to their face. The world would be a healthier place if everyone was called out on their stupidity, every time, by everyone there.
Anonymity enables honesty. Rigid identities are for people who are afraid of what they might hear if there was nothing protecting them from the truth of other peoples' thoughts.
Do you think this comment is the most ignorant, idiotic thing you've read today? Then tell me so, without being influenced by who I am, or dissuaded by anything I might do or think in the future. I welcome your honest opinion, for I know it is based purely on what I have said.
You're ignoring something important: Talk is cheap, and listening is expensive. Judging only the merit of ideas is nice, but it is only applicable within a small community. Once you have more people than you can easily listen to (even on a cursory level), it becomes a search problem. I don't have time to seek and consider opinions from all 7 billion people on the planet whenever I want an opinion on anything — particularly the kind of large topics where I'd generally want someone else's opinion — so I will focus my attention on people I know to be helpful. If I can't identify you as somebody who might have something to say, most of the time you'll get mentally lumped in with the teeming masses who don't even have an informed opinion on the matter.
I don't think you are wrong in your overall point. My post was an analysis of the social evolution of self-expression. That was its direction. Your points relate to the actual utility of having no identity. The merits of your points (while anonymous) exist, but I would argue that they could not exist if not for the experiences derived under a rigid identity, perhaps not even without the experiences derived from having an identity on the web anywhere. How do you know that you care about identity or UPP or not if you did not experience both the "have" and "have not" have not at some point? Your opinion comes out of the in-between, and knowing both ways.
Edit: upvote for your throwaway, new account to prove your point. I imagine it would not have preceded a real account that you care about.
[+] [-] daeken|14 years ago|reply
How many gay teens are posting on LGBT support and community sites using pseudonyms because they don't want to publicly out themselves? How many people are posting about breaking DRM anonymously or under pseudonyms to get around draconian laws? These directly fly in the face of the assertion that requiring your discussions and actions to be tied to your real name doesn't impact what you say or do. There's value in real-life identities, but that does not in any way diminish the value of anonymity and pseudonymity.
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naner|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] petegrif|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] droithomme|14 years ago|reply
All this talk about real identity on the web is a cover for the only real issue. Corporations can track, market to, and monetize what they learn about you more effectively with real id policies for internet use. Governments can track, monitor and control you more effectively with real id policies for internet use. The end.
[+] [-] rwolf|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
The argument is that without rigid identity on the web, anonymity and pen names could not really take off and receive audience. Many individuals' first encounter with the Internet and any web communities is with Facebook, and this is because these people would not feel comfortable starting out on a place like Reddit for 4chan. For this reason, rigid identity is a necessary foundation for the usefulness of pen names and anonymity. Moot's argument that pen names are the way to go is flawed insofar as it undermines the "necessary evil" of rigid identity, which is a natural, socially evolved stepping stone for anonymity's value.
Without people going online and possessing monuments to themselves (facebook profiles) in a way they feel comfortable and secure in, anything posted online (including content under pen names) is in aggregate less valuable. Rigid identity is a necessary characteristic of social media content which can result in inexperienced web users taking the plunge to explore the rest of the less-rigid web.
[+] [-] adbge|14 years ago|reply
How, then, can you argue that rigid identity is a necessary foundation for the usefulness of pen names and anonymity?
Further, I find your claim that men didn't have an identity prior to the advent of leisure time, frankly, extraordinary and, as such, the claim requires extraordinary evidence. Can you provide such evidence? Hell, even the argument that nomads don't engage in leisure time seems dubious. Wild animals have leisure time.
[+] [-] rjknight|14 years ago|reply
I'd guess that most people on HN have been online since before Facebook was a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye, and long since before it became popular. They created massive amounts of content, both long-lasting and ephemeral, and did so without the benefit of a Facebook profile. If I understand you correctly, you're saying that they had proto-Facebook profiles, or 'home pages' as they were known, and these served the same basic purpose. I don't think that a home page is a proto-Facebook profile, and I think that this refutes your argument that a profile or substitute profile is a necessary precondition for taking part in online discussion.
Almost every online interaction requires some kind of identity. IRC nicknames, handles or usernames on most websites, the contents of your sig on Usenet or mailing lists; these are all used to identify individuals. But there's no sense in which these need to be 'real' names, or that these different identities need to be correlated across different online social spaces. Plenty of ordinary people used AOL chat years ago without needing a rigid identity as a stepping stone. There might be a case that extremely socially conservative people ('settlers' in 'values modes' theory [1]) might need to feel that they're part of a community of 'real' people in order to interact online, and it's notable that the groups most upset at G+'s 'real names' policy were those least socially conservative, but the causality is tricky here. Either way, I don't think your argument holds up as anything close to a universal argument.
[1] http://www.cultdyn.co.uk/valuesmodes.html - I don't claim this is at all factual, but it's useful in the context of analysing how groups adopt technology differently
[+] [-] teyc|14 years ago|reply
It is well accepted that anonymity brings out the worst in people (the author has said so himself). It is also understood that context guides behaviours. For example, one might be more disinhibited on a tropical holiday. Another example is footballers behaving badly on tours. Another one is the unbelievable atrocities soldiers commit away from their home "context".
Moot's thesis is that people become interesting when you provide them a different context, while the author is saying that it is far healthier to have one well integrated identity.
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|14 years ago|reply
There's a lot here about self-gratification through performative identity, but nothing about the value society derives from the unflinching evaluation of unpopular ideas. I find this to be nearly absent in "this will go on your permanent record" oriented venues, which in turn is why I find those all but useless. It's reception and counters to my arguments that I value; what I write would be anonymous (and on slashdot it was) if a dissociated pseudonym weren't required.
[+] [-] tlholaday|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhizome|14 years ago|reply
Identity refers to how we reference ourselves, primarily in relation to relationships, experiences, and possessions.
What is your basis for this assertion?
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Causification|14 years ago|reply
That's exactly the way I like it, because it's honest. If I say something stupid, I want people to say it's stupid. If I say something intelligent, I want them to say it's intelligent. The concept that I would be dishonest or hold my tongue instead of saying exactly what I thought for fear of what the listener would think of me is little better than lying to their face. The world would be a healthier place if everyone was called out on their stupidity, every time, by everyone there.
Anonymity enables honesty. Rigid identities are for people who are afraid of what they might hear if there was nothing protecting them from the truth of other peoples' thoughts.
Do you think this comment is the most ignorant, idiotic thing you've read today? Then tell me so, without being influenced by who I am, or dissuaded by anything I might do or think in the future. I welcome your honest opinion, for I know it is based purely on what I have said.
[+] [-] chc|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neoveller|14 years ago|reply
Edit: upvote for your throwaway, new account to prove your point. I imagine it would not have preceded a real account that you care about.